***
“Hiya, kid. You look different,” Berta said as she cracked opened the door to her cabin and slipped into the hallway. The slim, silver-haired old woman was dressed in lemon-yellow polyester pants and a white top with yellow pockets. “What happened to you?”
“For crying out loud, Berta, am I such an open book?”
“You forget, kid. I’ve had a library card since 1938.”
I smiled wryly. Berta motioned to the right and I followed her down the hall.
“I just got an email from Friedrich. I’m not sure how to respond.”
“What did he want?”
“He wants to meet me in Naples.”
Berta pushed the elevator button and sighed. “Why?”
“He says his heart aches for me.”
“Yeah? And what about your heart. It doesn’t look to achy to me.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t meet him?”
“I’m saying follow your heart, kid.”
As we rode the elevator up, I thought about Berta’s advice. Clarice had a lover. Berta had one, too. Why shouldn’t I?
“I think I will meet Friedrich.”
“Oh.”
How could one little syllable say so much – and nothing at all?
The elevator opened and I was taken aback by the brisk pace Berta maintained as she scurried along the ship. By the time we got to the Asian Grille, any thoughts I’d had of helping a doddering old woman find her way around had vanished. A waiter led us to a table for two.
“Let’s be naughty and have some wine,” Berta said as we looked over the menu.
“Sure, why not. I’m in the mood to be naughty.”
“Thought so,” Berta replied without looking up.
I wondered what she’d meant by it, but wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“I’m having the chow mein.” Berta laid down her menu. “So, how’s that search for what you want outta life coming along?”
I knew there was no use trying to pass a fluff answer off on Berta.
“I’ve made a little progress. I know now for sure that leaving my husband was the right thing to do.”
Berta raised an eyebrow at me. “Yeah?”
“After fifteen years together, we were just zombies going through the motions. I want more than that. I want to feel loved when I’m with someone. Am I asking too much, Berta? Maybe I’m just nuts.”
“You know what I tell people who think they’re nuts?”
“What?”
“That they probably are.”
Berta grinned at me until I smiled back.
“Val, dragging up the past is only good for one thing – feeling like shit. What’s done is done, kid. Learn from it, but don’t dwell on it. Or you’ll end up trapped like a gerbil in a wheel, spinning around and around, but going nowhere. Now lighten up and enjoy yourself. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I apologized to the woman who didn’t believe in apologies. “What do I owe you for the therapy session?”
“After dinner, you can buy me one of those crappuccinos.”
“It’s a deal.”
***
I was in bed asleep when I heard the door open. I cracked one eye and watched Clarice tiptoe into the room.
“Are you awake, Val?” she whispered.
I heaved myself up on one elbow. “Yeah. How’d it go? Did you say ‘yes’ to Dr. No?”
Clarice giggled. “Yes. Val, I did the nasty with him in the garden outside the casino!”
“Really? How was it?”
“Like magic. It was…a fairytale.”
“That guy did seem a little too good to be true.”
“I know, right? As I got closer to the casino, I started to think that I’d made the whole thing up. Then, like a mystical prince, there he was, wearing a smart, tailored jacket and tight, designer jeans. You know I’m a sucker for a man in tight jeans. Anyway, Marcello looked even better than he had morning, if you can believe it!”
“No, not really. So, what happened?”
“He took me by the arm and led me down the garden path –”
“Ha ha! Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
“Yes, yes. Sorry.”
Clarice sat on my bed next to me.
“So we walked along this old stone wall. The garden was full of white roses. They glowed like tiny ghosts in the moonlight.”
“The ghosts of virgins past.”
Clarice wacked me. “One more crack and I’m done here!”
“Okay! I promise!”
“So I had to stop and take it all in…not a word, Val! When I did, Marcello pulled me close and began nibbling my neck. He said my beauty was ‘far more than the flowers’. Then he led me to a bench. I took a picture of him on it. Look!”
She showed me the picture on her phone. The glare blinded my sleepy eyes.
“Yeah. That’s him alright. Smokin’ hot!”
“You aren’t kidding. That face. That body! I’m telling you, Val, he’s gonna star in my erotic fantasies for years to come.”
“Mind if I borrow him for mine?”
Clarice laughed. “You wish. And Val? Marcello told me that he’s good friends with the captain of the King Kavanaugh. I kind of invited him aboard tomorrow for a second helping, so to speak.”
“Here? In our cabin?”
“Yes…but I promise to keep the festivities to my bed.”
“Damn. So near and yet so far.”
Chapter Twenty
I couldn’t decide if I was suffering from rejection or envy as I lay by the pool, banished from my room while Clarice enjoyed round two with Marcello. I only knew I felt as if I were missing out on something I wasn’t even sure I wanted.
I spent the afternoon re-reading Sex in Sorrento and drinking outrageously priced margaritas until I was sure I’d be penniless when the bill came due. I was just about to give up and call Berta’s cabin when I spied Clarice walking up to me, wearing a bikini and a Cheshire cat smile.
“How’d it go, hot tramp in the city?”
Clarice grinned. “Polite women don’t kiss and tell. But, he asked for my number!”
“But he lives here in Monaco. Do you really think you’ll ever see him again?”
“Who knows? I hope so. The world can be a very small place, you know.”
“You’re right, Clarice. It can be. With all the ‘stuff’ going on with you and Marcello, I forgot to mention that I ran into a friend of mine yesterday. She’s traveling alone. Would you mind if we invited her to join us for dinner?”
“Not at all! Another person I can brag to about Marcello! Goody!”
Waddling under the influence of margaritas, I went to the poolside bar and rang Berta’s cabin. We made plans to meet at The King’s Court at seven.
***
For stick-figures, Berta and Clarice could both put away some chow. We’d lucked out and gotten a table by a window. Clarice and Berta were both enjoying The King’s Court King Crab extravaganza, and, surprisingly, each other. They’d hit it off like old friends. I smiled and watched the crab legs disappear from our table as Monaco disappeared from the porthole.
“So, I heard you had an adventure last night, Clarice” said Berta. “How’d it go with Mr. Romeo?”
Berta pulled a long strip of meat from a crab leg, dipped it in butter, and shoved it between her dentures. Clarice giggled and blushed.
“Pretty damn awesome, actually. But I feel kind of…I don’t know…dirty.”
“Why? Because of the actual dirt?” I asked. I turned to Berta. “You know she did it with him outside, in a garden.”
“Really?” Berta said without surprise or judgment. “Good for you. Got a picture? Of him, I mean.”
“I sure do!”
“Good. I always say, when it comes to lovers, pictures beat out STDs as souvenirs every time.”
Clarice laughed. “Val said you were a hoot, Berta. She was right
!”
As Clarice handed Berta her phone, I noticed two waiters looking at us and whispering. When they saw I was watching them, they quickly looked away and snickered. Strange.
Berta peered at the phone screen. “So this is the infamous…Marcello, was it?”
“Yes, that’s him,” Clarice said proudly. “What do you think?”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, kid. But he looks a lot like Markus, my cabin steward.”
“What?! You’ve got to be shitting me, Berta!”
“Nope. That’s him alright. Most damned devilish eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“Berta! Oh shit! He tricked me! He…he pretended to be something he wasn’t!”
“What did he pretend to be, Clarice? Handsome? Horny? Husband material?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“And who were you pretending to be?”
Berta’s question made Clarice angrier than a wet hornet.
“At least I used my real name!”
“Hey look!” Berta said cheerily, ignoring Clarice as she studied the photograph. “The plaque on the bench…. Ha ha! Clarice, it looks like you lost your head in Princess Antoinette Park. Now that’s funny!”
Clarice wasn’t laughing. Berta looked up and finally caught on that my duped friend was far from amused.
“Okay. Well…was he at least good in bed – or should I say, the flower bed?”
Clarice’s face grew grim. Berta patted her shoulder.
“Sorry, kid. Was he good in the sack?”
“That’s totally beside the point,” Clarice argued.
“You enjoyed yourself. What was the harm?”
“You’re not from the South, are you Berta?”
“No.”
“Then you wouldn’t understand.”
I kicked Clarice’s shin under the table. She closed her mouth into a pouty frown and folded her arms over her chest.
“Okay, then,” Berta said calmly. “Moving on. You two missed a hell of a show last night. Wait a minute. What am I saying? I’d have traded places with Clarice in a New York minute. But, I mean, at any rate, the magician was pretty good.”
“A magician?” I asked. “I hope he was better than the old codger from the night before. Vinny Victrola or something like that.”
Clarice sneered. “He and his jokes were older than dinosaur dirt.”
Clarice sat up and unfolded her arms.
“Hey,” she asked, “is it my imagination or is that waiter over there giving me the evil eye?”
Berta looked over. “I’d say it was the eye, but not the evil one, if you catch my drift.”
Clarice leaned over the table. “Berta! I’m serious. My reputation on board has been…compromised!”
“Compromised? Ha ha! I haven’t heard anybody say that since 1957.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Nothing, Clarice,” Berta answered. “Who gives a flying turd what these people think? In a couple of days, you’ll get off this ship and never see them again. Lighten up, kid. I tell you what. Why don’t you two meet me at the Kaptain’s Klub for a couple of drinks before dinner tonight. I think I can sneak you a few freebies.”
Clarice looked around sullenly. “I could use a drink right now.”
“What’s the show tonight?” I asked Berta.
“I think it’s that guy you were talking about. Vinny Cannoli. Back for an encore performance. Either him or the piano bar guy.”
“I’d be surprised if Vinny was still alive after that last performance. I’m afraid Clarice and I are a half-century too young to appreciate his jokes.”
“They weren’t that bad, were they?” Berta asked. “I liked them.”
I shrugged. “I tell you what. Get me all liquored up and I might change my mind.”
Berta looked at Clarice, then back at me. “Geeze. Given the state she’s in, I’m not sure there’s enough liquor on this ship to do the job.”
***
Clarice was on the warpath. She’d pried Berta’s room number out of me, and now that she knew which part of the ship Markus worked in, she was plotting her revenge. Her first order of business was to get herself dolled up to the nines.
“Every good payback begins with looking your best,” she instructed me, her green eyes squinted into devilish slits.
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going to ambush his sorry ass!”
“And then what?”
“I’m gonna…I’m…I don’t know. I’ll think of something when the time comes. Nobody messes with Clarice Whittle! I’m going down there right now. Come with me.”
“Are you kidding? This is your battle, Clarice. Not mine.”
“Come on. What else have you got to do?”
“Uh…preserve my dignity?”
Clarice shot me a look that would have penetrated solid steel and one of those mystery meat cutlets at the Hotel Bella Vista.
“Okay already.”
An evil grin crept across Clarice’s angelic face. I had a feeling this would not end well.
***
We snuck down to the third floor and tucked ourselves away in a cubbyhole niche carved out of the narrow hallway. Voices echoed louder as they came down the hall. I started to speak, but Clarice shushed me. A silhouette appeared in the hallway. Clarice held her breath….
“Hi, dearies,” said a grandmotherly woman in a polyester house dress. “Are you two lost?”
“No ma’am,” said Clarice. “We’re just…waiting for someone.”
“Oh. Well, don’t wait too long. Life is short, you know!” She smiled at us cheerily and waved an envelope in her hand as if to emphasize her point.
“Yes ma’am,” we said simultaneously.
We watched the old woman stop midway down the hall and slip the envelope under a door. A few minutes later, another old woman came sauntering by and stuffed her own note under the same door.
Curious, I took a few hesitant steps down the hall while Clarice stood lookout. A third woman brushed past me and dropped an envelope on the floor, then pushed in under the door with her shoe. I looked up. A plaque read; No. 332. Berta’s cabin!
I looked down at the floor. The corner of one of the envelopes stuck out from under the door. I looked both ways down the hall. Clarice motioned that the coast was clear. I tried to kneel, but I couldn’t in my high-heels. I got down on all fours, butt in the air, and fished the envelope out. I carefully opened the envelope. A simple notecard inside read:
Meet me at the Portside Bar after the show. I’ll be the lady in red.
Margery
I checked the cabin number again. I was Berta’s alright. Wait a minute. Was Berta a lesbian? Maybe she’d actually screwed Giuseppe’s wife – not him? Is that really why she’d had to leave Brindisi in a hurry?
I put the card back in the envelope and sealed it again. I felt horrible. I’d just committed a gross invasion of Berta’s privacy. I looked over at Clarice and shook my head. I was going to keep my trap shut on this one. Clarice, god love her, had the discretion of a dog in heat. I shoved the envelope back under the door. I was still on the floor, butt in the air, when I heard a voice behind me.
“Ma’am, are you okay? Have you fallen?”
A young cabin steward looked at me with concern.
“Do you need a wheelchair or something?”
Geeze. Did I look that old? “No thanks. I…just…dropped an earring. I found it!”
I scurried over to Clarice. She’d been loitering in the cubbyhole, looking the other way, as if she didn’t know me. As soon as I got close enough, she grabbed me.
“What did the envelope say?”
“That people should mind their own business. Let’s go. I’m ready for that drink with Berta now.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I was washing my hair in the phone-booth-sized cabin shower, wondering how Mr. Bacon and Sideshow Tent Lady managed to squeeze their giant butts in here to bathe. The unwanted visual that flashed into my min
d nearly made me wretch.
Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to switch thoughts this morning. I was churning with curiosity about what Berta had been up to last night. Clarice and I had met her for drinks at the Kaptain’s Klub, then she’d told us she had other plans and promptly disappeared. Had she met that lady in red from the notecard?
I stepped out of the shower and dried off. I slathered on some deodorant and stepped out of the steamy bathroom.
“Your turn, Clarice.”
“Does my hair look alright?” she asked, her confidence still suffering from the Markus mash-up. “I washed it yesterday, but I’m just not sure.”
“Look. You’re gorgeous. With me standing next to you for contrast, you can’t lose. Hurry up. Berta’s holding a table for us.”
“Okay, already!” Clarice raced around and got ready in record time for her – forty three-minutes flat.
***
We found Berta in The King’s Court, seated at the same table by the porthole window, slurping a cappuccino. Today Berta sported blue capris and a white top with a blue collar and twin, blue breast pockets. She looked as if she’d just finished her soda-jerk shift at a drugstore, circa 1943.
“I was beginning to think you two fell overboard,” she said.
“Sorry. My bad,” Clarice apologized.
“Did you two catch the show last night?”
“No,” I said, and shot Clarice a look. “We had an adventure, instead.”
Berta flashed her perfect dentures. “Oo-la-la.”
“I wish.” I sat down and leaned in toward her. “And how about you? Any traction on getting some action?”
Berta shrugged. “Nah. No one on board my type.”
My eyebrows raised involuntarily. I never thought about Berta having a “type.” I hadn’t even been able to figure out whether she liked men or women.
“So, what’s your type?” I asked.
Berta set her cup of cappuccino back in its saucer and looked me in the eye.
“Dearly rich and nearly dead. What about you two? Tall, dark and then some?”
Clarice sniggered despite herself. “Don’t remind me.”
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