Rachel was nice enough at least. They had really hit it off in Aspen a few months earlier and she’d been hoping to re-create their camaraderie on board. Freddy’s niece was probably the only one in the group who thought she had anything valuable to say, even though they hadn’t really delved past the Kardashians and the wonder of dry shampoo yet. Darius was a cute kid—reminded her a bit of her own younger brother. When she bid good-bye to everyone this morning before setting off on the yoga van, she saw him walking off in a different direction with a cute girl about his age, both of them carrying towels from the boat. She couldn’t help herself—she’d darted over to fix his hair and pick a flaky remnant of morning croissant off his T-shirt. Darius had given her an embarrassed but appreciative grin.
That left Mitch, who didn’t seem half bad, though when she’d bumped into him in the espresso bar the prior evening he’d been writing the strangest things on a napkin:
The Unwrinkled Raisin
Periwinkle
The Short Side
Pacific Review
“What’s that?” she asked, surprising him. He looked up at her in alarm, like she’d caught him watching porn, and quickly obscured the list with his palm.
“It’s nothing,” he said, putting the napkin into his back pocket. “I was just . . . just . . . it’s a long story. Want to sit down?” He pulled out a chair for her and, reluctantly, she took it. With the way Elise had looked at her in the casino, she could only imagine how she’d feel about Natasha having coffee with her husband. Especially because that evening Natasha was dressed, even in her own estimation, rather scantily. Their suite had free laundry service, but all of her sensible leggings and exercise shirts had been terribly shrunk in the industrial dryers. Perhaps she’d invest in a sweatshirt, even if it said Ocean Queen across the back. She had the Happy Birthday, Annette hoodie, in which she was tempted to hide out, wrapping up her exposed skin with the soft fleece, but she wouldn’t risk upsetting Freddy’s mother all over again. Not to mention that she couldn’t possibly commit the same crime against fashion twice in one week.
“Why not?” she said, sitting down across from Mitch and taking a sip of her skim cappuccino. “The coffee is terrible on this boat, isn’t it?”
“The worst,” Mitch agreed. “The food in general has been pretty unbearable. I should have stayed away from the sushi, but I’m a sucker for a spicy tuna roll.”
“Freddy and I go to Matsuhisa all the time. You know, Nobu’s place?” Natasha said. “Like, sometimes three times a week. My mercury level is so high I could probably be a thermometer.”
It wasn’t her place to elaborate on how the two of them could afford to eat at such an expensive restaurant regularly. This was Freddy’s family and his business, but she was starting to feel his instincts weren’t as great as she might have thought when they first started dating and just the sight of his spreadsheets and land maps impressed her.
“Anyway, I think I’ll head to bed,” Natasha said. “Good luck with your list.” She saw Mitch’s lower jaw open, as though he was about to explain, but then he just gave her a friendly wave good-bye.
“Did Elise get anything good, by the way? At the Golden Nugget. I saw her shopping this morning, and she seemed to clean up pretty well.” Natasha had turned back toward Mitch, innocently taking another sip of her cappuccino.
“Huh?” Mitch said. He was already reaching for the napkin in his pocket. “I have no idea what she bought.”
Natasha reflected now on Mitch’s reaction last night: best described as utterly unfazed. Perhaps she was wrong about Elise. But she was not wrong about Freddy and the fact that he should have used a publicist, or at least had her sit in on the interview. She knew some things.
The yoga teacher announced the break was over. Natasha wiped the sweat from her brow and assumed tree pose. It was a calming position that would resettle her insides after the inversion. She needed to get a hell of a lot more zen before she got back on board and had to put on a freaking gown for the black-tie dinner, which she already knew was going to be a mentally taxing evening. The Feldmans certainly were an impenetrable bunch, a family of hard-shelled turtles, and it was tiresome to be around a group of people who so clearly wanted to be left to their own devices but also needed to be liked and respected by everyone.
Table conversation the prior evening had been stilted and forced, and so Natasha had decided to venture into neutral territory by asking everyone what they thought of their food. Boy, did that make the Feldmans come alive! Annette’s fish was too dry, David’s steak overcooked, Elise’s chicken rubbery, Freddy’s salad wilted, Rachel’s bread (because that was all she was willing to try) was stale, Darius’s cheesecake was moldy, and even Mitch chimed in, complaining that his scotch was watered down. The group of them had transitioned from awkward silence to an animated dialogue in seconds. Natasha had never heard a group of people so capable of analyzing whether the bread crumbs on the mac and cheese tartlets were oversalted. Tonight’s nine-course dinner was sure to be a doozy, but at least there’d be dialogue.
Before departure, Freddy had tentatively decided to tell his family about his business on the last night of the trip, but with the High Times article out there, she doubted that was still in the cards. If he announced he was one of the largest pot producers and retailers in the United States, who wouldn’t go right back to their room to Google him? So it looked like the best Natasha could hope for was that they might add the weather to the fascinating repertoire of dinner conversation, since she simply couldn’t take listening to Annette ask again how the boat staff could have the nerve to serve such lumpy mashed potatoes. Natasha had half a mind to fill out a comment card apologizing on the Feldmans’ behalf.
As if reading her mind, Julian, the cruise director, came into Natasha’s sight line. He was nearly incognito in the back row of the class, his face shaded by a neon green visor. She waved at him spontaneously. Julian waved back with a smile.
When the class was over he walked toward her with a boat-issue royal blue towel slung over his shoulder.
“Rosalie is the best teacher on board. She used to have her own studio in Los Angeles before we stole her,” Julian said. “Did you enjoy the class?”
“Loved it,” Natasha said. She studied his kindly face. He didn’t seem to place her with the rest of the Feldmans, at least not obviously. “I’m going to take her full-day in St. Lucia when we dock there.”
“How are you enjoying the trip so far?” Julian asked.
“Um, it’s great. I love the boat. The magician at teatime was amazing. And the gym is really nice. I love that there’s a Peloton.” She tried to think of other positive things to say. If she complimented the food, she wondered if it would sound disingenuous. Or was it worse not to say anything at all about the meals, considering what a big part of the cruising experience they were?
“You getting enough to eat? Rubber chicken doesn’t seem like your thing,” Julian asked.
Phew. Natasha relaxed.
“I sweet-talked one of the line cooks at Docksiders into making me green juices every morning,” she said. “So I’ve been getting by.”
“I’m on my way to a decent coffee shop on the island if you want to join me,” Julian said. “We can talk sun salutations. Or not.”
Natasha thought about it briefly. She’d love to go with Julian and have a break from any Feldman-related business for the next few hours. But she knew her place was back on the boat, calming Freddy, shoveling him out of this mess.
“Wish I could,” she said. “But I’ll walk you there.”
TWENTY-TWO
Elise stepped off the boat and sucked the fresh air into her lungs. All that recycled air clearly hadn’t been good for her or anyone else in her family. Instead of her parents quickly acquiescing to her request, they’d frozen. Mitch was as distracted as ever, scribbling notes for work on scraps of paper every
time she turned around. So much for him not seeming to care about being absent from the Bee. And her kids, if it was possible, looked even more glazed than normal. It was amazing how a boat so big could still feel suffocating. The way everyone was desperate to get off, it was as though they’d been crammed in a stalled elevator for the past forty-eight hours.
She hadn’t signed up for any of the excursions because all of them required getting piled into a van and shuttling somewhere else as a group, and she was sick of feeling like herded cattle. What Elise needed was some time alone, even if it meant she’d be wandering aimlessly around Philipsburg, Sint Maarten, for eight hours before the boat set sail for St. Lucia. She had almost decided to leave her wallet in the cabin safe. It would be healthier for her to cut this leather limb of hers loose for the day, but in the end she decided it wouldn’t be prudent to wander around a strange place without identification and some emergency money.
Her plan was to find a café with dependable Wi-Fi and contact Dr. Margaret. She desperately needed to vent. The only problem was that an hour would hardly be enough time to cover the latest developments: her mother being sick, Freddy pretending to be a baller, Mitch the most distracted she’d ever seen him in his life, Darius’s college essay word count still at zero, and even reliable Rachel dressing like one of the cabaret performers from the adults-only show.
She stood outside on the pier for a moment staring at the gigantic moorings tethering the Ocean Queen to land. The boat rocked gently to and fro in the calm waters of the Caribbean but remained anchored to within three feet of the dock. It made her think of her children and the way they must see her, as the rope tethering them to home when their place was really on the open sea.
She turned her back on the vessel and headed away from the water. Around the port there was a smattering of touristy shops peddling seashell picture frames, beaded jewelry, magnets in the shapes of flip-flops and sand toys, and Sint Maarten spirit gear. The vibe around the port was very Bob Marley, steel drums pulsing somewhere in the distance and dreadlocks a popular local style, but even she knew he was from Jamaica, not here. Elise soldiered past the stores where salespeople stood in the doorway beckoning her with offers, pretending like the coffee shop she saw in the distance had ions that were pulling at the metallic strips on her credit cards. She made it, and opened the doors to a charming, though unair-conditioned, bakery with a sign advertising Wi-Fi at the rate of five dollars per hour. Well, not everything could be free, Elise reasoned, and she couldn’t expect to spend an entire day off the boat without parting with any money. She pulled out her wallet, noticing that the stitching was already coming loose.
Elise ordered a bran muffin and an iced coffee and found a seat at a small table in the back. She pulled her laptop from her beach bag. Dr. Margaret wasn’t on call twenty-four/seven, but Elise sent her an urgent email requesting a live chat session for sometime during the day. It was only nine in the morning, and therefore too early to reach her banker—the other desperate call she needed to make—so she decided to take a stab at drafting the opening paragraph for Darius’s essay. She hadn’t been able to sleep well last night and while she tossed and turned she had thought about the essay prompts, trying to channel Darius, or at least the plausible thoughts of any given teenager.
The essay topic that stood out to her the most was the one about the people she’d like to have over for a dinner party. Mealtime in the Connelly household was a sacred thing. Before Rachel left for college, it had been the only part of the day where the four of them were together for longer than a ten-minute burst, and there was something about the chewing and the passing of dishes that relaxed everybody. For a long time, if Elise had been asked which three people she’d like to share a meal with, she’d have picked Mitch, Rachel, and Darius. Now she wasn’t so sure. Was she really that desperate to watch her kids pound away at their phones? Did she really need to hear Mitch utter his perfunctory “delicious,” his adjective of choice no matter what she made? She considered alternatives: the medical school professor who thought she was personality challenged, so he could see that she’d done all right in the end, or Michelle Shapiro, to show her banker that what she lacked in financial management skills she more than made up for with her chicken française. And then Freddy came into her mind. They had shared thousands of meals together as children but hadn’t sat down at the same table to eat consistently until this trip. She wouldn’t mind having him to herself, to find out what the hell he’d been up to for the past decade and check if he was genuinely okay, though she was probably too late to be of any help to him. And that was when it hit her. If she were to write an essay where she could choose any three people to have at her dinner table, she’d pick the people who she’d had the opportunity to help in the past but hadn’t done so. To make amends. Freddy would top that list.
Of course the theme of recompense wouldn’t remotely work for a teenage boy—certainly not hers. She chuckled at the implausibility and then Googled “teenage icons” and started jotting down ideas. Some famous downhill skier whose legs had been amputated below the knee came up. She decided that should definitely be one of Darius’s picks.
“This seat taken?” came a familiar voice. Elise looked up to find the cruise director standing over her, carrying a tray overflowing with dishes: oatmeal, a croissant, juice, and a fruit salad—not a ringing endorsement for the ship’s cuisine. He was wearing spandex and a tank top instead of his white uniform and it had taken a moment for Elise to place him from the night before.
“No, no,” Elise said, moving her beach bag off the empty chair opposite her. She looked around the tiny café and saw it was the only empty seat. How thoughtless of her to prop her bag on it like it was a person. Is that how elevated she was treating possessions these days? She’d be sure to mention that to Dr. Margaret, who had already responded that she could Skype at noon. Elise would have to go back to the boat for that, which wasn’t a big deal. There was only so long she could loiter in this restaurant or stroll through downtown Philipsburg, which according to a map posted outside, was about three streets long. She couldn’t imagine what the heck her parents would see on the van tour.
“Thanks,” he said, placing his tray on the table. “You’re from the boat, yes?”
“Guilty,” Elise said, flattered he recognized her out of three thousand passengers. Then she remembered the lanyard around her neck with the cruise line printed on it.
“I’m Julian, the cruise director. You might not recognize me without my megaphone.”
“I know who you are,” Elise protested. “Get a workout in this morning?”
“Yes. Just took a fabulous yoga class. You ought to try the three p.m. if there’s still space. Have you been enjoying the trip so far?” Julian added three Splendas to his oatmeal. She remembered testing artificial sweeteners on rats during her first summer internship in medical school and recording all the negative effects, but she decided not to caution him. Score one point for having EQ!
“Oh, yes,” Elise said brightly. “It’s incredible.” But something in her eyes must have conveyed the opposite.
“You can tell me the truth,” Julian said. “I won’t take offense. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor by giving me some constructive criticism.”
Elise considered Julian. He had gentle eyes, which he focused on her exclusively. She couldn’t recall the last time anyone had looked at her like that—without seeing everything else in the background or mentally running through their to-do list. Sure, sometimes Mitch trained his gaze on her this intently, but that was only when he had certain intentions. From what Elise could size up about Julian, there was no chance he had those same thoughts about her.
“The cruise ship is great. I had my doubts about how three thousand people could be fed and two thousand cabins could be cleaned and one thousand people could be corralled into a conga line, and yet, you manage to pull it off with aplomb.” Elise was proud of herself fo
r being so gracious and for not letting her foul mood pervade their interaction. It certainly wasn’t the cruise director’s fault she was in the seventh circle of hell. And Julian, with his earnest face, tidy gelled hair, and double dimples, was hardly the punching bag she had in mind.
“Well, I don’t do it alone. We have thirteen hundred in crew. If the guests don’t properly line up to conga, I blow a special foghorn and it’s all hands on deck until they do,” Julian said, giving her a wink.
“Have you worked on the boat long?” Elise asked. Julian looked like he was about her age. She couldn’t remember the last conversation she’d had with a contemporary that didn’t revolve around the children. She was sick of the logistics: where to park for the SATs and what time to pick up from the winter dance and what the going rate was for a calculus tutor.
“Almost eleven years,” Julian said. “I started out as a concierge. It was an easy way to see the world. Moved my way up the ladder and here I am now, master of ceremonies.” He looked mildly self-conscious and Elise had the urge to speak out of turn. She wanted to tell Julian that it was nobody’s business what he chose to do with his life. She wondered if he had parents who were disappointed in him, who’d hoped their seafaring son would become a marine biologist instead of the judge of a blindfolded pie-eating contest, which was on tomorrow’s schedule. But she held herself back, realizing she was probably just projecting. Come to think of it, Julian didn’t actually seem embarrassed.
“Anyway,” Julian said, collecting his empty cup of oatmeal and piling the rest of his food into a to-go bag, “it was nice to talk to you.” He produced a card from his wallet. It read, Julian Masterino, Cruise Director, the Ocean Queen, Paradise International, and underneath, in smaller italic font, it said, Where Everyone Is Treated Like Royalty.
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