Princess Charming

by Jane Heller

  At some point, Albert asked our forgiveness, saying he had to go back to his stateroom to place a long-distance phone call. I was surprised. He had told us he was a loner. To whom do loners place long-distance phone calls? Maybe he’s calling his stockbroker, I decided, given that, if my theory about Albert’s finances were correct, there would be assets to manage. I suddenly thought of Kenneth Cone, the asset manager from Table 186, and considered introducing him to Albert. If they decided to work together, maybe I’d get a finder’s fee or commission or something.

  “Well,” said Albert as he rose from the table, leaving a pile of soiled napkins in a heap on his plate. “I do hope you ladies have a pleasant day. A very pleasant day.”

  “The same to you,” said Pat.

  “Lunch was delightful, thanks to you both,” he said. “I hope you’ll convey my most sincere get-well wishes to your friend, Jackie.” He paused, his mouth forming a mischievous grin. “Or should I say, ‘to the third Blond Mouse’?”

  Pat giggled, clearly flattered that Albert had not only remembered our nickname for each other but felt at ease enough with us to use it.

  I wasn’t flattered so much as puzzled. I didn’t think we had ever told Albert our nickname. I certainly hadn’t.

  When Albert was gone, I related my phone conversation with Leah to Pat. “Harold is letting her handle my clients,” I said, getting upset all over again. “What if it’s the beginning of the end for me at Pearson & Strulley? What if they want new blood there? Younger blood? What if there’s a blood bath and I’m one of the bathers?”

  “I’m not a businesswoman,” Pat began. “And I don’t know the inside out of Pearson & Strulley. But if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you’re overreacting.”

  “I don’t mind your saying so,” I replied. “Go on.”

  “All right then. It sounds to me as if your clients are in a pepper.”

  “A pickle, Pat.”

  “Yes, they’re in a pickle and they need help. Fast. You’re out of the country, so it’s perfectly logical that your assistant, who has been trained by you and knows all the parties involved, would be chosen to manage the situation.”

  “You don’t think Harold’s trying to phase me out or anything?”

  “Not at all. You still have your job. You’re just on vacation. There’s no reason to suspect that either Harold or Leah is out to get you. You’re overreacting, Elaine. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I already told you: I don’t mind,” I said, minding. Once, okay. Twice, enough.

  “Well, I think I’d better get going,” Pat said after checking the time on her watch.

  “Where to?”

  “The cruise director is giving a lecture on duty-free shopping in the islands.”

  “Pat, I hate to burst your bubble, but duty-free shopping is an invention of the tourist industry. Trust me, you can buy the same stuff more cheaply at Costco.”

  “Really?”

  I looked at her, so innocent, so trusting, so good.

  “I was only kidding,” I said. “You can get great bargains down here if you know what you’re doing. That lecture sounds like a terrific idea.”

  “Want to come?”

  I shook my head. “I think I’m going to buy a paperback, find a chair by the pool, and people-watch.” Sam-watch more accurately described my plan.

  “Then I’ll see you later at dinner,” said Pat. “Hopefully, Jackie will be up to joining us.”

  “Hopefully,” I agreed.

  After another attempt at reaching Harold, who was, supposedly, with a client, I bought a spy thriller by a British novelist I’d never heard of and went poolside, in search of an empty lounge chair—a mission not unlike going to the supermarket the day before Thanksgiving and trying to find a shopping cart.

  Would you look at all these people? I said to myself as I gazed at the two thousand passengers stretched out next to each other—bodies of assorted shapes and sizes sizzling in the hot sun like rotisserie chickens on a spit. They didn’t seem to notice that they had such little personal space that they were practically overlapping. They also didn’t seem to mind the commotion coming from one of the two swimming pools. Apparently, there was a relay race in progress in which the six women positioned at one end of the pool were expected to grab—with their teeth—the balloons that were resting between the legs of the six men at the other end. Needless to say, every two seconds one of the balloons would pop in somebody’s face and the explosion would cause participants and spectators alike to shriek with laughter. I considered throwing myself overboard or, at the very least, going back to my cabin. But I wanted to catch a glimpse of Sam. So I pressed on. I finally spotted what appeared to be the one chair on the entire deck that didn’t have a person or a towel on it. I scrambled over to it, only to discover that it was broken.

  I heaved a frustrated sigh and sat very gingerly down on the chair. It was only a little bent, I figured. Not a lethal weapon, by any means. I slathered myself with sunscreen, then scanned the crowd for Sam and was disappointed when I didn’t see him. Still, it gave me a secret thrill knowing he was somewhere on the ship, that sooner or later we’d see each other again. I closed my eyes and fantasized about our reunion.

  I must have looked terribly beatific because I heard a man’s voice ask, “Meditating?”

  I shielded my eyes from the sun, squinted, and saw that Skip Jamison was standing before me, his long blond hair hanging wet and loose around his shoulders. He had just come out of the pool and his bathing suit, a clinging, tight little black bikini, left nothing to the imagination. In other words, Skip had a substantial set of family jewels. I wasn’t the only one to notice, either. Skip had two young women at his side.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I suppose you could call what I was doing a form of meditation.”

  “That’s cool. Meditation’s probably a good thing for you,” Skip prescribed. “Chill you right out.” He turned to the two women, who seemed irritated or annoyed or just plain bored that he was bothering to talk to a member of their gender, a member twice their age.

  “So I guess I’ll see you guys later? At dinner?” he said to Donna and Tori after introducing them to me and explaining that they were all assigned to the same table. The Young Singles Table.

  “It’s black tie,” Tori reminded Skip. “Don’t forget your tux.”

  “Me? Wear a tux?” He laughed. “I’m way too laid-back. Way.”

  “He’s allowed to wear a regular suit,” Donna informed Tori. “The instructions said: Black tie optional.”

  “Yeah, but tuxes are hot,” said Tori. “They make guys look like movie stars.”

  “Or restaurant personnel,” I interjected. “It depends on the cut of the tux.”

  Donna and Tori each gave me a butt-out face.

  “Look, tuxes, suits, whatever. I’m not into that formal shit,” said Skip. “I’m a casual guy and I’ve gotta go with that. Deepak Chopra says: Be comfortable in your own skin.”

  Donna and Tori looked at each other, shrugged, and went back to the pool. Skip picked up the towel that had been lining the lounge chair next to mine and wound it around his waist, obscuring the aforementioned family jewels. Then he stretched out in the chair.

  “I think someone was sitting there,” I said.

  “‘Was’ is the point,” he said, getting comfy. “You know, it’s pretty amazing how we keep running into each other, keep intersecting, isn’t it?”

  “Amazing.” Actually, it is amazing how you’re on a ship with a couple of thousand people and you keep running into the same two.

  “What sign are you?” asked Skip.

  God, I hadn’t heard that line since the seventies.

  “Scorpio,” I said. “You?”

  “Scorpio,” he said, shaking his head and marveling at the coincidence of it all. “And do you know what else is amazing?”

  “No, what?” I asked.

  “That every time I run into you, you’re alone. You t
old me you’re here with two of your girlfriends, but whenever you and I see each other, they’re not around.”

  “I didn’t make them up, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said. “They exist. We just don’t move in a swarm, the way insects do.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll get to meet them before the cruise is over.”

  “I’m sure you will.” I picked up the spy thriller I’d bought and opened it to the first page. “Do you mind if I read?” I asked, not wanting to be rude.

  “Mind? No way. I’m just gonna lie here, shut the old lids, and cop some rays.”

  Skip pickled himself in the tanning oil that the former possessor of the chair had left behind, along with the towel, wished me “Happy reading,” and closed his eyes.

  I’d been reading and enjoying the warmth of the sun for a half-hour or so, tuning out the relay races, the tray-toting waiters, even the steel drums, when I happened to look up from my book and spot Sam. He was sitting several rows of chairs down from mine, reading a magazine. My pulse quickened.

  Since he seemed engrossed in the magazine, I took the opportunity to indulge myself and stared unabashedly at him, studying every detail. And then, wouldn’t you know, I was caught in the act—he looked up, straight at me. It was as if he had felt my stare, sensed that my eyes were on him. I was mortified.

  I smiled sheepishly.

  He smiled back, put his magazine down, got up from his chair, and walked over to me.

  He was dressed in a pair of rumpled blue swimming trunks, his bare chest hard and flat and hairy. Furry, actually. Now, I know some women don’t care for hairy men, myself having been one of them (if I wanted an animal, I’d get a pet, and all that), but I found Sam’s hairiness to be yet another source of wonderment. It was absurd.

  “Elaine,” said Sam, standing at the foot of my chair now.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. How are you?” I asked.

  “Fine, thanks,” he said.

  God. We sounded like characters from Dumb and Dumber. I wondered why we were both acting so stiff and formal, after our rather peppy chat earlier that morning, and then I turned and noticed that Skip was sitting there, eavesdropping.

  “Been getting some sun?” I said to Sam, posing yet another inane question. No, Elaine, he’s been hot air ballooning.

  Sam nodded. “And catching up on my reading.” He kept waiting for me to introduce Skip, almost as if he thought we were “together.” So I introduced Skip. He and Sam shook hands.

  “Hey, man, don’t I know you?” Skip asked Sam. “From the city?”

  “Which city would that be?” Sam asked.

  “New York. What other city is there?” Skip winked at me in that condescending way many New Yorkers have when they want to make people from other cities feel like hicks.

  “There are a couple of others,” Sam said dryly. “I work in Albany, for example.”

  Skip shook his head. “Christ, I swear I know you from somewhere. You don’t have a twin in Manhattan, do you?”

  “None that I know of,” said Sam. “Maybe I’ve just got one of those ordinary, everyday faces.”

  Yeah, and I’m the spitting image of Michelle Pfeiffer, I thought.

  “Do you two know each other from New York?” Sam asked Skip and me.

  I answered. “No, we only met yesterday. In the elevator. Skip works in advertising and he’s on his way down to the Caribbean to scout locations for a photo shoot for Crubanno Rum.”

  “That sounds like nice work if you can get it,” said Sam.

  “It is,” Skip agreed. “The islands are a hot place to hang out. Really cool.”

  It was funny about the words “hot” and “cool.” I never could figure out if they were supposed to be interchangeable or if they had different meanings.

  “So how do you two know each other?” Skip asked Sam and me.

  “Elaine and I are table mates,” Sam explained. “Table number 186. Early seating.”

  Skip looked from Sam to me and back to Sam. Then he nodded his head in recognition. “So this is the dude from your table.”

  “The dude? What are you talking about?” I said.

  “You know. The dude from your table,” Skip repeated. “The guy you were gonna meet on the Promenade Deck last night. To check out the stars.”

  God, I suddenly remembered how I had lied to Skip about that, just to get rid of him.

  “Uh, no. That was someone else,” I lied some more.

  “A man from our table?” Sam asked, looking skeptical.

  “Yes,” I said. “Lloyd Thayer.”

  “You met Lloyd, the eighty-nine-year-old, on the Promenade Deck last night?”

  “That’s right. Dorothy came too. They both wanted to take a walk and I said I’d go with them. In case they couldn’t see in the dark or something.”

  “That was considerate of you,” Sam said.

  “Very spiritual,” Skip agreed, then turned to Sam. “She fools you, this Elaine. She’s got a soft side and a very ‘Don’t touch me’ thing. Which is totally New York, believe me.”

  “I believe you, Skip,” Sam smirked. He was getting a kick out of being treated like a hayseed. “Now I hate to run, but I’ve got an appointment in five minutes.”

  “An appointment?” I asked, praying “appointment” wasn’t a euphemism for “date.”

  “Yeah. With the ship’s barber.”

  “Oh.” I smiled with relief. “They must be having a special on haircuts. Pat had one today too.”

  “I didn’t hear about any specials,” said Sam, “but you know what a small town Albany is. Can’t get a decent haircut there to save your life. I figured I’d try the guy here on the ship, since the brochure says he comes to us straight from Manhattan.”

  I laughed. Skip didn’t. I don’t think he realized his leg was being pulled.

  “See you at dinner, Elaine,” said Sam. “Good meeting you, Skip.”

  And he was gone.

  I was staring after him, replaying our conversation, when Skip said, “I’m not crazy about Sam’s vibes.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “There’s an energy there. A different kind of ‘Don’t touch me’ thing than yours. His is more of a ‘Don’t fuck with me’ thing.”

  “You just don’t trust him because he’s getting a haircut,” I smiled, regarding Skip’s long, golden, surfer-boy locks. When I was his age, I didn’t trust men who got haircuts either. “But thanks. I appreciate the warning.”

  7

  The afternoon was uneventful. I checked on Jackie, who was still feeling rotten, and Pat took ballroom dancing lessons—she had always yearned to become proficient in the Merengue, she said. I also tried to reach Harold again—three times. The first time, his assistant said he was on another call. The second time, she said he was away from his desk. The third time, she said he had left for the day. Harold was avoiding me, obviously, but he wouldn’t get away with it; I had his home number.

  Dinner that night, as Donna and Tori had pointed out to Skip, was the first of two of the Princess Charming’s formal evenings. The travel agent had briefed us about these black tie affairs, and as a result I had packed two simple but elegant dresses, which would be of absolutely no use to me now, since they were stuck in the baggage compartment of some 757. So, on went another Perky Princess purchase: a short, white, sleeveless, sequined number that overemphasized my skinny arms and legs and made me look like a cross between a Roaring Twenties flapper and an extremely shiny stork.

  Pat and I ordered Jackie some chicken soup from room service and sat with her on her bed, encouraging her to eat.

  “I’d rather have a scotch,” she said, but nevertheless finished the entire bowl of soup.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” said Pat.

  “No ‘maybe’ about it,” Jackie countered. “I’m not missing another day of this cruise if I have to crawl onto that Isle de Swan.”

  “Thatta girl,” I said, admiring Jack
ie’s pluck.

  “I don’t know,” said Pat, shaking her head at Jackie. “If you’re not better in the morning, I think we should take you to see the ship’s doctor.”

  “The ship’s doctor?” I said with alarm. “What if he’s some quack whose medical training consists of a couple of weeks at the University of Calcutta?”

  “Elaine,” Jackie rolled her eyes. “It just so happens that Peter and I backpacked in Calcutta, in the seventies, and had a great time.”

  “Yes, but did either of you have to consult a doctor while you were there?” I asked.

  “No,” she conceded.

  “There you go,” I said.

  “I think I should call Bill,” said Pat. “I could describe Jackie’s condition to him over the phone and he could tell us what to do.”

  “He’s a fine doctor, Pat, but he won’t be able to diagnose the problem long-distance,” I pointed out. “Besides, you said you were going to wait and call his apartment on Friday, so you could wish Lucy a happy birthday.”

  “In case anyone cares what I think, it’s time for you two to go down to dinner,” said Jackie, nodding at the door.

  “Are you sure you won’t mind being here alone?” I asked.

  “Positive. Tell everybody at Table 186 I said hi,” she said and shooed us out.

  Pat and I stepped out of her cabin and saw Kingsley maneuvering his housekeeping cart down the hall, in preparation for his evening “turn-down” service. As we walked by him, he smiled and said, “A gentleman passenger was asking about you.”

  “Asking about us?” I said.

  Kingsley nodded. “He came by about ten minutes ago.”

  My heart danced as I wondered if it was Sam.