The tables aboard the Blue Star Delos, this ship to Thira and Birdie and Red, are covered with a film of sea salt. At first I thought it was sugar from, somehow, the donut I got to go with my bottle of breakfast beer, an Alpha, and tried to wipe it clean so my forearms wouldn’t be sticky for the next several hours of travel, but it wasn’t — it isn’t — and my work is no use.