Princess Charming

by Jane Heller

  All of this awkward silence was made more awkward by the fact that a squall had flared up outside and the ship was beginning to roll in a thoroughly unpleasant manner.

  “Thanks for taking me dancing,” I said finally, breaking the tension.

  “You’re welcome,” Sam said.

  “I had fun at the disco,” I said.

  “Sure you did.” His blue eyes were skeptical.

  “I really did. Trust me.”

  “I never trust people who say, ‘Trust me.’”

  I laughed.

  “Are you going running tomorrow morning?” he asked.

  “If this little storm we’re having passes.”

  “Let’s meet at the Promenade Deck at seven-thirty.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And we’ll have breakfast afterwards.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I guess you and Pat and Jackie will be going over to Isle de Swan together?”

  “If Jackie’s feeling better. But you’re more than welcome to come along with us.”

  “I would. Like to come along, that is.” He paused, then moved closer to me. I could feel his hot, disco-charged breath on my hair. There was a faint scent of garlic, too. From Italian Night. “I guess it’s pretty obvious that I’d like to see more of you.”

  “More of me?” How did he mean that, exactly? More of me, as in: more often? Or more of me, as in: with fewer clothes on?

  “Yes, more of you. I told you before, I don’t know quite what to make of you. You definitely require more study.” He smiled over his eyeglasses.

  “Sort of like a science project?” I asked, my breathing becoming shallower the nearer to me he drew. And the nearer to me he drew, the farther from him I shrank—strictly out of nervousness, you understand, and because I was so rusty at situations like this—until I backed right up against the elevator and inadvertently leaned on the up button.

  “Is something wrong?” Sam asked.

  “Wrong? No,” I said, unwilling to admit how off balance I was, how much I longed for Sam to kiss me. “I just didn’t want you to think I’m easy.”

  He laughed. “No one could ever think you’re easy, Slim.”

  “I get easier as you get to know me,” I promised, hoping he wouldn’t give up.

  Reading my mind, Sam bent over and was about to press his lips to mine when the elevator arrived. Thanks to me.

  We broke apart and glared resentfully at the elevator doors as they opened to reveal six or eight nuns. Needless to say, the romantic spell was broken.

  Sam and I squeezed in among the sisters, pressed the buttons for our respective floors, and rode upstairs. We got to his floor first. Right before he stepped out of the elevator, he touched my arm and whispered, “See you in the morning.”

  “See you,” I said back, hoping the nuns were pleased that Sam and I were ending the evening on such a chaste note.

  Oh well, I thought. There were still five nights left.

  Before going to my room (which was no small feat, as the boat’s pitching and rolling made walking down the hall an adventure), I stopped at Pat’s cabin for an update on Jackie’s condition, but they both had do not disturb signs hanging from their doorknobs. I figured they’d gone to sleep and would tell me how everything was in the morning.

  Once in my stateroom I sank onto the bed, the covers of which Kingsley had expertly turned down, and realized that I was not the least bit sleepy. In fact, I was wired, antsy, restless. I felt like a high school kid who’d just come home from a hot date and was dying to share the juicy details with someone. The trouble was, there was no “someone.”

  It was a few minutes after ten. I flipped on the television and settled back to watch the news on CNN. The reception kept fading in and out, I assumed because of the squall, but I did catch a few of the stories they were reporting. There was something about interest rates. There was something about Prince William. There was something about hydroponic tomatoes. And just as I was starting to unwind, there was something about Dina Witherspoon getting arrested for lifting that goddamn bracelet from the jewelry counter at Neiman Marcus!

  I shot up off the bed.

  The picture on the screen was grainy and the sound was unclear, but there was no mistaking my client, surrounded by the media, as she was being led away in handcuffs from her Dallas hotel.

  “I thought you were handling this, Leah!” I said out loud, incensed that Dina Witherspoon’s reputation—and Pearson & Strulley’s—had been placed in the hands of a neophyte, my neophyte!

  Suddenly, the television reception fizzled out completely and the set went black. I wasn’t sorry. Now I wouldn’t have to watch stories about the scandals involving my other two clients.

  That was it. I was calling Harold. He was a night person, I knew, and was often up until one or two in the morning. But I didn’t care what time it was. This was my chance to remind him of my indispensability to the company; to make it perfectly clear that if I had been handling the Dina Witherspoon matter, her image would not have been splashed across television screens around the world as if she were a common criminal; that if my assistant was to be promoted, I should have been the one doing the promoting.

  I weaved my way over to the phone, grabbing on to furniture so I wouldn’t be tossed around by the ship’s pitching and rolling. I lifted the receiver, gave the operator my credit card number, dialed Harold’s home number, and waited. I was not surprised when the static on the line was even worse than it had been the day before, given the awful television reception. Still, I hoped the connection would clear just long enough for me to make my point with my boss.

  I waited a few more seconds. The call was taking an awfully long time to go through. All I heard was buzzing and humming and crackling.

  I wondered why Sea Swan Cruises even bothered to equip each cabin with a television and a telephone if both were so easily knocked out by a few rain showers. It will not shock you to learn that I can be just as irritated by inanimate objects that let me down as by people who do.

  Several more seconds elapsed and the connection still hadn’t been made. I was about to hang up and place the call again when I heard a man’s voice very faintly. I assumed it was Harold saying: “Hello.”

  “Harold!” I yelled. “It’s Elaine Zimmerman! I’m calling from the Princess Charming!”

  In the way of a response, I expected something along the lines of: “Elaine, what a surprise.” Or: “Elaine, get yourself on a plane and come home. Pearson & Strulley needs you.” Or at the very least: “Elaine, what the hell are you doing calling me at home at this time of night?”

  Instead, there was no response at all. Not to me, anyway. After I heard the man’s voice, I heard another man’s voice answering the first one. And then the first man said something back to the second one. It finally dawned on me that neither of these two men was Harold and that neither of them could hear me.

  The phone lines must be crossed, I realized, remembering how the same thing had happened to me once in New York. I had picked up the phone in my apartment one Saturday night, intending to order Chinese food from the place around the corner, when instead of getting the owner of Pan Central Station, where they made heavenly moo goo gai pan, I got two Jamaican women arguing over which of them made better curried goat. I reported the problem to the phone company from a neighbor’s apartment, and the repair person I spoke to said the line would be cleared within twenty-four hours. It wasn’t. For two whole days, I was forced to eavesdrop on conversations that weren’t worth eavesdropping on.

  “Hello? Hello?” I said to the two men. “Can either of you hear me?”

  They went right on chattering, as if I hadn’t said a word, their voices tinny, garbled, annoying.

  I was about to hang up in disgust when I heard one of the men tell the other man that the weather was nice and warm, the Princess Charming was much bigger than he had expected, and he was having a reasonably good time.

  “I’m glad to hea
r it,” the other one said. “I knew you’d see things my way.”

  Maybe it’s a son calling his father up north to thank him for sending him on the cruise, I thought. Or maybe it’s the father calling his son up north to thank him for sending him on the trip. The voices were so distorted I couldn’t even guess at the ages of the men they belonged to.

  Again, I was about to hang up when the conversation started to get interesting.

  “So what line of bull have you been handing the other passengers?” asked the first man.

  The other man’s response was practically unintelligible, even though he was the one speaking from the ship, while the other one was somewhere in the States. His voice kept breaking up, and all I could make out was: “…not the problem.”

  “Then what is? You wouldn’t have spent a fortune on a ship-to-shore call if there wasn’t a problem,” said the first man. “Sounds to me like everything’s going according to plan.”

  “…don’t know if I…through with it.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course, you’re going through with it. You don’t have any choice, remember?”

  “…harder than…it would be. Now that I…her.”

  “Give me a break. She’s a nightmare.”

  “She’s not so…”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you had her for an ex-wife.”

  I giggled to myself. The remark reminded me of something Eric would say.

  “You sure you want me to…”

  “I’ve never been surer about anything in my life. What I’m not sure about is you. You’ve gotta stop calling me from the ship.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that…needed…hear you…me again what a…she is.”

  “Open your eyes and see for yourself what a pain in the ass she is! She’s right there on that fucking boat!” The man paused to collect himself. “Let me put it another way,” he continued. “If you don’t do the job, I’m going to go right to the—”

  “Stop. I know.”

  Know what? Do what job? What was going on here, anyway? I sensed that whatever I had stumbled onto was infinitely more sinister than curried goat.

  “So we’re clear?” asked the man on land.

  “We’re clear,” conceded the man on the ship. “I said I’ll…it and I will.”

  I’ll what it? I wondered with growing alarm.

  “You’re sure?” the other man asked skeptically, impatiently, wearily. “No more whining?”

  “You heard me,” said the passenger. “Before the Princess Charming is back in Miami, your…will be as…as this…”

  Your what will be as what as this what?

  “What’d you say, pal?” the other man asked. “Our connection’s breaking up.”

  The man who was speaking from somewhere on the ship, somewhere on my ship, somewhere on my floor for all I knew, then replied: “I said, before the ship is back in Miami, your ex-wife will be as dead as this phone line.”

  There was one click. Then another click. And then the line was dead.

  Day Three: Tuesday, February 12

  9

  The Princess Charming pulled into our first port of call, Isle de Swan, at 6:30 a.m., an hour earlier than scheduled. The nasty weather of the previous evening had cleared, and the day had metamorphosed into a radiantly sunny one with light breezes and calm waters.

  My view of the island out my porthole was obscured by the lifeboat—and by my inability to keep my eyes open, thanks to my second sleepless night in a row—but as I pressed my face against the glass, I couldn’t help but be dazzled by the colors, the textures, the picture-postcard perfectness of the scene before me. The sturdy blue of the Atlantic Ocean had given way to the shimmering turquoise of the Caribbean Sea. The flat, uninteresting terrain of south Florida had yielded to lush, green vegetation, flowering plants so vivid in hue they seemed almost cartoonish, hills and mountains dotted with pastel painted houses, and beaches made of sand that looked (from the distance, anyway) to be as fine grained and cottony soft as any I’d ever seen. And then, a few miles away from Isle de Swan or maybe many miles away—it was impossible to tell—was the looming presence on the horizon of other islands: to the east, the Haitian mainland and its neighbor, the Dominican Republic; to the west, Jamaica and Cuba. It struck me then, rather belatedly, that the Princess Charming wasn’t just a gaudy pleasure vessel, laden with food and booze and people who equated a good time with overindulging. It was also a conveyance, a mode of transportation, a method of ferrying you from the grayness of your everyday life to places of genuinely breathtaking natural beauty—and it did so in a leisurely, dreamy way that airplanes, with their brisk, impersonal, get-’em-in-their-seats, feed-’em-a-bag-of-peanuts, and-get-’em-down attitude, couldn’t match.

  Welcome to the Caribbean, I thought, allowing myself a smile. Welcome to paradise.

  Unfortunately, my smile didn’t last long. As I stared out my porthole that Tuesday morning, I quickly sank into the memory of the phone conversation I’d overheard eight hours earlier. I’d spent the entire night worrying about the call, obsessing over it, debating what to do about it, and had reached no solid conclusions other than to take a couple of Extra-Strength Tylenols for the excruciating headache all the worrying, obsessing, and debating had given me.

  What I couldn’t get over, couldn’t stop replaying in my mind, was that I had heard a man, a passenger on the Princess Charming, agree to murder another man’s ex-wife, a woman who was also a passenger on the ship. In other words, among the 2,500 badly dressed passengers on the Sea Swan’s pride and joy, there were two people headed toward a terrible destiny: a hit man and a woman about to be hit.

  Now I ask you: Even if you weren’t as fundamentally paranoid as I was, even if you weren’t prone to seeing danger and intrigue where none existed, even if you weren’t a woman whose ex-husband despised her enough to want her dead, wouldn’t the situation keep you up at night?

  I’d tried to remain calm in my dark cubbyhole of a cabin as the hours ticked by. Midnight. One a.m. Two a.m. And so forth. I’d told myself I must have misheard the conversation between the two men. There was so much static on the line that, for all I knew, they could have been having a cozy little family discussion, saying “mother” instead of “murder” and “dad” instead of “dead.”

  Or maybe the subject was more nautical in nature, given the setting, and the men were merely saying “keel” instead of “kill.”

  Or better yet, maybe, instead of uttering the words “ex-wife,” the men were actually saying “ex-cite,” as in: “You’d better excite the people on that boat before it’s back in Miami.”

  Yes, that was it, I’d decided at about three o’clock in the morning. Perhaps the man who’d been speaking from the ship was an entertainer of some sort—one of those talentless acts the cruise line employs for its shows—and the man on the other end of the phone was simply his agent, acting tough and tyrannical the way agents often do.

  Good try, I’d sighed heavily at about three-thirty in the morning. Yes, there were plenty of vocabulary words that sounded like those I thought I’d heard the two men use. But one of my few physical merits, other than my miraculously high HDL level, was my exceptional hearing. Eric used to make fun of it, whenever he was out cheating on me with Lola and didn’t want me to find out. He’d sneak into the apartment, late at night, and tiptoe around in his bare feet so his shoes wouldn’t squeak against the hardwood floor. Just when he thought he was home free, I’d call out from the bedroom: “Eric? Where the hell have you been?” “Jesus, Elaine. You must have bionic hearing,” he’d mutter, as if it were my fault that he was at that funeral parlor letting Lola massage him with embalming lubricants. “Your ears are so good you could hear a bird shit,” he’d add for good measure if he was feeling especially guilty.

  I did have excellent hearing, so the fact that I thought I’d heard the two men on the phone discussing the murder of one of their ex-wives probably meant that I had.

  The next way I
’d tried to calm myself during the night was to consider the possibility that, even though I had heard the men talking about murdering the ex-wife, they could have only been joking. Men were always joking about the women they used to be married to. They were always joking about women, period. They joked about how we either nagged them or neglected them; how we were either sexually insatiable or hopelessly frigid; how we either spent too much money on clothes and gyms and beauty salons or cared so little about our appearance that we let ourselves go; how we were such a trial to deal with, given the ever-fragile balance of our hormones. We were one big joke with men. Ha ha ha.

  But if the two men on the phone were just joking about one of them killing the other one’s ex-wife, why weren’t they laughing during their phone conversation? Static or no static, I didn’t catch even a single chuckle.

  No, by four o’clock in the morning, I’d had to face facts: some poor, unsuspecting woman was about to buy the farm. And it wasn’t a huge stretch to wonder if either Jackie or Pat or I was that woman. But would Eric really arrange to have me murdered? Would Peter hire a hit man to bump off Jackie? Would Bill, a man who had taken the Hippocratic oath to save life, actually pay someone to take Pat’s?

  Neither of the men on the phone sounded like any of our ex-husbands. But then, both of the voices were terribly distorted, because of the bad connection, so how could I really be certain who was who or what was what?