Love on the Lido Deck

by Barbara Oliverio

  “Keira! That wasn’t nice at all!” Alex began.

  “Really, Alex?” I just wasn’t in the mood. “Remind me, just where are your parents, again?”

  “They’re playing bingo. Besides, what difference does it make if they did this or not? Or is it that you’re jealous that your mother is more daring than you are, Ice Princess?”

  I looked around to see others outside our group were starting to stare again and thought it was better not cause a scene.

  “I’m just not in the mood for this right now. I’ll see all of you ... DAREDEVILS ... at dinner. Right now I have to do a boring report for my boring job.”

  I stomped off. Luckily when I reached the elevator, it was already there, and the doors opened with a passenger inside.

  “Hello, mate! Brennan told me to look for you, and your co-worker said you might be up here. Are you ready to suit up for the parade tonight?” Neil greeted me with a smile.

  “You know what, Neil, I am sooo ready!”

  I’d show them who’s a daredevil!

  I managed to make polite chit-chat with Neil as the elevator descended to the crew deck, one of the lowest decks on the ship. The doors opened to a scene a bit different than the passageway outside my stateroom.

  Crew members dashed back and forth preparing to arrive at their next assignment. The “kids”—the crew that worked for the cruise director and who seemed to be everywhere on the ship at once—were all dressed in their polo-and-khaki combination and comparing notes:

  “Who’s manning the board?”

  “Isn’t that you, Gianni?”

  “No, no, I’m early ticket one.”

  “It’s Olga’s turn. She’s on bingo. Syd will get there when ice melts.”

  A combination of accents all mixed together speaking in the kind of shorthand that only comes from working closely in a group that has many responsibilities and little time.

  Neil could sense my amused confusion.

  “It’s all shorthand around here. Can you even guess what’s going on?”

  “Let me see. Gianni will be taking tickets for the early show, Olga is calling bingo and will run the shuffleboard tournament. Syd will help her after the ice show?”

  “Good on ya! You managed to crack the code! We have some crew members who still haven’t managed to decipher our crazy shorthand.” She stared pointedly at the tall red-headed young man with the name tag “Bryce.”

  He swooped her up and gave her a laughing embrace.

  “Aye, Neil, me love, tell me again why ye won’t make me the happiest Irishman and run away with me to raise a family in County Derry.”

  “Because you have been too long at the Blarney Stone and don’t mean a word of it, me lad,” Neil said, echoing his accent, and pushed him toward the elevator. “Now get to the Lido Deck and use that charm on the teenyboppers who’ll be waiting for you to teach them cowboy line dancing.”

  “How about you, me flaxen-haired green-eyed filly?” he turned to me and waggled his eyebrows.

  “She’s here on real business, not monkey business. Now scoot!” She pushed him once again.

  “They seem like a fun crew,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s nothing but high jinks around here sometimes. I have a devil of a time keeping them on task, especially the head prankster.”

  “Bryce?”

  “No. I mean the head imp himself. Brennan.”

  “Brennan? Surely not. He’s the director.”

  “Oh, he’s the director, and a great one at that, but when it comes to pulling pranks, he’s the worst ... or, should I say, the best.”

  I thought of smooth, cool-eyed Brennan with that ear-to-ear grin. Surely, he must run his crew with the same tough-as-nails attitude he showed me the other evening in our meeting.

  “But what does he do if you don’t complete your reports correctly?” I asked.

  “Reports? What reports?”

  “You mean you don’t have daily meetings and reports?”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “He did. He said we had to meet after my event every day for a debrief.”

  “Keira, we don’t have daily reports! We barely have time to get the work done during the day!”

  Suddenly I felt quite the fool. I had to endure that meeting with him yesterday AND I completed that report last night AND I was prepared to complete one tonight and every night.

  “Neil,” I asked as we entered a storage area filled with props and costumes. “What else can you tell me about Brennan McAllister?”

  She began pulling costumes and holding them against me. “Not a lot, really. He hasn’t had this ship for long. He moved up from being cruise director on one of the smaller ships. This is actually my first cruise with him.”

  Hmm.

  “I do know one thing. The girls all love him.”

  Big shock there.

  “I mean they LOVE him. Apparently his transfer followed some sort of incident with a passenger.”

  Another big shock, I thought drily.

  “What about you? Aren’t you under his spell?”

  “Me?” she laughed. “I’m taken, mate. My husband is on this ship as well.”

  “Is he on the cruise director’s crew?”

  “Not exactly. He plays piano. Here, see if these boots fit.”

  “Is he in the band?” The white go-go boots zipped up perfectly.

  “He’s in all the bands. When you’re a musician on a ship, you go where you’re needed. Wig or no wig?”

  “I’d prefer no wig if possible. So you all are multitaskers then.” I did recall seeing some of the same faces of the musicians in different venues.

  “That’s the key to working on a cruise ship. Lots of tasks.”

  “I noticed so many different accents. Is that normal?”

  “Definitely. People apply for jobs from all over the world and speaking different languages is a plus because we might be assigned to ships that sail with cruisers from all over the world. We’re a real mixed bag on the cruise director’s crew. If you do no wig, can you pull off a Farrah Fawcett look?”

  “Oh, definitely. What about a dress?”

  She snapped her fingers.

  “Give me back those boots.”

  “Hey! I like these.”

  “What you wear on your own time is up to you, love. No, I have a better idea for you, blondie. If you’re going Farrah, you’re going glam.”

  She pulled out a form-fitting kelly green silken dress with spaghetti straps and a handkerchief hemline.

  “Wow! That is stunning!” I ran the material through my fingers. “Is this vintage ‘70s? It has to be.”

  “You bet it is. And here ... and here ...” She handed me a white fur stole and a pair of high-heeled silver sandals so wispy they seemed to be made of mercury itself.

  “Do you think I can pull this off?”

  “I can’t think of anyone else who could. Look, come down here early and let Magda do your makeup. She’ll send you back a couple of decades for sure.

  I looked at the ensemble.

  Why not? It was daring. And wasn’t daring the key word of the day?

  “Did you do a bit of shopping?”

  I met Mr. and Mrs. D’Ag in the passageway as I was walking toward my own stateroom.

  “What? Oh, this.” I held the exquisite green ‘70s disco outfit against myself. “It’s for the parade tonight. What do you think?”

  Mrs. D’Ag said, “I think it’s perfect! You’ll look like you stepped right out of Saturday Night Fever!”

  “That’s the look I’m going for.”

  “Where are you headed now?” she asked. “Why don’t you join us by the pool for a while. I’m sure you must be tired of being inside all day.”

  After the temper tantrum I had pulled on the Sports Deck, I felt like I needed time to cool down before I saw my mother and the others and apologized.

  “I need to do some paperwork and clean up before dinner.”

  “Ar
e you sure?”

  “Angela, let her do her job. Remember she’s here to work, not to fritter away her days by the pool,” said Mr. D’Ag. “Keira, doll, you do what you need to do, then we’ll see you when we see you. Here.”

  He handed me a stick of gum from his front pocket. I had seen him do this wordless fatherly gesture to Alex many times, and it was one that he began sharing with me when the family “adopted” me as their second daughter, back in college.

  My fancy dress crushed against him as we hugged.

  “Papa D., thank you so much.”

  He waved me off awkwardly.

  “It’s just gum, not diamond earrings, sweetie.” But his smile stretched across his face. “Come Angela, we’ll miss getting a good chair.”

  Despite my inclination to not complete Brennan’s report, or to fill it out with joke answers, I did the correct thing and filled it out properly. What could it hurt? I reasoned that it was valuable to my own record-keeping in any case. I did, however, refuse to jump through any hoops to get it to the purser’s office before dinner.

  Once the detestable paperwork was done, I took a leisurely shower and prepared my hair for later in the evening by drying it so that it cascaded in a long golden column. When it was parade time, I would employ a curling iron to give the sides the classic ‘70s Farrah “wings.” That night was a smart casual night, so I slipped into my off-the-shoulder swing mini in a bold geometric print. I looked into the mirror and felt as if I was already in ‘70s mode.

  At the precise moment I finished my preparations, there was a mad rapping on my door.

  “Let’s go, Keira, this is just dinner, not the prom!” came the teasing voice of my best friend. Could she possibly have forgotten my rudeness of earlier?

  I whipped the door open, and Alex nearly fell in.

  “Calm down, Alexandria! You don’t need to alarm the entire ship.” I peered out to see Cam, Damian, Anthony, and Celia, appropriately smartly dressed. The men wore linen slacks and summer sport coats, while the women wore dressy halter numbers—pastel floral for Celia and bold color-blocking in primary colors for Alex.

  “Yikes! I didn’t realize I needed this much of an escort.”

  “Ma was afraid you were going to order room service, so she sent us to strong-arm you,” said Anthony.

  “I knew better,” I laughed as we started toward the elevator. “Where are your parents, anyway? And my mother and Russ?”

  “Oh the grown-ups are having dinner in the Steakhouse specialty restaurant. So it’s just us kids tonight.”

  I stopped short of the elevator.

  “No! I think Juliet is having dinner there with her beau!”

  “What? She’ll be ambushed. Not by your mother, certainly, but definitely by Ma,” Anthony said and turned around. “How would she not have discussed this with your mother?”

  “I don’t know. I suspect she got ready and left the room before Mother came back to get ready.”

  “Ooh,” Alex said with a hint of diabolical glee. “I think we should go there ourselves and watch that happen.”

  “No!” we chorused.

  “That’s a nice steakhouse,” Cam said. “It’s not dinner theater.”

  Celia herded all of us into the opening doors of the elevator. “We will go to our table in the dining room, as planned, and have dinner as planned,” she said sensibly, but ended with, “Of course, if we end up taking a stroll in The Commons near the steakhouse afterward, well, it is a nice area, after all, and open to everyone who wants to walk there.”

  “Ceil, we thought Elisabetta got her devilish streak from Tonio, but you contribute pretty heavily, too, don’t you?” Cam gave her a hip bump.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she sniffed, then winked.

  Despite the missing diners at our table, the decibel level of conversation did not seem to have gotten any lower. For a day at sea, the family managed to fill time with myriad activities in addition to the infamous zip line.

  “The bowling was pretty cool,” said Cam.

  “Especially when the guy who kept bragging about what a good bowler he was got crushed by the lady who just learned the game today,” agreed Celia.

  “They have a bowling alley?” I asked.

  “No,” Cam shook his head. “It was on the Wii gaming system hooked up to a big screen in the Sports Bar. You have to play it pretty carefully.”

  This led to a demonstration of video game bowling that resulted in almost catapulting a nearby wine bucket to the floor, along with a few stares from neighboring tables.

  “So, we KILLED at every trivia competition,” said Anthony, neatly changing subjects.

  “I am not shocked,” I said. “And did other people eventually learn who you were and begin to groan when they saw you approaching?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes they did,” said Cam. “They thought they finally had a chance when they saw Damian, because some of them had been at daily Mass and figured that surely a priest would not be competitive.”

  “They don’t know Damian.”

  “I was just being honest about the answers that I knew,” said the man in question. “Can I help it that the topic for the one competition was rock and roll?”

  “Well, when they let you pick the category, I don’t think they knew you nearly had a successful rock and roll career before you became a priest, Padre!” said Cam.

  “Ouch. Nearly?”

  “You kids stop fighting,” said Alex, in a perfect imitation of their father, and we all laughed. “Anyway,” she continued turning toward me, “you need to carve out some time to join us tomorrow in the shuffleboard tournament.”

  “What are we, senior citizens?” I asked.

  “No,” she shook her head. “It’s fun. All ages participate. As a matter of fact, most ages participate in everything.”

  I remembered my meltdown over my mother and the zip line.

  “You guys, I’m really sorry,” I began.

  “Stop,” said Damian. “We know it wasn’t your best moment, Keir. It’s okay.”

  “But it’s not okay. I was mean to my mother. You guys should hate me.”

  “We know you need to make it right with your mother. But we love you, okay?”

  I looked around the table. Their faces were sincere.

  “Okay. So what about this shuffleboard?”

  “Oh, it’s so cool, not what you’d think at all.” And Alex was off and running.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The dinner table was clear of everything except our coffee and teacups when Alex remembered. “Oh! We need to get down to The Commons if we’re going to get a peek at Juliet’s young man, don’t we?”

  “Are we really going to do that?” I asked. “Isn’t that kind of a Brady Bunch thing to do? Spy on Marcia and her date?”

  “Yes. So?”

  I looked around the table but didn’t see any disagreement. The one person who might have been the voice of reason, Damian, had excused himself earlier to attend to a contingent of the staff who had scheduled pastoral meetings with him.

  “What’s the harm?” said Anthony, taking me by the arm. “We’re just going to sit in the Tidal Wave Bar in the park.”

  “The one that moves up and down from The Commons to the next deck on hydraulics?”

  “Right. It only sits in front of the Steakhouse for fifteen minutes before it moves up, so if we catch a glimpse of them, well, then so be it.”

  “Yes. That sounds oh-so-nice and innocent, doesn’t it?” I went along, but I had a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

  “What else do you have to do before the ‘70s parade, Keir?” asked Alex. “It’s not like you’re the grand marshal of it or anything, right?”

  Hmm. She hadn’t seen my disco togs, so maybe I would keep that a secret.

  “You’re right. I just have to get down to the meeting space in time to march in with the crew. Neil did say something about doing my makeup, so I might go a little earl
y.”

  “Do you have a groovy outfit to wear?”

  “Something like that. You’ll be able to pick me out.”

  We negotiated our way through the ship to the relative calm of The Commons Deck, marveling again at how many different “neighborhoods” were contained on the floating city.

  “After this, before the parade, we should go over to the Boardwalk and get a hot dog,” said Cam.

  “Seriously? Did that short stroll give you an appetite?” asked Alex.

  “I don’t know, there’s just something about being on a ship that makes me hungry all the time,” he shrugged. “Besides, you should talk. Have you walked past the Promenade Cafe ONCE without having a chocolate brownie?”

  “That’s different. I’m doing research,” she said. “We might want to carry them at the restaurant, and I want to figure out the recipe.”

  “Oh, you’ll be carrying them into the restaurant—on your hips!” cracked Anthony.

  We reached the small bar that was “parked” on The Commons Deck outside the Steakhouse, which would afford us a prime view of entrances and exits.

  “Here. It was meant to be. Perfect.” Alex settled front and center on a stool facing the Steakhouse. The rest of us took our places around her.

  Although the restaurant didn’t have large windows, it did have walls that could be opened to imitate the open-air concept of restaurants on land. All in all, it was a charming venue.

  “I see your mother and Russ, but I don’t see Jules and the doc,” Alex declared. “I’m pretty sure they can’t see us out here.”

  “’Jules and the doc’? What are they, a Vegas act?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You took exactly one second to look! Besides, you don’t know what he looks like.”

  “Uh, I went snorkeling with him, remember?”

  “I forgot! Hey, I thought you said he’d be perfect for me,” I teased.

  “Tomato, tomahto,” she waved me off. “He would fit into the group one way or another.”