Swan Song

by Lisa Alther

  “You’re really diabolical, Mona. Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

  “I seriously doubt that you could.” Mona smiled at her. “Who’s Amphitrite anyhow?”

  “She was Poseidon’s wife. Queen of the Seas. She used to be a very important goddess. She rode around in a chariot pulled by seahorses, wearing a fishnet and crab claws in her hair. But the Romans downgraded her to a sea nymph.”

  “How come a science nerd knows this stuff?”

  “My partner of many years, Kat, was a writer. She forced me to read novels and poems, and to attend concerts and plays and art exhibits so I would be more well rounded.”

  “Past tense?”

  “She died last year from esophageal cancer.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  They sat in silence until Jessie asked, “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Do you have a family? Children? A husband? A wife?”

  “I have a huge Italian family in New Jersey. But no children or mate. I’m like a Vestal Virgin. I’ve devoted my life to my career. I keep an apartment in New York City, but I sing in recitals and with orchestras all over the country and abroad. My boyfriends and girlfriends have never stuck around, because I travel all the time.”

  Jessie nodded. “If Kat didn’t go away when she felt the urge to write, she would turn snarky on me. But if she did leave and do her work, she came back home happy. So I learned to let her go. But I was so busy at the hospital that sometimes I scarcely noticed she was gone.”

  “Lucky Kat,” murmured Mona. “A few times I got hired by the extra choruses at the Met. I applied for a full-time position with the permanent chorus, but I didn’t make it. That would have been great, because those singers get a salary and benefits and a fixed work schedule. I could have led a normal life. Maybe had a spouse and some children. But I’ve had to face the fact that I’m not good enough.”

  “I think you have an amazing voice.”

  “Thanks. I know it’s not bad. I was a child prodigy and sang all around New Jersey, at churches and county fairs and Moose lodges. I got a scholarship to Juilliard. But once you get to New York City, you encounter prodigies singing in every subway tunnel, trying to make a living. And now when I hear the really great divas sing, I know that I’m not in their league.”

  Jessie couldn’t think of anything comforting to say. What did she know about opera?

  “But it’s okay,” Mona continued. “I’ll just keep on singing for whoever will hire me, until I lose my voice. It’s not a bad life, doing what you love every day.”

  “Kat loved to write fiction, so she just kept on writing, even though many of her readers switched from novels to Netflix. She said it was like being a saddle maker after the invention of the automobile. But she also believed that if someone had a talent and didn’t use it, something curdled inside them. Her publishers used to nag her about defining her brand. She’d say, ‘What am I—a steer?’ They advised her to establish a platform on social media, and she replied, ‘If I blog and tweet, I won’t have any time left to write fiction.’ ”

  “It’s definitely a new world out there,” agreed Mona.

  “I prefer the previous one, but I guess that’s what old people always say.”

  “You aren’t old.”

  “Yes, I am, and I’ve earned every single strand of this gray hair.”

  “It’s not gray; it’s silver,” observed Mona. “Young women in New York City are paying hundreds of dollars to their stylists to achieve that color. It’s stunning.”

  “Well, thanks!” Jessie had almost forgotten how pleasant it was to flirt, even if you were hors de combat.

  * * *

  —

  Gail Savage turned around to inspect her profile in the mirror on the closet door. Her new midnight blue backless gown, lifted from the laundry room, was perfect for the Flappers Ball tonight. It had a dropped waist with some tiers of fabric below. She was wearing white gloves that came above her elbows. Drago had bobbed her hair and shellacked a stiff curl from each of her sideburns. She had fashioned a headband from a wide golden ribbon. The captain, by way of apology for the interruption of the tea dance by the pirate attack, had announced this Flappers Ball yesterday. Passengers had been attending workshops today to prepare their costumes, borrowing items from the wardrobe room at the theater.

  Charles came over and placed his white-gloved hands on her shoulders. “You look fantastic, my dear.”

  “Thank you, Charles. You look very handsome yourself.” He did, too, in his tails with his white tie and white vest. Whatever his failings in bed, he looked superb in evening wear. In fact, the more she saw of Xander in his blue oil-stained jumpsuit, the more she appreciated Charles and his fastidious grooming. She wasn’t quite sure what she had unleashed in Xander. Everywhere she went on the ship, he turned up with some tool for a chore he had invented so he could check up on her. Yesterday morning he had even come to her cabin to fix something on the TV that wasn’t broken, so he could catch a glimpse of his competition—even though she had repeatedly assured him that she would never leave Charles for him.

  Still, as long as she and Xander were stuck on this ship together in the middle of the ocean with no way off, she had every intention of savoring his splendid physique and tireless libido. He had introduced her to places all over the ship where personnel took illicit partners for forbidden liaisons. The most exciting was atop the roof of a small elevator that ran from the library to the cocktail lounge. You got into the elevator, pushed the emergency stop button between decks, opened the hatch in the elevator ceiling, and climbed up onto the roof, where you found utter blackness and privacy for your exertions. Xander had stashed a blanket up there, so they were warm and cushioned. Her stifled moans probably made patrons believe the library was haunted. She also enjoyed their trysts in the compartment where the huge iron anchor and its chain were stowed. You could hear the ocean slapping the hull through the opening down below while you rocked in time to the heaving of the giant ship.

  Xander claimed he had more hidey-holes to show her. Once she’d experienced them all, she thought she might end it with him. Curiosity was an aphrodisiac, but nothing could kill lust faster than repetition. And she saw no future with Xander, because he was as broke as she would be when Charles eventually died.

  * * *

  —

  Gail and Charles stood in the doorway of the ballroom. On the dance floor hundreds of couples were struggling to do the Charleston while the ship listed and swayed. Gail clutched a gold mesh purse in one hand and Charles’s arm in the other. The results of the outfit workshops were impressive. Many women wore ankle-length skirts and cloche hats, berets, or sun hats, plus fringed shawls or fur wraps. In keeping with the British tradition of bizarre women’s hats, many were decorated with elaborate constructions from ribbons, pipe cleaners, netting, fake fruits and flowers, and stuffed birds. Some men were disguised as gangsters with spats and two-toned shoes, zoot suits, walking sticks, and homburg hats. Others wore tuxedos or tails, vests in clan plaids, top hats, and black patent-leather pumps.

  A couple pushed impatiently past Charles and Gail, the woman speaking in a harsh Australian accent that sounded alarmingly familiar to Gail. The woman came to a stop and studied Gail. Gail noted the red triangular scab on her forearm and gazed quickly across the room.

  “Hold on!” said the woman. “That’s my frigging dress you’re wearing, lady!”

  The woman and her husband stepped forward until they were nose-to-nose with Charles and Gail. Gail stepped back and looked the woman up and down, as though inspecting a rabid raccoon.

  Finally she said, “Prove it.”

  The woman opened her mouth, but no words came out. Eventually, she grabbed her husband’s hand and they marched away.

  A singer c
ame onstage. She wore a gold turban with an ostrich feather waving above her head, and a sleeveless red flapper dress with lots of fringe around the hem. Some ropes of beads circled her neck. The orchestra started playing “Stardust.”

  “Let’s dance, Charles.” Gail dragged him toward the crowded floor.

  * * *

  —

  This woman is going to kill me, thought Jessie as Mona sang on and on about the pain of lost love, and music from years gone by that refused to fade away.

  The beauty of her voice was devastating—to say nothing of the beauty of her person in her fringed red flapper dress and her sheer stockings with seams up the back. But Jessie knew it was important not to confuse someone’s talent with the whole person. Kat had taught her that talent was an inexplicable gift from some higher source. But the person who embodied it was usually just an ordinary flawed mortal, probably a borderline psychotic if you really got to know her. Patients sometimes developed crushes on Jessie, assuming that her medical skills made her a superior person in every respect. When this misconception inspired them to make a pass at her, she usually thanked them for the compliment but reminded them that she awoke every morning with bad breath, just like everyone else.

  This was one of those occasions when Jessie was grateful to be a medical officer. She was required to attend these passenger bacchanals in her uniform, so she didn’t have to come up with a costume. She had, however, donned her white jacket and skirt in place of the slacks and shirt she usually wore at the clinic. She glanced at the Union Jacks that festooned the room. They seemed odd decorations for a Roaring Twenties party peopled with characters from Chicago speakeasies.

  She spotted Ben moving toward her in his white dress uniform. Although she had declined to participate in Mona’s plot to punish him for his faithlessness, she knew that Mona had shoved a love poem underneath his cabin door that afternoon. She wondered how he was going to react. The only thing she knew for sure was that she herself would never get into a bed with him ever again, in this world or the next. She only hoped that if he decided to focus on just one of them, it would be Mona. She certainly knew whom she would pick if she hadn’t already deserted the playing field.

  “She’s amazing, isn’t she?” Ben nodded toward Mona, who was now singing about spending lonely nights dreaming of a long-lost song that lingered in her memory.

  “I’ll say.”

  “Would you like to dance?”

  “Why not?” She raised her arms to him. He took her hand and placed his other hand on the small of her back.

  Mona was watching them as she sang. Her eyes met Jessie’s and she winked. Mona’s poem to Ben had been her own translation of “L’Hymne à l’amour,” which Edith Piaf had composed for her lover, a French boxing champion, shortly before his death in a plane crash. Edith promised him that they would live together forever in the Great Beyond. Jessie wondered how that plan was working out for them.

  She spotted the Savages. Charles looked dashing in his tails, with his perfectly parted silver hair, but his face appeared a bit green. Maybe he was seasick. She hoped he wasn’t still incubating the norovirus. He was turning his wife over to a gentleman host who was dressed like Al Capone, minus the machine gun. Charles strode off the dance floor and headed toward an exit door.

  Mona’s song ended, and Captain Kilgore took over the microphone. A screen behind him lowered and filled with a billowing Union Jack, over which was superimposed an outline of the British Isles that looked very much like one of Mrs. Pendragon’s withered fetuses. “We’re so deeply happy to have you all here tonight, enjoying our amazing Amphitrite orchestra and our beautiful guest singer, brought to us direct from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City—Mona Paradiso! Let’s give them a hand!”

  The crowd applauded while Mona and the conductor bowed.

  “You may be wondering about these Union Jacks decorating our ballroom. We thought that after our little contretemps with brigands the other afternoon it would be fitting to remind you all of how safe our ship really is. And what better setting in which to do this than at a party to celebrate the 1920s? Need I remind you that at that time Britain held sway over a quarter of the world’s population and a quarter of its landmass? Only twenty-two of the two hundred countries on the entire globe had not been civilized by the British. So we find it appropriate to mention these facts here in the Red Sea, which was entirely dominated then by the Royal Navy. No pirate would have dared attack a British vessel in those days—and in fact very few would dare it today. And as you have seen firsthand, those who do dare it fail miserably!”

  Everyone cheered as the orchestra launched into “Rule, Britannia!” Mona finally had a chance to display her full operatic skills, as well as her fake British accent, as she trilled lines about Britain’s emergence from the ocean at God’s command.

  The audience members not already standing leapt to their feet for the chorus, roaring in unison:

  “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!

  “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!”

  As Mona continued singing, the Brits shouted uncharacteristic encouragement to her and jumped up on teetering chairs. Many began frantically waving small Union Jacks on sticks.

  Jessie felt her pager beeping in her pocket. Pulling it out and glancing at it, she turned and headed for the exit as Mona hit one of the highest notes Jessie had ever heard before, in a phrase having something to do with manly hearts guarding the fair. On her way out she spotted the same maintenance man in the red bandanna headband who had so courageously thrown tables overboard at the encroaching pirates. He was lurking by the doorway, holding a large wrench, staring at the delirious crowd howling about never being slaves. (Selling slaves, yes, but never themselves being slaves.) This young man was always turning up wherever Gail Savage was. Either he was stalking her or something was brewing between them.

  On the phone out in the hallway, the operator on duty reported that someone had called 999 from room 10024 but that no one was on the line when she answered. Jessie recognized the room number as that of the Savages, and she recalled Charles’s olive-tinged face as he left the ballroom. She assured the operator that she would follow up on it.

  She pushed the elevator button for the tenth floor, and also the emergency button to prevent the elevator from stopping at intermediate floors. The medical team prided itself on arriving at any spot on the ship in two minutes or less. They had practiced this several times in Hong Kong after she boarded. But it was doubtful she would make it tonight, having had to thread her way across a dance floor packed with hyperventilating imperialists.

  As she exited the elevator and raced down the hallway, an elderly couple came careening along in the opposite direction. The man, dressed in a tux with a Union Jack cummerbund, stopped, clicked his heels together, and saluted her. She saluted him back and dodged around his unsteady wife, who wore a mauve floor-length gown that revealed too much of her dimpled décolletage.

  When Jessie knocked on the door of room 10024, no one answered. She opened the door with her master key. The room was dark and the drapes were drawn. On the king-size bed was a white comforter, on which Charles Savage lay supine, two foil-wrapped chocolate mints on the pillow beside his head. He didn’t stir as Jessie entered. She went to his side and tapped his shoulder, saying in a loud voice, “Are you okay, Mr. Savage?” No response. She flipped on the light. On the nightstand stood a pill bottle. Jessie picked it up and read the label. Viagra. The phone receiver lay on the floor. Jessie placed her fingertips on his carotid artery. No pulse. She lowered her face to his but felt no breath.

  She did nothing for a long moment, withdrawing into herself and struggling to become calm and detached. Then she abruptly took out her pager and sent Ben a message, instructing him to call the purser to announce an Operation Bright Star, and to bring the crash cart to room 10024.

  She quickly
rearranged Charles’s limbs, hiked up her skirt, and knelt over him on the bed. Locking her hands together and placing them just above the vee of his rib cage, she straightened her arms and began pushing on his chest in time to the lyrics of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. After thirty compressions, she tilted up his chin and explored his mouth with her fingers for obstructions. She pinched shut his nose, locked her lips with his, and gave him two deep breaths. Then she returned to the compressions.

  In the hallway she could hear the purser announcing quietly over the loudspeaker, “Operation Bright Star. Operation Bright Star. Guest deck ten, starboard side. Room one oh oh two four.”

  Jessie kept pumping away—press, release, press, release—to the throbbing disco beat of John Travolta’s dance routine in Saturday Night Fever. She knew this procedure worked less than 10 percent of the time, but saving even one life seemed worth the exertion.

  Soon the crash cart came careening through the door, with Amy and Ben close behind. While Amy gave Charles an injection, Ben set up the defibrillator. Then he tore open Charles’s pleated dress shirt, studs flying all around the room. He applied the paddles to Charles’s chest several times, but it was soon clear that Charles wasn’t going to respond ever again. Ben, Amy, and Jessie fell silent and lowered their heads for a long moment.

  “He has a wife on board,” Jessie finally said. “I guess we need to find her.” She picked up the phone and asked the purser to page Gail Savage and instruct her to go to the clinic as soon as possible.

  The medical team plus Pedro, the Savages’ cabin steward, slid Charles into a black zippered body bag and placed it on a stretcher. Officers had closed off either end of the hallway where the service elevator was located. Ben and Pedro carried the stretcher while Jessie pushed the crash cart.