Princess Charming

by Jane Heller

  Sam and I moved quickly through the receiving line, made our way out of the Crown Room, and rode down in the elevator to the dining room. We had forgotten we were still holding hands and murmuring romantic little inanities to each other when we arrived at Table 186.

  The jaws of our table mates dropped as we took the two empty chairs between Kenneth and Rick and sat down.

  “Look! The tall one’s got a boyfriend now, Dorothy,” Lloyd said in such a discreet and tactful manner that half the people in the dining room turned around to stare.

  “She’s a grown woman, dear. What she does is her own business,” Dorothy answered him, then winked at me. I winked back.

  “I’m so happy for you two,” Brianna cooed, then nudged Rick, who was munching on a hard roll. “Isn’t it neat about Elaine and Sam, honeybun?”

  Rick ignored her, trying not to get dragged into some hopelessly girlish conversation.

  That left Gayle and Kenneth, but they didn’t comment, perhaps because they wanted everyone to know they were too worldly and sophisticated to care about who was falling in love with whom on some cruise that catered to the Middle Class.

  Gayle, for example, got very involved with the clasp on her oh-so-patriotic pin—a bejeweled American flag made of rubies, diamonds, and sapphires. She explained that she had chosen to wear the pin because tonight was American Night in the dining room.

  Kenneth seemed more interested in launching into a speech on the vagaries of the stock market, although he did take a moment to ask how Jackie and Pat were faring.

  “Much better, thanks,” I told him. “Pat’s recovering from her fall and Jackie should be out of the hospital sometime tomorrow.”

  “That’s good news,” said Kenneth, before going back to his discourse on puts and calls. I found talk of the stock market as boring as it gets, so I was grateful when Ismet appeared to tell us the specials.

  “Tonight, in honor of your America the Beautiful, I am recommending the fried chicken and mashed potatoes,” Ismet said, then glanced anxiously at Rick, who had never been a big fan of our waiter’s recommendations.

  But Rick surprised everybody by applauding when he heard Ismet’s pick of the night. “Finally, something I can eat,” he grumbled. Rick lived in North Carolina, where, presumably, he ate fried chicken and mashed potatoes several times a week.

  Sam and I didn’t even bother to consult the menu. We went with the fried chicken and mashed potatoes too, just to get the whole business over with. It was obvious from the way Sam was stroking my leg under the table and the fact that I was practically purring that food was the last thing on either of our minds. What was on our minds was sex, plain and simple. By the time dessert arrived, there was no question that this was the night we would sleep together. Why wait another day or two? I thought. Sam and I were adults. Single, unattached adults. We didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to take off our clothes in the privacy of one of our staterooms and give free rein to our feelings for each other. It was right and normal and natural that we have sex. And I was a nervous wreck.

  I don’t remember how the food tasted or how much of it landed on Lloyd’s dark blue sport jacket. All I remember is that I wanted dinner to be history so that Sam and I could create our own history.

  Eventually, Rick and Brianna and Dorothy and Lloyd got up to leave the table. Sam and I were about to beat it too when Kenneth asked us if we wanted to join him and Gayle for the eight-thirty movie. We begged off, saying we’d already seen it. Much later, we realized that in issuing the invitation, Kenneth had never indicated which movie the ship’s theater was showing.

  Sam took my hand and we drifted wordlessly through the corridors of the ship. Past the photographers’ display. Into the elevator. Up to Deck 7. Sam’s floor.

  My heart was thundering so loud in my chest I wondered if I was about to have a cardiac incident.

  No, I told myself. You’re about to have the time of your life.

  We arrived at Sam’s stateroom. He opened the door, flicked on the light, and beckoned me inside.

  His cabin was exactly the same size and configuration as mine, I saw as he closed the door behind us. He even had a lifeboat hanging outside his porthole. The only difference between our rooms, other than that his was on a lower deck, was that his was not nearly as neat as mine. It wasn’t just that Kingsley was a much more competent cabin steward than the one assigned to Sam; it was that Sam was not the compulsive person I was. I always hung my clothes in the closet the moment they were off my body (unless they were bound for the washing machine). Sam’s clothes were all over the place—the shorts and shirt he’d worn during our afternoon of sightseeing were gathered in a little ball on the floor; several ties, which he must have decided against wearing to dinner that evening, were draped across the lamp shade; a couple of still-wet bathing suits were hanging on the knob of his bathroom door. The mess was quite a revelation to me, because whenever Sam appeared in public, he was neat and well groomed. I wondered if there were other things about Sam Peck that would surprise me.

  “I guess Gordon didn’t straighten up the room yet,” he said. “He usually puts my stuff away when he shows up for the turn-down service.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said as Sam busily tidied up. “I didn’t come here so I could give the place the white-glove test.”

  “Good.” Sam threw the last of his clothes onto the floor of the closet and walked over to me. He encircled me in his arms, drawing our bodies exquisitely close. “Then let’s talk about why you did come, Slim.” His voice was low and soft and provocative. “I wasn’t sure you would, to tell you the truth. Not after last night’s rejection.”

  “I didn’t reject you,” I said. “I just thought we should wait another day or so. We hardly know each other. I’m not one for hopping into bed with strange men.”

  “So I’m less strange, twenty-four hours later?”

  “No, I’m just more eager.”

  He laughed.

  “Do you have any idea how good I feel when I’m around you?” he asked, beginning to kiss me—little pecks here and there, on my cheeks, my forehead, my neck.

  “No. How good?” I said, letting his lips wander all over me, still more than a little overwhelmed that all this was really happening.

  “So good I want to make love to you, Slim. Does that answer your question?”

  “Yes,” I moaned. “Yes.”

  Sam took my “yeses” as a cue to slip my white blazer off me. I was vaguely aware that he let it fall to the floor in a heap instead of hanging it in the closet, but I wasn’t about to say anything.

  Next, he unzipped my black dress, pulled it over my head, and let it, too, fall to the floor. And then he helped me out of my shoes and peeled my panty hose slowly and sensuously down my legs, off my feet.

  I felt totally vulnerable, standing there before him, wearing nothing but my bra and panties. The last person to see me in my undergarments was a saleswoman at Saks, who, three weeks ago, had been rushing back and forth from my dressing room, frantically trying to outfit me with “cruise wear.” But oddly enough, I didn’t shrink from Sam’s gaze, wasn’t the least bit ashamed for him to see my body. I wanted him to look at me, to admire me, to be turned on by me. The very idea that I did turn him on was an amazing confidence booster.

  “You’re beautiful,” he murmured. “Really.”

  Giddy with arousal, I took charge from then on. I removed Sam’s eyeglasses and, with his help, his sport jacket, shirt, tie, socks, and shoes. And then I threw my arms around him and kissed him. Hard. Avidly. Greedily.

  Sam was nearly naked now, except for his underpants. (They were briefs, not boxers, and they were, as they say in romance novels, “straining.”) He reached out, lifted one of my bra straps off my shoulder and pressed his lips to the skin he had bared. I nearly cried with pleasure, having never in my life had my shoulder kissed.

  To reciprocate, I ran my hands over Sam’s hairy chest, nibbling on various spots, caressin
g them. Sam responded with low moans that eventually gave way to an actual: “Oh, Jesus.”

  He lifted my head up off his chest, crushed his mouth against mine, and kissed me with such force, such pent-up passion, that both of us were astonished by it.

  Then we broke apart very suddenly, as if it had simultaneously dawned on us that we were still standing in the middle of the room when there was a perfectly good bed available.

  Sam took my hand and led me toward the bed.

  Well, this is it, kid, I said to myself as I swallowed hard. You’re about to join that exclusive club of single, middle-aged, working women who actually have sex with men instead of attending support groups and whining about why they don’t.

  “I’d like to say something,” I managed, just before we reached the bed.

  “Tell me you’re not changing your mind,” Sam pleaded.

  “No. It’s…nothing like that,” I said hesitantly. “It’s…” I paused because I wasn’t sure how to proceed, so out of the loop was I when it came to sex in the nineties. Or sex in this century, for that matter.

  “Go on. What is it?” Sam urged.

  “Okay. It’s been a while since I’ve had…Well, what I mean is, I haven’t seen the need to…The point I’m trying to make is that I’m not on the Pill or anything,” I said finally, placing special emphasis on the “anything.” So Sam would be sure to catch my drift. Why spend money on birth control or sexually transmitted disease preventions when I wasn’t partaking, if you know what I’m saying?

  “Oh. Is that all?” Sam laughed, looking very relieved. “I did come prepared tonight, but I completely forgot about it once we got going here.” He laughed again. “I’m glad one of us is thinking clearly. I’ll just step into the bathroom and wrap the rascal.”

  “Wrap the rascal?” Men had such cutesy ways of referring to their sex organs. “I’ll be waiting.”

  As soon as he was out of the room, I reminded myself to relax. I was so excited about making love with Sam that I could barely contain myself. I almost felt guilty about feeling so happy, particularly when I thought of Jackie and Pat and the problems they were having—and when I thought of the poor, unsuspecting ex-wife who was soon to perish at the hands of a hit man. Life just wasn’t fair, was it?

  In an effort to work off some of my nervous energy while Sam was in the bathroom condomizing himself, I started to straighten up his cabin, picking up his clothes and either hanging them up or folding them on the chair. I was in the process of smoothing out his rumpled khaki slacks and sliding them over a hanger when something dropped out of one of the pockets.

  I knelt down to pick it up.

  It was Sam’s wallet, a buttery, brown-leather Mark Cross model. I quickly debated whether I had time to give it an innocent little examination before he emerged from the bathroom. I wasn’t interested in how much money he was carrying, you understand; I was interested in whether he was carrying a photograph of Jillian (still) and, if so, what she looked like.

  I decided I had just long enough to search the wallet, recalling that it used to take Eric a few minutes to put one of those rubbers on.

  Feeling like a prostitute rolling a John, I nevertheless unfolded the wallet and, as fast as my nimble fingers could manage it, began to riffle through its various compartments. Disappointingly, there were no photographs of the dearly departed fiancée.

  Oh, well, I thought. Why make this scavenger hunt a total loss? While Sam is still in the bathroom, I might as well see what sort of credit cards he has, just to pass the time.

  But the first card I lifted out of the wallet had me baffled, to say the least. It was a SkyMiles card. For members of Delta’s frequent flier program.

  I had a SkyMiles card. So did lots of people I knew. But Sam had told me that he never set foot on airplanes, that he was deathly afraid of flying, that he had taken the cruise because it was the only way he could get to the Caribbean. So what in the world would he be doing with a frequent flier card?

  Then came another puzzle: The member’s name on the SkyMiles card wasn’t Sam Peck. It was Simon Purdys.

  Simon Purdys?

  I mulled this discrepancy over, calmly and rationally, and decided that Sam had probably grabbed a business associate’s frequent flier card by mistake. Or maybe the unwitting swap had occurred on the ship. Yes, it was entirely possible that one of the passengers on the Princess Charming was named Simon Purdys and that, during the mad crush at the terminal in Miami, when everyone was opening their wallet and flashing their ID, Sam had somehow gotten stuck with Simon Purdys’s SkyMiles card and Simon Purdys had gotten stuck with—say—Sam’s Mobil gas card. It was possible, wasn’t it?

  As I cautiously flipped through the other credit cards in Sam’s wallet—American Express Gold, MasterCard, Visa, Blockbuster Video—I saw that the name imprinted on every single one of them was Simon Purdys! So much for inadvertent swaps at the terminal.

  What was going on here? Surely there must be a reasonable explanation. Sam didn’t strike me as the type who would steal one of the other passengers’ wallets. He was an insurance agent, not a thief. He earned a nice living, he’d told me. Besides which, he was Sam, honest Sam, a solid citizen, the man I was about to make love to.

  I searched the wallet further, sensing I shouldn’t, knowing I shouldn’t, and ultimately discovered something truly damning—the one piece of plastic I couldn’t reason away.

  It was Sam’s driver’s license. Or should I say, Simon’s.

  There, in living color, on the left side of the license, was a photograph of Sam, his blue eyes twinkling behind the eyeglasses, his dark, wavy hair smooth and lustrous. In the center of the license, however, was the name Simon Purdys, along with an address, not in Albany, but in New York City. About two blocks from my apartment, as a matter of fact.

  No wonder this guy looked familiar to me that first night at dinner, I thought, feeling dizzy, faint, nauseous, as I stuffed the cards back into the wallet and the wallet back into Sam’s—Simon’s—pants pocket. No wonder he looked familiar to Skip that day at the pool. Sam Peck was a total fucking fraud, a complete fabrication, an impostor!

  I was absolutely devastated, completely shellshocked. None of it made sense. None of it. I could hardly let myself think about it. But I had to think about it.

  I had heard two men on the phone, plotting to murder a woman on the ship, but I had never even considered that Sam might turn out to be a cold-blooded killer. I had never allowed that the reason he’d been romancing me was simply to get me alone so he could carry out the job he’d been hired to do. By my ex-husband!

  My whole world fell apart in those moments, and the tears and the anger and the fear nearly strangled me. As I grabbed for my clothes and got dressed as fast as I could make my arms and legs move, I was consumed with feelings of betrayal, as if I had hurtled back in time to my adolescence. I was suddenly the gawky little girl again—the awkward child who was so needy she let herself love a father who lied to her over and over and then left her. History was repeating itself yet again.

  So Simon Purdys is the hit man, I thought with a terrible, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. He’s the person Eric is paying to get rid of me.

  I shook my head in disbelief, blinded by my rage, as I tried to make myself face the fact that the man with whom I was about to become intimate—the man with whom I had fallen in love!—had planned to seduce me before taking my life! To think that I had trusted this guy, this liar, this creature! To think that I had eaten dinner with him, gone running with him, let him befriend my friends, let him kiss me, was too much. It was all too much.

  My hand was literally on the knob of the cabin door when Sam—or whoever he was—finally emerged from the bathroom. He had a white bath towel wrapped around his waist, covering his privates, but he was still erect, I couldn’t help noticing. Unless, of course, it was a gun that was protruding from the towel. A gun equipped with one of those silencers.

  “What are you doing?” he as
ked, feigning a pained expression when he realized that I was fully dressed and about to flee his little love nest.

  “I’m escaping,” I said, my voice choked with sobs. “Mr. Purdys.”

  He seemed surprised, hurt even. “How did you…I mean…” Pause. “I don’t…” He stopped. What could he say? I had him.

  “Just tell me one thing, Simon, or whatever the hell your real name is,” I said, wiping my nose and eyes with the back of my hand. “Are you really in the insurance business?”

  “Well, no,” he admitted sheepishly.

  “Pity,” I said. “You could have sold me a life insurance policy and then killed me.”

  “Killed you? What are you talking about, Slim?”

  “How dare you call me that,” I snapped. “The only thing that’s ‘slim’ are the chances that you and Eric are ever gonna get away with this.”

  “With what?” he demanded, the erection only a memory now.

  I took one final look at his tall, lean body and handsome, lying face.

  “With making me love you,” I said and bolted out the door.

  Day Five: Thursday, February 14

  16

  I awoke to the cruel realization that it was February fourteenth. Valentine’s Day. Swell.

  I had spent half the night pacing my cabin, turning over in my mind everything Sam had said to me, replaying it in this new context, trying to piece together how he and Eric could have met and hatched their little plot. As if it wasn’t devastating enough to my ego to learn that my ex-husband hated me enough to want me dead, I had to deal with the fact that the man I loved—the man for whom I had actually bought the sappiest Valentine in the ship’s gift shop—wanted me dead too. Talk about a kick in the teeth.

  What line of bull have you been handing the other passengers?

  That’s what the man on the phone (Eric) had asked the man on the ship (Sam) the night I’d overheard their conversation.