by Karen Quinn
I Will Wait for You
I WAS FLABBERGASTED. WHY WAS my father under arrest? I knelt at his feet. “Pops? What did you do?”
“I just—I don’t know. I met this nice lady here,” he said, motioning his head toward the woman by his side.
“Hello,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m Elizabeth Blair, but you can call me Beth.”
“Beth and me were getting to know each other,” Pops continued. “One thing led to another and we decided to join the mile-high club.”
“The what?”
“The mile-high club. We wanted to, you know, in the bathroom, a mile up in the air,” he whispered. He made the international symbol for intercourse—a circle with his thumb and pointer finger, his other pointer finger jackhammering in and out. It was awkward with the cuffs, but I got the point.
“Oooh-kay,” I said, glancing at Stewart the steward, who was situated in a jump seat across from Pops. He gave me one of those “hey, what can you do?” shrugs, although what I sensed he meant was, What is wrong with that horny father of yours that he can’t keep his pants zipped up for one lousy flight?
“Did my father commit a crime?”
“The new rules state that two adults can’t enter a bathroom stall at the same time. We worry about people coming together to make, oh, I don’t know, a bomb,” Stewart said, dropping the word like it was a bomb.
“But clearly these were two consenting adults…”
Stewart held up his hands. “That’s not for us to decide. The Department of Homeland Security will meet them in New York to investigate.”
“Oh, lordy,” Beth said. “We’re not going to one of those secret jails where they torture people, are we?”
“You want my opinion?” Stewart snarled.
Not if you’re going to snarl, I thought.
“When the passengers wake up and find out we’re back at Kennedy,” he said, “you’re gonna hope that’s where you’re going.”
Several hours later, we landed in New York. Nobody was allowed to get up until the police came on board to arrest Pops and Beth Blair. The passengers were then told to deplane, but to stay near the gate because the flight would take off as soon as it had been refueled and serviced.
“I’m carrying a trunk with special cargo in the hold. Can I get it removed while I go look for my father?” I asked Stewart the steward who was saying his “bub-byes” at the door.
“Haven’t you caused enough trouble?” he asked.
“I haven’t caused any trouble,” I said. Pops, on the other hand…“Do you know where they took my father?”
“There’s a Homeland Security office next to the x-ray machines in Area B. They’re taking them there,” he said. “But don’t go beyond the gate area. We could be reboarding at any time.”
I shot him an incredulous look. “I’m not leaving, not without my father,” I said. It was very Sally Field in Not Without My Daughter. But truthfully, I was torn. My first duty was to stay with the dresses I was carrying. But Pops was in trouble. I couldn’t just leave him. “How much time before we take off?”
Stewart shrugged. “Forty minutes. An hour.”
I checked my watch. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.” As I made my way out, FBI agents were waiting to enter the plane with bomb-sniffing German shepherds. “You’re wasting your time,” I shouted, but not too loud for fear of getting arrested.
I rang the buzzer at the Department of Homeland Security’s unmarked door, which a guard at the x-ray machines had pointed out. A NYC cop let me in. The waiting room was pure government office circa 1970—beige linoleum floors, pewter-colored folding chairs, water cooler with a Dixie cup dispenser, and a cheap black Formica table with several copies of Counterterrorism News strewn on top. There was a closed door marked “No Admittance.” That’s where they must have taken Pops and Beth Blair, I thought.
“You’ll have to wait,” the cop said.
“Does my father need an attorney?”
“Not if he’s innocent,” the officer said. He disappeared through the “No Admittance” door.
Swell, I thought. That’s what they say on Law & Order when they’re trying to get someone to confess before lawyering up.
I used my cell phone to call 1-800-lawyer. What do you know? There was such a place. The secretary transferred me to an attorney on staff who insisted on talking to Pops immediately, just as soon as he took my debit card number.
I opened the “No Admittance” door and shouted, “Hello-ow, Sven Ross, Pops, don’t say a word. I need to speak to my father. His lawyer is on the line.”
An ash-blond interrogator wearing a headset peeked out of a door. “Can I help you?”
I bolted down the hallway and slapped the phone in her hand. “Give this to my father now. It’s his lawyer.” I prayed it wasn’t too late. Those interrogators can trick even the most innocent people into incriminating themselves, or so I’ve witnessed on countless police dramas. She closed the door behind her.
Five minutes later, as I perused an article on “Bomb Basics—What You Need to Know” in the September issue of Counterterrorism News, the blond officer came out and handed me the phone. “Your card was declined, so the lawyer hung up. Sorry.”
I slumped back in my seat feeling helpless and alone. I checked my watch. Thirty minutes had passed since I’d deplaned. I’d better go back, I thought. If the plane takes off with those costumes, I’m screwed. But what about Pops? What if they drag him to Guantánamo Bay? Gowns? My father? My job? My father? I’ll stay for five more minutes, ten at the most. I went back to my magazine and tried to concentrate on what I needed to know about bomb-making basics, but I won’t lie. My heart wasn’t in it.
Fifteen minutes later, Pops and Beth came out the “No Admittance” door, shaking hands with their interrogators, apologizing for causing such a to-do.
“Are you okay?” I asked, glancing nervously at my watch.
“Yes, fine,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Beth Blair said. “Apparently this happens about once a week. They should really announce it’s against the FAA regulations to fornicate in the bathroom. I don’t understand why they don’t say something during the safety demonstration.”
I rolled my eyes. What a pair these two made. “C’mon, we have to hurry and make the plane.” I was desperate to get back to the gate.
“We missed it,” Pops said. “They’re rebooking us now.”
“Good thing,” Beth Blair said. “Those passengers would have lynched us if we’d reboarded.”
I slumped back into my folding chair and moaned.
Ten hours later, we boarded the same flight as yesterday (only now it was today) to Athens by way of Frankfurt. If there were no further delays, we would arrive two hours before the ship sailed. It would be tight, but we would make it.
We’d spent all day trying to reach the Lufthansa baggage office to be sure they took our suitcases off the earlier plane and locked them up until we arrived. They promised they had retrieved our bags, and that they were safe and secure just awaiting our arrival.
This turned out to be half true. When we finally got to Athens, exhausted, bedraggled, hungry (I could go on and on with adjectives, but I won’t), Pops’ suitcase was under lock and key. My luggage and its eighty-thousand-dollar contents were nowhere to be found.
Call Me Irresponsible
WHEN IT BECAME PAINFULLY obvious that the search for my bags was destined to end badly, I sent my bleary-eyed father on to the Hotel Grande Bretagne on Constitution Square. He promised to behave. Had we arrived twenty-four hours earlier, we would have checked into the hotel and slept a few hours, then gone to the dinner at the Olive Garden. No, not the chain, the real Olive Garden. It’s a quaint little restaurant located on top of the Titania Hotel with postcard views of the Acropolis, lit up in all its golden glory. The place is known far and wide for its fresh Mediterranean cuisine, at least according to Nigel, who insisted we dine there and made the reservation himsel
f. Sadly, we would neither enjoy their fine fresh fish nor the spectacular views, as we were arriving a day late, thanks to Pops’ inability to keep his pecker in his pants, not that I was angry about it.
The Grande Bretagne is an elegant hotel, one of Athens’ finest, brimming with marble, chandeliers, and antiques at every turn. This was where the Tiffany Cruises Line sets up the exclusive holding pen for its newly embarking guests who have nothing to do until the ship opens for boarding at one P.M. At the hotel, passengers are treated to live folk music by a Greek violinist and served stuffed grapevine leaves, boiled octopus, cheese pastries, baked halva, and unlimited champagne until the ship has been thoroughly cleaned and readied for its new lucky load.
After one, the passengers are taken by bus (but only the finest buses) to the Port of Piraeus, where they are checked in and personally accompanied to their cabins to be reunited with their luggage. Guests don’t even have to unpack, as they have butlers for that sort of thing. They can settle into their new digs and enjoy the wine and caviar snack that has been thoughtfully laid out on their veranda tables. Of course, I would not be reunited with my luggage, nor would I watch my butler unpack, as everything I had checked was now lost due to my father’s midflight misbehavior, not that I was bitter about it.
Oh, who’s fooling whom? I was bitter. How bitter? Let me count the ways. If the trunk containing the borrowed costumes wasn’t found, I was in serious trouble. Tanya would probably fire me, and who could blame her? Those dresses were worth two years of my salary.
It isn’t that I didn’t consider carrying the clothes on board. I did. But eleven costumes would not squeeze into one suitcase that fit into the overhead compartment. The airlines are so strict these days about what size bags you can carry on board. So I went through the special courier check-in and literally witnessed the baggage handlers loading the trunk into the cargo hold. Had we transferred in Frankfurt and landed in Athens as planned, I would have watched them remove the trunk from the plane and taken custody of it right at the gate at both stops. But thanks to Pops, I had violated the cardinal rule of being a museum courier: Never separate yourself from the precious load you are carrying.
If Alexander Soros, the baggage complaint department manager, was to be believed, the luggage did make it to Athens. The costumes (along with my bras and undies) had been packed in the original brown leather trunk from the museum. All my other clothes, shoes, and makeup were in a smaller matching suitcase. Alexander was sure he remembered my trunk because it was identical to one he was still holding. A butler named Jorge from the Golden Goddess (another five-star ship cruising the Mediterranean) had come by and picked up what we think was my trunk and matching suitcase. Apparently, Jorge was assisting one of his passengers whose luggage had also not arrived. It would have been easy to confuse our bags had one not taken the time to check the name tags. How could a professional like Jorge be so negligent? It was an outrage to butlers everywhere.
Luckily, the Golden Goddess was cruising the same itinerary as the Tiffany Star, only they were a day ahead of us. Alexander suggested that if we could just get the passenger and/or his butler to check my bags at the next port, I could retrieve them there. I wrote down the passenger’s name from his tags and prayed that Alexander was telling me the truth, and not sending me on a wild-goose chase to get me off his back.
Till There Was You
BY THE TIME I arrived at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, Pops was gone. There was a handful of people milling around the special Tiffany Cruises Line section, and hotel employees were dismantling the VIP setup. My heart leaped to my throat. Was I too late? Did I miss the ship?
Then I spotted a woman who had to be a Tiffany Star cruiser. She was in her late sixties or early seventies, but well maintained and über-rich. This I gathered from the ornate jewels that adorned her well-toned body, the crisp shopping bags she carried from Prada, Tod’s, Bulgari, and Gucci, and the chic nature of her very person down to her astonishingly pink fingers and toenails. She wore her hair in a geometrically perfect silver pageboy. Her bright lips had that puffy artificial filler look and her eyes a permanent expression of surprise. In her arm, she carried a Yorkie with Mediterranean-blue highlights. Everything about her screamed, “Rich,” “Social,” “New Money.” Naturally, I assumed her to be a snob. But then she caught my eye and sent me a smile that could light up an ocean liner. I was intrigued.
“Hi,” I said, “I’m Holly Ross. Do you know the time? Please don’t tell me I’m too late.”
The woman flashed me the face of her bejeweled Cartier. It was six diamonds past an emerald, whatever that translated to in minutes and hours. “You’re cutting it awfully close,” she said in a Southern drawl. “See, they’re closin’ up. Ship sails in less than half an hour.”
“What happens if you get there after it sails? Can you still board?”
The woman gave me a bewildered look.
I slapped my forehead. “Oh, duh. Sorry. I’ve been up for forty-eight hours. My brain is all mushy.”
“Carleen Panthollow, Tulip, Texas,” she said, holding out her hand. I was temporarily blinded by the enormous rock on her ring finger. “And this is Famous, my furry child.”
I petted the Yorkie, who was alarmingly high-strung. She quivered and shook at the sight of me. I do that to dogs.
Carleen stood and grabbed her bags, dropping Famous inside one of them. “Come, darlin’, time to go.”
We boarded the ultrafancy bus, along with a few uniformed members of the crew and one other couple loaded down with new purchases. Carleen retrieved Famous, and then threw her packages in the empty row behind ours. The specially outfitted bus boasted extra-wide leather first-class seats and ample legroom. We lurched forward and soon were humming our way through Athens, toward the water. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could swear the exhaust fumes smelled like perfume.
“You a regular cruiser?” Carleen asked.
“It’s my first. You?”
“Oh, Lord have mercy, no,” she said. “I’ve been sailing for the past seventeen months and I don’t expect to stop soon.”
“Really?” I said. “You don’t get tired of it?”
“Hay-ell no,” she said. “I have one of the big two-story penthouses and that’s plenty comfortable for Carleen Panthollow.”
“You’re so thin,” I remarked. “How do you resist all the rich food?”
“Darlin’, I’ve been on a diet since World War II. Gotta look good for the boys, not that I’ve gotten any lately,” she said with a wink.
I laughed. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but why don’t you go home, at least to visit? Seventeen months is a long time to stay on a ship.”
“Some people have been on for years,” she said. “It’s the finest retirement community money can buy. The food is better, the service is divine, and there’s dancing every night. Plus, if you fall and break your hip in a nursing home, they stick you in bed and turn you like a pig on a spit. If you fall and break your hip on a Tiffany ship, you get a butler, a penthouse, and free spa services for the rest of your life.”
“So you’re retired to the ship?”
“Sort of,” she said. “My husband died about five years ago. We did the world cruise together ten years in a row. In fact, he died the day after we got back from our tenth trip. I’ll never forget. His bags weren’t even unpacked.” There were tears in Carleen’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can I ask what happened?”
“His old ticker just gave out,” she said. “We had a ball on that last cruise.”
“You must have really loved him,” I said, touching her hand.
“Oh, I did, darlin’. I did. I was his second wife, but we were married thirty years. He bequeathed me beaucoup bucks in trust, with the remainder going to the kids from his first family after I kick the bucket. Those children of his are as nasty as you are skinny. Do you know they challenged the will?”
“Nooo!” I said in my supportive, aghast voice.
“Yep,” she said. “They hate me, always have. Resent the fact that I made their father happy. So, after his kids’ lawsuit got thrown out of court, I booked the big penthouse indefinitely and I plan to cruise until I spend all their daddy’s money. That’ll show ’em.”
“How long’ll that take?” I asked.
“Two hundred years.” She laughed. “My husband, Tex Panthollow—maybe you’ve heard of him—he invented the multiple-fold automated umbrella. You know, you see them everywhere? He left me more than the gross national product of California. I could cruise till eternity and never spend it all.”
“So the kids’ll get the money eventually, huh?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “but not before I put a dent the size of Texas in it.”
I almost asked if she’d like to make a million-dollar donation to the Fashion Museum, but decided to wait until I knew her more than ten minutes. “Would you like to adopt me?” I said instead. I was kidding, of course. Okay, not really.
She laughed warmly. “You’ll have to stand in line behind all the crew on the ship. What about you, darlin’? What brings you here? You’re gonna be the youngest cruiser by a century. Excuse me,” she said, hailing a steward who was offering champagne in Baccarat flutes. “I’ll have one. You?”
“Not for me.”
Carleen took a sip.
“I’m sure I’m not the youngest cruiser,” I demurred.
“Honey, this ship is Jurassic Park at sea. What’s your story? You married?”
“Heavens, no.”
“Lesbian?”
I regarded her with curiosity. Was she asking me out? Couldn’t she see that our age difference would always be a stumbling block?
“I was just going to say this isn’t the right ship for that,” Carleen said. “There are special cruises for that,” she said, making air quotes around the word special. “So what gives? Why’re you here by your little lonesome?”
I shook my head. “You don’t want to know. I’ve had a tough run of luck.” Then I proceeded to spill my guts after securing Carleen’s solemn oath never, never, never to tell a soul, and I meant never ever. I confided how Alessandro was caught in the act with a minor. How he dumped me. How I didn’t get the promotion I so richly deserved. How a city bus destroyed my clothes. How my luggage was lost on the way over. How I was coming on board as a speaker with my father so I could heal my wounds (I made no mention of my ulterior motive—soliciting a donation—lest she think I was some kind of vulture, which I was, but preferred not to publicize).