Lord and Lady Bunny—Almost Royalty!

by Polly Horvath

  “Danced? Good Lord, who wants to dance? No, there’s no dancing although I hear there is up on the human deck. But the music was quite good. I tapped my toes aplenty, let me tell you.”

  “Oh, how I wish I could dance to the ship’s orchestra. Or even just tap my toes,” said Mrs. Bunny.

  “Yes, Mr. Treaclebunny and I always enjoyed the music. But speaking of dancing, I should probably change and go to bunny aerobics. It starts in the gym in half an hour. They call it the Hopping Haven. Isn’t that cute?”

  “Mr. Bunny doesn’t care for a cute gym,” said Mr. Bunny. “But maybe I’ll change and join you. I could lift weights. Perhaps Mrs. Bunny would like to do a little aerobicizing.”

  “Can’t. Only for those in first class. No economy-class bunnies allowed in the Hopping Haven. I wonder if there are any chompies in my room yet? Toodle-oo.”

  Mrs. Bunny could no longer keep her upper lip stiff. Despite herself, tears began to roll down her furry cheeks.

  “Well, how about a few more saltines!” said Mr. Bunny enthusiastically.

  Mrs. Bunny’s shoulders slumped as she shuffled sadly in the direction of their room. Mr. Bunny could stand it no more.

  “Mrs. Bunny, I have an idea!” he said, pretending not to see that she was crying. “What if Mr. Bunny finds the head honcho and gets our tickets changed to first class?”

  “Oh, Mr. Bunny,” said Mrs. Bunny, grabbing his arm. “But what about your fear we will be bankrupted by this trip?”

  “Well, I may have, ahem, overstated our financial situation somewhat,” said Mr. Bunny.

  “Oh, Mr. Bunny!” And now Mrs. Bunny’s tears were for pure joy. “You always save the situation with your bunny verve and masterly ingenuity.”

  “Yes, those are words that describe me very well indeed,” said Mr. Bunny, preening. “And let me tell you something else! That brochure promised us moonlight strolling and an orchestra, and by gosh, we will have them. Come on.”

  “Where are you leading me?” asked Mrs. Bunny in alarm, having to hop so quickly to keep up that she was almost falling off her strappy sandals. Mr. Bunny was moving like a bunny on a mission.

  He raced ahead until he got to a large steel door. The handle was so high up it was clear that no bunnies were meant to open it, but Mr. Bunny ignored this with his masterly verve. He leapt upward, grabbed the handle and pulled down hard. The door opened. On the other side was a long staircase.

  “Where does this lead?” asked Mrs. Bunny as they hopped up.

  “To the human deck.”

  “We can’t go up there. That’s against the rules,” said Mrs. Bunny. “And Mrs. Treaclebunny says that if they find you up there, they grab you by your ears and throw you overboard.”

  “Ha!” said Mr. Bunny through pants as they continued up and up and up. At last Mr. Bunny opened another door, which led outside. The Bunnys were finally topside. They took deep breaths; it was so good to finally breathe the fresh sea air. The moon glistened on the water. The deck was lovely shiny wood. In the distance they could hear an orchestra playing.

  “I think I can safely say that Mrs. Treaclebunny doesn’t know everything,” said Mr. Bunny. “Now come on.”

  They strolled romantically up and down the deck a few times, watching dolphins diving through the moonlit waves, the gentle movement of constellations toward the next horizon, and feeling the soft tropical sea breezes as the ship headed south. Then, sated with loveliness, they made their way to the dining room, where second human service was still going on. Mr. Bunny hopped boldly to the bar, grabbed two glasses of champagne and brought them to the table that Mrs. Bunny was crouched under.

  “Here,” he said. “First the champagne, then it’s your choice, dinner or dancing.”

  “Oh, dancing!” breathed Mrs. Bunny in delight. On the ballroom floor couples swayed and waltzed to the show tunes. All the dresses were beautiful. All the suits were divine. Jewels glittered under chandeliers. Mrs. Bunny had never seen so much sparkle all in one place. It quite took her breath away. The orchestra was playing “Wunderbar” from Kiss Me, Kate. It was Mrs. Bunny’s favorite show tune. All Mrs. Bunny’s life she had longed to waltz to “Wunderbar.”

  She downed the last of her champagne and then, at Mr. Bunny’s bidding, threw the glass against the fireplace. Mr. Bunny had seen people do this in a movie once and had always thought it looked like fun. Several people turned their heads to the sound of tinkling glass, but no one gave it more than a passing glance in all the gaiety of the evening. Then, perhaps because the champagne had caused them to throw caution to the winds, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, instead of dancing discreetly under the table, hopped out to the dance floor. Mr. Bunny was quite the adept waltzer, even though waltz-hopping is the most difficult sort, and he kept Mrs. Bunny turning and swaying so long that her ears twisted around each other to form one spiral. She thought she was in a dream. The music would never end, the waltz-hopping would never end, the moonlight was forever. Nobody seemed to be looking down to spy two rabbits floating enchantedly in the starlight. Until Mrs. Bunny, dreamily dipping and swaying, heard from across the dance floor:

  “MR. AND MRS. BUNNY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

  “I feel that I’ve stumbled into a dream, a beautiful athletic-equipment-free dream,” said Katherine.

  After they had boarded, Katherine phoned her parents to explain everything and give them her address in England. Then the girls were sent to find the steward and change their sleeping arrangements. Originally Madeline was to sleep in Flo and Mildred’s stateroom, but now they would need a separate stateroom for Katherine and Madeline.

  “Why?” asked the steward, whose name tag read PERCY, looking at his cabin chart. “Why were you down as three and suddenly you’re four?”

  “I’m the youngest,” said Katherine. “Everyone is always forgetting about me.”

  “The youngest, eh?” said Percy, who didn’t act anything like the stewards on Love Boat reruns. He wasn’t happy and charming and aiming to please. He looked as if he would like to throw both girls overboard at the first opportunity. “You appear to be exactly the same age as this one.” He pointed to Madeline.

  “I’m not. I’m younger,” said Katherine. She was four months younger than Madeline.

  “You’re not even dressed like you’re from the same family. You’ve got on some weird getup and ripped-up shoes and your pal here has got on proper cruising clothes,” said Percy.

  “Welcome to my world,” Madeline whispered to Katherine. “My mother taught me never to make remarks about people’s clothes,” said Katherine, who was coming to dislike Percy more and more.

  “Oh, she did, did she,” growled Percy. “Well, as long as you’re on board ship, you’ll be answering to me. You make sure you change into appropriate clothes. You’re not paying passengers, you know. You’re ship employees, as far as we’re concerned. You’re ambassadors for the ship, and we expect you to look and act the part.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Madeline. “We’re going right now to find the ship’s store that sells evening wear and buy appropriate evening clothes.”

  “I’ll worry if I want to. You look like a couple of troublemakers to me. Just remember, one wrong move out of you and it’s all up. And if I find out either one of you isn’t really Flo’s daughter, you’ll be CHARGED for your passage. That’s a two-thousand-dollar ticket, you know. And then we’ll make the two of you walk the plank. Or toss you in the brig. We may be a cruise ship, but we have a brig, you know.”

  “I know, ‘Incredible Cruises Has Everything,’ ” said Katherine, quoting the ship’s motto, which was printed everywhere. She grabbed the key to their new stateroom and pulled Madeline away.

  “Ugh,” she said when she got Madeline into the hallway. “He’s not exactly a barrel of laughs, is he? I don’t know what a brig is, but only pirates make you walk the plank. He’s just trying to scare us.”

  “Two thousand dollars,” said Madeline. “That’s pretty scary. No wonder t
hey only let you bring family members.”

  “Don’t worry. Some of those marimba players had about a dozen relatives with them. Your family is a cheap date by comparison.”

  “But if he did prove you weren’t my sister, we’d have to pay for you and it would wipe out all the money Flo made from the campground.”

  “We’ll just have to make sure we stay out of his way,” said Katherine soothingly. “He’ll probably forget all about us if he never sees us again. We’ll find places to hang out on shipboard where he isn’t. Come on, let’s go try on evening dresses. How much did Flo give you for our clothes?”

  “Three hundred dollars,” said Madeline. “It makes me nervous just to carry it. It’s more than I have in my college education fund.”

  “Well, we don’t have to spend all of it. We could buy the cheapest dresses and shoes they have and you could put the rest in your fund, or we could buy scissors and some needles and thread and make dresses out of our bedspreads. I bet we’d save a bundle that way.”

  “I think ripping up the bedspreads probably comes under the category of the ‘one wrong move’ Percy is just waiting for us to make,” said Madeline.

  “You said your mom sews,” said Katherine. “Maybe we can buy some fabric on board and she can help us make dresses.”

  “Good idea,” said Madeline. “I’m sure she’s bored to death already. The only things she would be remotely interested in here are the yoga classes and marimba concerts. She’d probably love to have some sewing to do. And she’d certainly approve of our thrift. She hates spending money. She says most things should be bought recycled and secondhand and what isn’t you should make or grow yourself.”

  The girls hunted for a store where they could get dressmaking supplies. They stopped in the children’s evening-wear store first but as they suspected, dresses, while wonderfully fancy, started at one hundred dollars. Shoes were even more expensive.

  The girls spent the rest of the day going in and out of shops. They found scissors and needles and thread but no fabric.

  “We could make them out of beach towels!” said Katherine, draping one over her shoulder to demonstrate.

  “I suppose,” said Madeline uncertainly. “If Mildred helps she might be able to cut them so that it’s less obvious they were made out of towels. Let’s go find her.”

  But the girls didn’t have to find Mildred, for just at that second a sweet cooing voice called, “Girls, oh, girls! Isn’t the shopping divine?”

  At first Madeline didn’t look up from the towels she was examining because she didn’t know anyone who talked like this. But a hand dripping in gaudy rings grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, and Madeline found herself looking into the face of a platinum blonde with a strong perfume smell and too much makeup. She was wearing a gold lamé bikini with a loosely tied cover-up and some sparkling sandals. Madeline stared. Her mouth fell open.

  “Well, honestly, dumpling, close your mouth before you trip and fall in it,” said the strange and yet familiar woman with a twinkling starry laugh.

  “Mildred?” ventured Madeline tentatively.

  “Yes?” said Mildred.

  “What have you done to yourself?”

  “I haven’t done anything to myself,” said Mildred. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “But your hair, the jewelry, the makeup …” Madeline’s voice trailed off. “Are you trying to fit in?” she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Did Percy tell you that you have to be a ship’s ambassador? Is that what this is about? We don’t have to dye our hair, do we?”

  “Ambassador? Fit in? Oh, you mean all this?” said Mildred, turning around to display her new look. “This is Cruising Mildred. This fab woman, Selma, I met at the salon who lives in Las Vegas with her husband, Tony, says that whenever she takes a cruise she gets a desire to meditate and eat nothing but fruit. She says it’s her cruising self. Cruising-Fruit-Eating Selma, she calls her. Totally different from Land-Based-Criminally-Inclined Selma. It’s called a sea change. It’s very common. It turns out that Cruising Mildred loves to blow money. Just loves it. I haven’t stopped shopping since I found out. Let me tell you, Cruising Mildred is a lot more fun than Old-Stick-in-the-Mud-Hornby-Island Mildred.”

  “So all this is going to stop the minute you touch land?” asked Madeline nervously.

  “Maybe,” said Mildred.

  “We were just going to try and find you. We were hoping you could help us make some dresses from beach towels,” interjected Katherine.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, girls. Buy dresses. Cruising Mildred doesn’t engage in menial labor like sewing. Poo. Pooey poo poo.”

  Cruising Mildred seemed to come with her own vocabulary. Madeline had never heard her mother say “poo.”

  Mildred marched over to a rack and picked the two gaudiest dresses she could find. One was purple with stripes of black sequins. The other was a strange affair that looked like a tutu with little fairy wings attached on the back. They cost two hundred dollars apiece. Mildred snatched Madeline’s money out of her hand and opened her purse to unroll the wad there. She handed the money to the salesgirl. “We’ll take these. Oh, and shoes.” She grabbed two pairs of high heels, one covered in rhinestones, one covered in fake fur, and paid for those as well. Then she handed the bagged purchases to the girls. “Enjoy.”

  “Those shoes cost TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS!” shrieked Madeline.

  “I know, what a bargain! Now, toodle-oo, gotta catch some rays, and then I’m off for my aromatherapy session,” said Mildred, leaving the girls outside the shop.

  “Aromatherapy! Not all the activities are free. I’m pretty sure you have to pay extra for aromatherapy!” called Madeline.

  “What a Debbie Downer,” Mildred muttered as she sped away.

  Madeline stood for a second staring at Mildred’s sparkly retreating back. Then she looked down at their bags.

  “Those shoes cost a fortune and they’re hideous. Who wears fake-fur high heels?”

  “Well …,” said Katherine. “It might be kind of fun—in a tacky kind of way. Remember in Little Women when Meg went to Vanity Fair?”

  “Don’t you start,” said Madeline.

  “What’s done is done,” said Katherine sensibly. “At least we’ll fit in at dinner. Let’s just forget it and have some fun. What’s there to do here anyway?”

  It turned out there was so much to do that even Madeline forgot her money worries. There were lectures to attend, and pools and movie theaters. There was even a skating rink. There were classes and games and crafts. The girls took a waltz class and started a calligraphy course.

  Occasionally they ran into Mildred, always on the fly, always with more bags over her arms.

  “What can she be buying?” asked Madeline. “What will she do with all this stuff when she gets home? What will Flo say?”

  “Try not to think about it,” said Katherine. “I’m sure she’ll settle down by dinner.”

  But Dinner Mildred was as strange as Shopping Mildred. She was obsessed with “the best” of everything. She called the waiter garçon and demanded the best champagne. The best caviar. The best pork chops.

  “But you’re a vegan!” protested Madeline when the plate of steaming chops arrived.

  “Not Cruising Mildred. Cruising Mildred loves her meaties!” said Mildred, digging in with knife and fork.

  Madeline broke into a nervous sweat. She wondered if she should tell Flo so it wouldn’t come as a shock when he saw her, but he was busy with the band in another part of the ship and she decided to let him stay blissfully oblivious.

  Katherine looked at Madeline’s worried face.

  “Come on, let’s dance,” she said, pulling Madeline out onto the dance floor. They weren’t very adept at waltzing despite their dance class, and Katherine squawked “Honk honk” when the going got tight and other couples got in their way. Soon many of the dancers, all of whom seemed to be over sixty, were steering their partners through the milieu going “Honk honk”
as well.

  Katherine was honking loudly when a turn around a pillar brought them right in front of Percy. He glared at the girls and said, “Did you start that honking?” But he was swept out of the way by an older couple who had introduced beeping as a new twist.

  “Oh, Henry, I never had so much fun. Nobody honks or beeps on the Princess Cruises,” said a beaming woman clad all in chartreuse.

  “Curses!” said Percy. “The luck you have! It was going to be the brig for you for disturbing the passengers, but apparently they like it.” He strutted off to find a waiter to chew out instead.

  “We should tell him it’s not luck, it’s synchronicity,” said Katherine.

  But Madeline didn’t seem to hear her. She had stopped mid–box step and squeezed Katherine’s hand too tightly, hissing, “Look!”

  Katherine turned her head, which caused her to fall off her fake-fur heels and onto the train of a dowager who crashed into a waiter who dropped his tray of champagne glasses. Over the ensuing chaos Katherine heard Madeline cry, “MR. AND MRS. BUNNY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

  Katherine’s eyes followed Madeline’s to where two bunnies stood rooted in surprise.

  “Are you talking to those rabbits?” asked Katherine. “The ones in evening wear?”

  Percy heard the commotion and raced over. His eyes followed Madeline’s to Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, still frozen on the dance floor.

  “You brought PETS?” he cried. “That’s absolutely against the rules! HA! I’ve got you now!”

  Although Incredible Cruises had a storage area for pets, it knew nothing about the deck for animals nor the still lower one for bugs. They were run by different cruise lines altogether.

  Before Madeline could disentangle Katherine from the wreckage, Percy had pounced upon the Bunnys and scooped them up by their ears. Holding one in each hand, he swiftly walked them off the dance floor.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” said Mrs. Bunny. She and Mr. Bunny had seen the steward racing toward them but were paralyzed with terror and unable to hop away in time.