Killer Cruise

by Laura Levine

  “Oh, dear.” Cookie had come down off her cloud and was now eyeing my sorry outfit. “You’ve been to the rental shop, haven’t you?”

  I nodded miserably.

  “I look awful.”

  “Well, you won’t when I’m through with you. Wait here,” she said, dashing out the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  Minutes later she was back in my cabin with a professional make-up kit.

  “I happen to be a whiz at this stuff,” she said, dabbing foundation on my face.

  She did not lie. The woman was a regular make-up Michelangelo. When she was through with me, my eyes were bigger, my lips were fuller, and for the first time in my life, I had cheekbones.

  “Now, for your hair.”

  With what seemed like just a few spritzes of hairspray and some deftly placed hairpins, she wound my curls into a sexy Sarah Jessica Parker-ish updo.

  “Wow,” I said, gazing at my reflection in the mirror. “This is such an improvement.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not through.”

  With that she took a pair of dangly gold earrings from her pocket and put them in my ears.

  The saleslady was right. Accessories did help. I didn’t look half bad. I bet if I squinted my eyes and stood about three cabins away from the mirror, I’d even look skinny.

  “Oh, Cookie. You really are my guardian angel.”

  “Don’t be silly, hon,” she said, wrapping me in a perfumed hug. “I’m sure you’d help me out if I was in a jam.”

  What neither of us knew at the time, of course, was that a jam of monumental proportions was right around the corner.

  Chapter 7

  I made my way across the dining room that night feeling pretty good about the new, improved me. My confidence was quickly shattered, however, by what I was about to see.

  There, floating above the table next to mine, was a balloon reading, Happy 100th Birthday, Ethel! Sitting beneath the balloon was a frail old woman with pink cheeks and blue hair—Ethel, no doubt—wearing a button that said, Kiss me. I’m 100!

  And that’s not all she was wearing.

  You guessed it. The exact same outfit as mine.

  Yes, folks, I’d shown up dressed like a centenarian.

  “Jaine, how lovely to see you,” Emily said, catching sight of me.

  Once more, the others had arrived before me and were seated with their cocktails. All dressed in non-rented togs far more fashionable than mine. Emily wore a spectacular lace gown, set off by a string of magnificent pearls I sure hope she was insured for. Maggie had on a champagne-colored halter dress that, although not particularly flattering to her generous upper arms, undoubtedly sported a designer label. Even Ms. Nesbitt had pulled out the stops and was wearing a tailored beige silk dupioni suit.

  Kyle and Robbie both wore tuxes. And Robbie, I couldn’t help but notice, was looking particularly spiffy, his green eyes startling against his tan, his sun-streaked hair still wet from a shower.

  I smiled feebly and slipped into the vacant seat next to Emily, feeling about as stylish as the Volga boatman. I just prayed they hadn’t noticed my centenarian fashion twin.

  No such luck.

  “Oh, Jaine,” Ms. Nesbitt said, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “You’re wearing the same outfit as the hundred-year-old lady over there. Isn’t that cute!”

  I felt like shoving a dinner roll in her big fat mouth.

  But I did not do any roll-shoving, because at that moment Graham Palmer III came gliding up to our table, once more channeling Cary Grant. I tell you, the man was born to wear a tuxedo.

  “Good evening, everyone,” he purred in a deep baritone.

  “Guess what?” Emily’s face glowed with pleasure. “I’ve invited Graham to join us for dinner.”

  Kyle looked up from his martini, not bothering to hide his irritation.

  “But he’s not assigned to our table.”

  “He is now, dear. That maitre d’ said there’d be no problem if Graham sat with us for the rest of the cruise.”

  “The rest of the cruise?” Kyle washed down this news with a big gulp of his drink.

  “I had him bring an extra chair to our table,” Emily said.

  Indeed, for the first time I noticed an empty chair at the table, two spaces down from Emily. I’d been so wrapped up in my fashion crisis, it hadn’t registered before.

  “Leona, dear,” Emily said to Ms. Nesbitt, “why don’t you take that chair, so Graham can sit next to me?”

  Nesbitt blanched in disbelief, her face almost as white as her napkin.

  “But I hate to trouble Ms. Nesbitt,” Graham said smoothly. “I can sit over there.”

  “No!” Emily cried, like a child whose favorite toy has just been threatened. “I want you here next to me.”

  Jaw clenched tight in anger, Nesbitt grabbed her drink and changed seats, fuming as Graham slid into her vacated spot.

  And Nesbitt wasn’t the only one who was pissed. Kyle, clearly upset at having this interloper in our midst, polished off his martini and signaled the waiter for another.

  Yes, indeedie, there was tension in the air.

  And matters did not improve when the waiter returned to take our orders.

  “Madame?” he asked, starting with Emily.

  “The Steak Mexicana looks awfully good,” she said.

  It sure did. According to the menu, it was “broiled to perfection and smothered in onions and roasted red peppers.”

  “Good grief, Emily!” Ms. Nesbitt piped up, shaking her head. “You can’t have the Steak Mexicana. Much too spicy.”

  “Oh, dear,” Emily sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t.”

  And then Graham did the unthinkable. He contradicted Ms. Nesbitt.

  “Oh, go ahead, Em,” he said. “Get what you want.”

  “Do you really think so, Gray?”

  “The steak’s not that spicy, is it?” he asked the waiter.

  “Not at all,” the waiter replied.

  “And besides,” Graham said, with a wink, “you only live once.”

  “Yes,” Emily said, clearly under his spell, “I think I’ll have the steak.”

  Nesbitt seethed as Graham shot her a smug smile. Another victory for Graham in the Emily Wars.

  The waiter proceeded to take the rest of our orders. Once again, due to my second-class citizenship, I was saddled with the chicken. But the others were under no such restraints, and I listened with envy as one after the other opted for red meat. Only Ms. Nesbitt held back, sticking with her ghastly vegetable plate.

  Finally, the waiter trotted off, leaving our jolly party to converse with each other. Which was about as easy as that Sisyphus guy trying to roll a boulder up a hill.

  What can I say? Conversation did not sparkle. Not with Nesbitt and Kyle in full-tilt snit mode.

  Emily, however, seemed oblivious to the tension crackling in the air and chattered gaily about the day’s activities.

  “Graham and I won second prize in Scattegories! We had so much fun, didn’t we, Gray?”

  “So what exactly is it that you do for a living?” Kyle asked, clearly not interested in their Scattegories victory.

  “Graham’s a retired corporate executive!” Emily beamed.

  “Fortunately,” Graham said, “I was lucky with a few investments so I was able to retire young and pursue my love of cruising.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Emily beamed. “Gray loves cruising just as much as I do!”

  “How nice,” Maggie said, darting an anxious glance at her husband’s rapidly draining martini glass.

  “Where exactly did you work?” Kyle asked, not to be deterred from his cross-examination.

  “The British Petroleum Corporation,” Graham replied, with a cool smile. “For almost twenty years. I’ll be happy to fax you my resume if you like.”

  “Touché, Graham,” Robbie said, a twinkle in his eye.

  To which Kyle muttered what I was certain was a hearty curse.

  Thank heavens the wai
ter showed up just then with our appetizers. But alas, he eventually abandoned us to our own company, and the rest of the dinner slogged by under a thundercloud of tension, with Kyle and Ms. Nesbitt radiating hostility and poor Maggie watching helplessly as her husband downed one martini after another.

  I, meanwhile, was trying desperately not to reach over and cut myself a hunk of Emily’s Steak Mexicana. I was also busy trying to avoid eye contact with Robbie, who kept looking at me with that disconcerting grin of his.

  But what bothered me the most, more than the tension, more than the lure of the forbidden Steak Mexicana and Robbie’s lopsided grin, was the way Graham was cozying up to Emily, gazing deeply into her eyes and brushing her hand with the tips of his fingers.

  He sure wasn’t acting like a guy who had a fiancée waiting in the wings.

  “Ready to take another spin on the dance floor?” Robbie whispered as we filed out of the dining room.

  Just say no, I warned myself. Do not get involved with a bad-boy heartbreaker. He walked out on you last night. He’ll walk out on you again.

  “Please say yes,” he said, sensing my hesitation. “If you don’t, I’ll have to dance with the battle-axe.” He glanced over at Ms. Nesbitt, who was discreetly popping a Tums into her mouth.

  I steeled myself against temptation, but all it took was one sniff of his baby powder, and the next thing I knew I was in his arms on the dance floor.

  Obviously I missed class the day they passed out backbones.

  Graham and Emily were dancing alongside us, Emily happily ensconced in Graham’s arms. For a woman of her advanced years, she bore an uncanny resemblance to a high school teenager, batting her eyes and giggling at her date’s bon mots.

  Graham had his charm turned on full blast, earning every cent of what they paid him to keep the single ladies amused.

  Cookie was up on the bandstand, still radiant from her earlier tryst, belting out old standards. Every once in a while Graham caught her eye and winked at her over Emily’s shoulder.

  What an operator.

  Meanwhile, out in the audience, Kyle and Nesbitt were glaring at the happy couple, Kyle guzzling enough gin to open his own distillery.

  “We’re going to take a break now,” the band-leader announced after Cookie wrapped up a lovely rendition of “Blue Moon.” “But we’ll be back in ten.”

  I started off the dance floor but Robbie pulled me back.

  “Oh, let’s not join the Gloomies,” he said, eyeing Kyle and Nesbitt. “What do you say we take a walk out on deck?”

  This time Sensible Me didn’t even put up a fight.

  “Sure,” I managed to sigh.

  It was a beautiful night, the kind you see in cruise-line commercials—mild and balmy with gazillions of stars in the skies. When you live with L.A.’s perpetual overhead gunk, you tend to forget how many of those twinkling babies actually exist.

  We strolled along the deck, the moon glittering like diamonds on the water below. Talk about your Kodak moments.

  What next, I wondered? Would Robbie turn to me and tell me how he’d always yearned to meet a freelance writer with generous thighs, and then take me in his arms and wrap me in a torrid embrace?

  Apparently not.

  “That was the dinner from hell,” he said, not breaking stride.

  Oh, well. It was all for the best he didn’t make a pass at me. The last thing I wanted was to rush into things. (Who am I kidding? At that moment I wanted nothing more than to throw caution to the wind and plunge headlong into a frantic lip-lock.)

  “I thought Nesbitt would have a cow when Aunt Em asked her to change seats.”

  “She was steamed, all right.”

  “Good for Aunt Em,” he said. “I’m glad she’s having fun. Poor thing’s led a pretty sheltered life.”

  “She never married?”

  “No. She had some big romance when she was very young, but it didn’t pan out.”

  “I just hope she’s not falling too hard for Graham. You know, he already has a girlfriend.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that. Underneath her ditsy ways, Aunt Em’s pretty sensible. She’s been on enough cruises to know that Graham is one of those men hired to dance with the single women. Surely she can’t think anything serious is going to happen between them.”

  Obviously he hadn’t Clue One about the self-deluding inner workings of a woman in love.

  We stopped now and leaned against the rail, looking down at the moonlit waters below.

  “Besides,” Robbie said, “it’s not Aunt Emily’s love life I’m concerned about. It’s yours.”

  “Mine?” I flushed.

  “What’s with you and that ice sculptor anyway?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” I assured him. “Nothing at all.”

  “I just thought from the way you two have been together…”

  “No, Anton and I are definitely not an item.”

  “Any significant other back home?” he asked.

  Play hard to get, I told myself. Let him think he has some competition. Make up some guy you’re seeing occasionally.

  “Aside from my cat, no.”

  Way to go, Jaine.

  “Well, that’s a relief.” He inched just a tad closer. “So tell me about yourself. What do you do when you’re not sailing the high seas?”

  I told him about my career as a freelance writer, and my fondness for fine literature and crossword puzzles, carefully omitting my penchant for Chunky Monkey, Cosmo quizzes, and daytime TV.

  “You go in for water sports?” he asked. “Sailing, scuba, that sort of stuff?”

  And then the most outrageous lie popped out of my mouth.

  “Oh, yes. I love it all.”

  Was I nuts? The only water sport I enjoyed on a regular basis was soaking in the tub.

  “Really? Somehow I didn’t think you were the type.”

  “Oh, but I am,” I said, digging myself in even deeper. “I’m a real water nut.”

  Would somebody please shut me up?

  And it looked like Robbie was about to do exactly that. Because just then he reached out and ran his finger along my cheek. I felt a jolt of excitement I hadn’t felt in many a moon.

  Much to my delight, he leaned in to kiss me. With any luck I would not be doing any talking for the next twenty minutes or so. Our lips were just about to meet when I heard:

  “Hey, Jaine! I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Phooey. It was Anton, hustling over to us.

  “Look what I made you, babe!”

  He held out a plate, and there in the center was a bright red jiggly blob.

  “It’s a rose carved out of Jell-O!”

  “How nice,” I managed to say.

  “A precious flower for my precious flower.”

  Oh, puke.

  “Hey, babe,” he said, wedging his way between me and Robbie, “did I ever tell you about the time I carved the Eiffel Tower out of egg salad? Man, that was some tough job. I mean, you’ve got to get the egg salad really cold and not use too much mayo; otherwise it’s too runny.”

  He proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes giving a blow-by-blow description of the construction of his egg salad Eiffel Tower, his back to Robbie the entire time.

  “What a fascinating story,” Robbie said when he finally wound down.

  “That’s nothing. Wanna hear about the time I carved Moses out of chopped liver?”

  “Some other time, Anton,” I said. “I think I’ll turn in now.”

  “Me too,” Robbie chimed in.

  With that, he grabbed my elbow and hustled me inside the ship, where we sprinted along the corridors, certain that Anton would soon be hot on our heels.

  “In here,” Robbie said, pulling me into the ship’s game room, a wood-paneled enclave whose shelves were lined with board games and video rentals. Over at one of the tables, a bunch of kids were playing Uno.

  We cowered in a corner, and seconds later we saw Anton rushing by.

 
; “That guy is a human bloodhound,” Robbie sighed.

  So there we were in the game room, me holding a Jell-O rose, the kids at the table shrieking “Uno!” at the top of their lungs. No moonlight. No twinkling stars. No balmy breezes. The spell had definitely been broken.

  “You know,” Robbie said, “I think I really will turn in. I’m sort of tired.”

  “Me too,” I lied.

  What did I tell you? Dumped again.

  I was dying to make a pit stop at the buffet, but I couldn’t risk running into Anton. So I trudged back down to the Dungeon Deck with nothing more exciting to snack on than a Jell-O rose. Which I wasn’t about to eat. Not after Anton had touched it.

  Back in my cabin, Prozac sniffed at Anton’s artwork disdainfully.

  This is your idea of a midnight snack?

  For once we were on the same wavelength.

  With a weary sigh I got in my jammies and plopped into bed.

  It was then that I noticed that Samoa had not brought me the pillow I’d requested. Most annoying. There were, after all, two beds in the cabin. There had to be another pillow for the second bed.

  I made a mental note to have a stern talk with my steward-cum-novelist in the morning.

  In the meanwhile, Prozac was perched on our one and only lumpy specimen. After copious pleading and belly rubbing I finally convinced her to relinquish her throne and lie on my tummy. Then I turned on the TV—believe it or not, my cabin actually had one—and zapped around until I found Sleepless in Seattle on the ship’s movie channel.

  Prozac and I spent the next hour and a half watching Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks fall in love. Rather, I watched. Prozac was snoring five minutes after the opening credits. I don’t think she likes Meg Ryan. She doesn’t like anybody as cute as she is.

  Afterward I sat through a highly educational spiel on the many fun and exciting tourist attractions in Puerto Vallarta. None of which I could afford.

  At about one-thirty, I turned off the light.

  But sleep would not come. Visions of brownies danced in my head.