Others aboard include an American couple, David and Jenny; she is infatuated with David who is disconsolate at his lack of success as a socially committed artist and stifled by Jenny's needy dependence. A divorcée, Mary Treadwell, drinks and flirts, on a quest to recapture her lost youth in Paris but rejects the men who take an interest in her as unworthy. Bill Tenny is a former baseball player with a drink problem, angry the way his career never took off. Passengers are entertained nightly by a troupe of flamenco musicians and dancers, whose leader pimps the women in the troupe; other passengers regularly drink themselves to oblivion. One young heir to a fortune loses his virginity to one of the flamenco dancers, who treats him with gentleness.