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past
his bag and briefcase and O’Malley reached in front of him to pick them up,
taking the lead again.
    “Now, let’s put these in your cabin.” The older man hurried
along and opened a door at the end of the hallway.
    “Usually there’re two to a cabin, but you’ll have this one
to yourself, of course. Assuming you still want to stay after you get the
tour.”
    Michael glanced inside the small room as the man put the
cases down. There was a vanity, what looked like another smaller compartment, a
bathroom perhaps, and something he had never seen, not even when he’d been sent
away to camp one summer as a young boy. Bunk beds. Built into the wall, they
had heavy, short curtains presumably to draw closed before sleeping.
    Bunk beds.
    His summer camp experience had included a lavish wood cabin
complete with servants.
    “You do it by sex, I assume?”
    “Pardon?”
    “Assign rooms. You have women on board. Correct?” He didn’t
deign to refer to Miss Donald. “You bunk them together, I assume.”
    “Oh yeah, sure. If there are enough of them.”
    “And if there aren’t? Or there’s an odd number? What happens
then? Do they get their own cabin?”
    “They’re drillers. Just like everybody else.” O’Malley
looked over Michael’s shoulder at Miss Donald, who remained in the hallway,
with what could only be interpreted as pride for some reason. “There’s no
favoritism.”
    “So they bunk with men.”
    Miss Donald piped up, sounding more subdued than she had on
deck or in the control room. “It’s not an issue anyway, since bunkmates are
always on opposite shifts. When one’s sleeping or in the cabin, the other is
working.”
    He turned to her. “Who’s your bunk mate?”
    “A roustabout named Lenny Krantz.”
    “Roustabout. So what does that mean exactly?”
    She shrugged. “A kid. He’s only twenty-one.”
    “And you’re an ancient…what?”
    She didn’t answer, her eyes narrowing in what she wasn’t
bothering to hide was annoyance.
    “Vanny here’s old for her years, Mr. Reynolds. She
practically grew up on a rig.”
    “Is your bunkmate sleeping now?”
    “No.”
    “Good. You can show me your cabin. And you can leave those
cases. Mick, is it?” Mick nodded, following orders as most people did in
Michael’s experience. “Thank you. I may have some questions for you later, but
for now, that’ll be all.”
    The older man looked uncertainly toward Miss Donald.
    “The safety officer was supposed to show me around as I
understood it,” Michael said deliberately. He nixed his earlier idea of getting
another tour guide, at least for now. He wanted to have a talk with this one
first to make sure they were on the same page in terms of safety on the rig. He
wasn’t going to watch his investment in Transcoastal float off on an oil slick
because of somebody’s bad attitude.
    O’Malley nodded. “Sure. No problem. Catch you later.”
    “Shall we?” he asked her when they were alone.
    Her cabin was on the same level and, not surprisingly,
proved identical to the one he’d initially been shown to. She leaned against
the door frame as he went in.
    Michael glanced around, noting the jumpsuits in the open
closet, no indication of gender other than the size, a few considerably larger
than the ones Miss Donald must wear. “Your bunkmate, this Lenny, he’s working?
I’d like to meet him.”
    “Why?”
    He looked at her coolly. “Why not?”
    “Well, actually Lenny is on an off-shift.”
    “Meaning?”
    “He’s not on the rig. He’s on his twenty-one-day home
stretch. Wyoming, I think. We work fourteen days on, twenty-one days off.”
    “Good. Then I’ll share this cabin.”
    She froze and then ignored the word share. “Okay.
I’ll just gather up a few of my things and get out of your way.”
    “No need. I’d like the whole experience. Sharing a
cabin and all.”
    “The whole experience is that the bunkmate is not around
when you are,” she pointed out testily. “Since I’m