I turned to Buddy for help a few times, although he has no children. I told him how contemptuously Phil had answered my prying, invasive questions that morning, like, "What are your plans today?" Buddy said, "You could let God be in charge of surveillance. Maybe your fear makes Sam more afraid. My friend Blanche could ask her husband a question, answer it herself, and go away mad."

I stopped by the chapel to pray a few times. It was very Italian, painted the colors of rainbow sherbet. Then I'd go to the Internet cafe to check my e-mail. I'd end up reading the news, what Michael Wolff called "the long, execrable, grinding buildup to war." And then walk dejectedly into sunshine, where there'd be hundreds of people clothed in American flags.

They'd be wearing flag pins, caps and hats, and beach totes, flag swimsuits, flag towels. It's like everyone went to Gift Shoppe USA before boarding. I felt very fragile. Michael Wolff was right when he said, "The slow motion is the weird, unnerving part." So I'd try to speed things up, racewalk around the boat past all the bodies sunbathing on deck, half of them glorious, half of them -- comment se dit? -- less glorious. I'd go looking for Tom and Buddy.

Buddy and Tom were just as worried as I was. Buddy said that in Indonesia, tour guides take goats along with them on tour buses, to toss over cliffs to the Komodo dragons below, to amuse the tourists. The goats have to be alive, because the dragon wants to play, and it's more fun for the tourists.

"Maybe the goat doesn't know what awaits him," I said.

"The goat knows," Buddy replied. "The smell of Komodo poop, and dead goats, gets stronger."

This is how afraid I sometimes feel now.

I talked to my pastor about my fears right before I left for this cruise. She told me about flying home from a vacation with her daughters, with the plane bucking, and people crying out. "We were petrified," she said. "But we stuck together, and I absolutely knew that in life, as in death, we belonged to God. We were safer with God and each other on that plane than we would have been without God, on the ground."

When she told me this, I thought, a fat lot of good that does me. But Tom said the same thing. "Sticking together is what saves us," he said. "Praying for the willingness to have mild spiritual well-being helps -- you don't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity. Me? I'm just willing to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees. And if I stay sober, help other people, and not kill anyone today that's a lot."

While we were at sea, I hid in my room as much as possible and read magazines. I vacillated between faith and utter hopelessness. War could break out in the next breath, and yet, so far, it felt like when Mr. Magoo is about to fall off the beams of the skyscraper, and another girder appears at his feet. I don't know how long this can last, though. Once a government is convinced that it's right, and everyone else is wrong, and can be excluded from the family of man, then you're on the way to concentration camps. I never forget that Bush used the word "crusade," so he could baptize the slaughter. But by the same token, I also never forget that there is one who has all power, and it's not Bush. Then I'd go look for Buddy or Tom.

Buddy and Tom were never in the sun. We are all fair, and my father died of melanoma. My heart leapt whenever I found raggedy old Buddy. One morning, I found him by the fancy glass elevators in the center of the ship. People were getting out, or waiting to board. Buddy stared into the emptied elevator and clutched his head. The handrail had pulled free. Screws stuck out everywhere. When he saw me, he said, "What if the hull is like this." He covered his mouth. "I shouldn't say this in a crowd," he whispered.

It was easy to identify with him, and see how beautiful he is, even with the missing teeth, but I was having trouble identifying with most of the other people onboard. It was partly all those fucking flags, partly how boorish the Americans could be after a few drinks. Tom said salvation is when you identify with people, but I didn't identify with these flag people.

I was on the top walkway of the ship one morning. I stopped, and began to watch the people below bathing in the sun. I stood at the railing, outside the Internet cafe, and I looked at the old bodies, and the hideously perfect young bodies. Even from 15 feet up, at the rail, I could see the corrugated skin, the lumps and veins and chicken-skin knees. I saw huge guts, bad moles, flag towels, and flag beach totes, and fat, hairy middle-aged men wearing teeny bikinis. One old woman seemed to be wearing oversize pink-tinted pantyhose, which turned out to be her skin; and everything in me wanted to run for my room or the Internet. But then I had the simplest, cloth-coat spiritual awakening. That's all it took. A spiritual awakening almost never means that the world suddenly makes sense; it just means you stop, and remember something, that usually makes you want to do something kind -- call your parents, tolerate your children, or, in this case, to care for my sad, fretful self. And with blinding intuition, I knew I needed to be on a cruise ship.

I went down the stairs to the deck where people lay sunbathing. I found a lounge chair in the warm shade and stretched out. It was so unnatural for me. I must have looked tense and ridiculous, like Richard Nixon at Club Med. I looked at everyone, and thought, If Jesus was right, then these are my motley siblings. And they are so letting themselves go. I know this is not how Jesus would have seen things, but I saw an expanse of walruses, big wet bodies flopped down on towels, letting it all hang out.

It's the opposite of hibernation, resting in the sun. The people were putting cool lotion on their bodies, and on one another: They got up and returned with drinks for the people they were with. They handed each other caps and visors, and covered each other up with towels and T-shirts.

Surely they all knew what was going on, that we were about to go to war, but -- or so -- they lay there anyway. They chatted, or dozed, in the warmth of the sun. I thought of people warming themselves around the campfire on a battlefield. I know God doesn't see their walrus bodies; God sees their hearts at temporary ease. God sees babies, radiant, befuddled babies, and after a few minutes I could see how safe they were, just in that moment, because the warmth held them up like the sea.

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