5 Ways to be Famous Now

by Maurilia Meehan

  For that reason, she told herself, the librarian from Araballa was under control. She had already worked out that he sought her praise, that her approval was the trigger for his release of dopamine and its pleasurable consequences.

  She was safe, surely, in delegating to this semi-stranger. She had no choice, as Plan B required it. Still, every nerve of her body reminded her that she was now vulnerable, when what she most desired in life was to be in total control.

  9

  THE BANQUET

  Coming events are supposed to cast long shadows before them, but Lily Zelinski did not notice any darkening of the light, perhaps because the Queen Mary was so brilliantly lit for this first-night Banquet in the Ballroom.

  Anyway, what could go wrong on this luxurious ship, full of determinedly jovial seniors intent only on finding their allotted tables in time for entrées? Nothing warned Lily, who was feeling youthful and nowhere near pensionable, that in the next few hours, the lives of four women on board the Queen Mary would be in peril.

  Taking her numbered seat at Table 101, she immediately recognised her two dining companions. She had, after all, spent part of the afternoon identifying each from her seat at the Grisette. If anything, alcohol improved her vision, or at least it removed any inhibition she may have had about openly staring at story-worthy subjects.

  Even Ariadne’s cosmetic enhancements had not fooled her, because no one would ever be able to hide those remarkably thick ankles. Sturdy, would be the polite way of describing those calves with ankles highlighted by delicately jewelled ballet shoes. Bizarre, her current look. A living tribute to the princess, face immobile as a museum wax-work. Had Ariadne, who Lily remembered for those unfortunate ankles and theatrical clothes rather than for her face, ever resembled the late Diana? Surely Lily would have remembered this lacquered helmet of hair, the orange pancake that finishes too suddenly above the long white neck, and that worst-ofthe-eighties shantung frock? But Ariadne had been so easy to overlook back then.

  Outwardly, the three women at Table 101 gave no sign of knowing each other. Instead, they were apparently absorbed first with arranging evening bags and wraps, and then with a jazz singer warbling discreetly at a white grand piano. Yet twenty years ago, when they had been in their twenties, they had all shared the same apartment block. Puzzling, thought Lily, that they should be not only on the same ship but also at this same table, as if someone had deliberately gathered them together. Or was it just that they were the only non-seniors on the ship? Lily, believing that she was the only one at the table who had recognised the others, was excited to be one step ahead, just like in the old days when chasing a story.

  How and why had the three been allotted Table 101? The first suspect that came to Lily’s mind was Monica Frequen, the only common link between them. But why? Just so that her old acquaintances could witness how successful she had become?

  All eyes at the table, including Lily’s, were now focused on the dramatic table centrepiece. It was indeed a worthy object for prolonged meditation, an ice carving of an upright dolphin, from whose mouth pink champagne flowed to fill glasses nestling in the icy waters from which it rose. The cloth and napkins were starched white, the trim on the glasses and plates gold, which sparkled in the flashing light of the overhead disco-balls. The chanteuse, still burbling cool jazz from the stage, was barely audible above the hearty voices of the excited passengers at other tables, settling into their positions at the trough.

  Only Table 101 was silent. A waiter flipped out their napkins, smoothed one onto each lap. The women’s eyes lingered on his shoulders and luxuriant hair, as he knew ladies over forty were permitted to. When he left and their eyes reluctantly returned to the table, they noticed that the waiter had left a little gilt card on each plate.

  CONGRATULATIONS, WINNER OF THE RAZZLE DAZZLE RAFFLE DRAW!

  Enjoy your special luxury table, your pink champagne fountain, and if you need anything at all, do not hesitate to call one of our charming waiters. And after your sumptuous dinner, revel in the special attentions of our famous Dance Boys, who will invite you to skip the light fandango!

  Welcome Aboard!

  All was explained. Or was it? They were taking longer than strictly necessary to interpret the cards, heads bent low. Should Lily force the issue, introduce them to each other as old neighbours? Or should she postpone this great reveal for her own pleasure? Growing impatient now for her big announcement, she loudly cleared her throat and leaned forward triumphantly. In a crisp voice she clearly pronounced each woman’s name as she pointed to her.

  But what was this? No expressions of polite recognition? Instead, just a long, pained silence that told Lily the disappointing truth. The women had already recognised each other. Not only that but she was sure that each would have continued to pretend she hadn’t, if not for Lily’s blundering. And now there was nothing for it but to trot out lame niceties.

  We all look the same.

  And so it went, until Ariadne Jones whispered, ‘We must thank God for the bounty of these free tickets.’

  They all looked directly at her for the first time, but her head was bowed in silent prayer. What would happen to the flat, snowy plane of her forehead if she stopped her obvious treatments? Would she age overnight? Ghoulish glances at her silhouette. An eating disorder too?

  An onslaught of entrée dishes meant that silence could reasonably reign again as the women (except Ariadne Jones, who toyed with hers) attacked their pre-selected choices. What twist of fate had brought these three together again? They had never even been friends, just thrown together as co-tenants. Ordinary girls, young enough to have whole worlds before them. Since then, with each casual decision, the doors to better possibilities had slammed resolutely shut. Their once promisingly brilliant lives had faded to …

  Lily Zelinski, single mother, no love life, neglectful adult son, career in a crisis that only a huge scoop could remedy.

  Ariadne Jones, ex-costume designer, now locked so tightly in a world of imagination that she dressed like a dead princess.

  Shanti Bounty, a successful yoga teacher, but ashamed at being unable to control her base chakra urge for revenge.

  And in that same apartment block there had also dwelled Monica Frequen, a ghost at their table. Lily remembered her as being no more special than any of the other tenants. Yet out of a population of twenty-four million, she was among the one per cent of the one per cent who had fulfilled their dreams. She would soon be sitting up on the dais next to the captain, in that red director’s chair with her name printed on it. Lily swallowed a mouthful of duck pâté and ran a long, cleansing tongue around her teeth. The silence at the table might have unnerved her had it not been that the more she drank, the more sober she felt.

  ‘You think it was Monica who arranged for us to meet like this?’

  ‘But we all won those tickets …’

  ‘Don’t question this blessing from Jesus.’

  Ariadne was regretting that she had not recognised either of the other women until they had sat down, and by then it was too late to change to another table. She wanted to see fresh faces on this cruise, not these judgemental women from her past. She blushed. They were still laughing at her, these snobby, confident women. Passing judgement on her as in the old days. And she was fully aware that they both had a reason to resent her. There was nothing for it. She was determined to slip away as soon as the speeches had begun. No one would even notice.

  In the case of Shanti, the clichés about all looking the same were true, at least regarding her clothes, a tie-dyed caftan and Birkenstocks, though now her bushy hair was grey. She began to fiddle in the recesses of a huge patchwork shoulder-bag. From its depths, she extracted a couple of flyers which she shared with the other two. Including Lily was a real test in activating her higher self. (Had Lily shrunk? She seemed so much smaller than the monster of Shanti’s nightmares.)

  ‘Midnight tonight to celebrate the full moon. Free yoga.’

  ‘Oh I don
’t …’

  ‘Let’s go,’ encouraged Lily, ‘but we have so much to talk about first. I haven’t told you …’

  Give a titbit in order to receive a good meal. The journalist’s maxim.

  ‘I’m still single …’

  That permanently pleasant expression on her face meant that they couldn’t tell if this was a complaint or a boast. An awkward hush followed, during which each remembered the paternity of Lily’s child, which had never been as secret as Lily believed. (Did she know they knew?)

  Sipping at her water, keeping her eyes lowered, Shanti mentally repeated her mantra, blocking out the sound of Lily’s voice as she pontificated about the child who should have been Shanti and Teddy’s. Not Lily and Teddy’s. Did Shanti wish that she had never read that note with its bold cut-out letters, pushed under the front door? Should she have pretended that she hadn’t seen it and then gone off the pill without telling Teddy? Unilaterally started up her own competing family and continued the fulfilling round of social engagements that they had built up through the yoga school? Had Ariadne Jones and even Monica Frequen known all along about perfidious Lily, but said nothing? Did Lily know that she knew?

  At that point, Shanti realised that she had lost the mantra completely. When she tuned into the conversation again, she was relieved to find that it had moved on to Monica Frequen. The outsider. Always a safe topic.

  ‘I wonder if she’ll deign to talk to us.’

  ‘Have you read her books?’

  Lily had skimmed them, Ariadne Jones had seen them in the library at Lone Pines, Shanti had read the posters on the ship attesting to her international renown. But, as Lily said, they knew what she was really like, and it definitely spoiled the magic of a book once you had met the author. They were about to let the topic drop when Ariadne ventured quietly that Monica’s books seemed depressing. To Lily, investigator always on the prowl, this meant that Ariadne herself might be depressed. Sympathetically, she asked her what she was doing now. Ariadne petulantly ignored the question.

  She had still not forgotten Lily’s rejection, so long ago. Neither she nor Shanti had even mentioned the intricately designed invitations that had taken so long to create. No, Lily was just like Shanti, only pretending to be nicer. Lily changed tack.

  ‘Did you make that frock? It’s lovely.’

  Ariadne’s sewing skill happened to be her only vanity. She couldn’t help preening, and even flicked back her curtain of hair in a gesture that all the women recognised as that of the late princess.

  ‘And where do you work now, Ariadne Jones?’

  This time she replied, but neither asked her to elaborate on what Lone Pines might be. It sounded dire. Thankfully, just at that moment, the next round of the feast distracted them, as did the young waiter leaning over them, intimately straightening their napkins on their laps. When he had completed his welcome ministrations, Lily regretted aloud the shortage of male passengers on the cruise.

  ‘No guys back at our apartments either, were there?’

  ‘Except for the squatter,’ Ariadne corrected, surprising them all.

  ‘Oh yes, whatsisname?’

  Creepy eyes. Grotty beard. But, back to the present and another course was arriving. Salmon and spring onions. Then, unasked, Lily — both Ariadne and Shanti had by now decided that she must be drunk — started up about her son again.

  ‘He’s a research assistant, working on Velikovsky theories …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He says we all have amnesia about our planet’s past. We suppress our species’ memories of past biological extinctions. How else could we get through another day, if we were aware of the dozens of meteors that are constantly whizzing about up there, just missing Earth? At any time …’

  As she expatiated on her son’s theories — or was it Velikovsky’s? — Shanti was transfixed. What the poor boy’s research so patently reflected was his own cataclysmic origins in a cake syringe full of Teddy’s sperm. She still felt proprietorial about her ex-husband’s sperm. What had Teddy been thinking? He had told her that he wasn’t ready for children, yet he had acceded to this donation, as he called it, to help out a woman who was no more to either of them than just any tenant in the same block of flats. Or so he had convinced Shanti until he had run off with her. And, from what Lily was saying, he had left her as well. Served the little husband-stealer right.

  Didn’t she ever shut up? Shanti gripped her water glass tighter, as if for ballast, while Lily was talking about this son of hers and Teddy’s. His unnatural conception would have damaged a few brain cells. Just shut up, why don’t you? The jazz band was deafening, the crowd now shrill and raucous. She needed more water. Yes, water … She had a sudden vision of an overflowing baptismal font. Teddy’s baby shrieking as the priest splashed its head. And holding Shanti’s baby, was Lily.

  Shanti’s water glass snapped under the pressure of her fingers and water splashed out in an arc. A waiter appeared immediately, checked she wasn’t cut, then smoothly blotted at the water, took away the shards, renewed her setting. She was disproportionately moved by his impersonal care and sat staring into the new glass of water, red in the face, assuring her table companions that all was now fine.

  Lily’s hagiography of Teddy’s child had halted during this minor upset. Even the devoted mother had become aware that she had been talking too much. But the eighth or ninth drink always took her back to the one achievement of her life — not her journalistic career, but this boy.

  She was still unaware that she was the cause of Shanti’s discomfort. It had been so long ago and, after all, Shanti couldn’t possibly know. It wasn’t as if Teddy and Lily were still together. If Shanti was not so damn holy, they might even have been able to bitch about Teddy together. After all, yoginis were supposed to be so detached and calm, weren’t they? She glanced at Shanti’s still flushed face. Fat chance.

  The chanteuse launched into a particularly morose rendition of ‘Is That All There Is’, which, if they had been a more chatty table, they would have agreed was the most depressing song ever written. It was banned at Lone Pines. Great choice for an audience of seniors, thought Shanti, but when she looked around she saw that some of the passengers were singing along, even beginning a Mexican wave. Had their emotions, even depression, been dulled by time’s progressive attrition of nerves? Her own had become more unbearably acute.

  The conversation at Table 101, punctuated by assiduous gourmet interludes, was petering out. No one, after all, had bothered to keep in contact these last twenty or so years. After the apartment block, Lily had briefly moved in with Teddy and the baby, close to the newspaper office. Ariadne had enjoyed a few more theatre seasons, but the company had let her down when it came to money. Deceived yet again by humankind, she had gratefully moved into staff quarters at Lone Pines, accepting a lower wage in return for training on the job. Since then her only break, up till now, had been that stint in Volunteers Abroad which had so transformed her life.

  Monica Frequen, of course, had gone to New York and astounded everyone, except herself, when she had been dubbed the latest overnight sensation by the US literary set. But where was Monica? Why wasn’t she here, lapping up the glory she had always boasted would one day be hers?

  While Lily was summoning a waiter to enquire after the keynote speaker, Ariadne took advantage of the distraction to slip away from Table 101. Unnoticed.

  Or so she thought.

  ME #5

  It is rewarding to know that while the captain is still at her banquet table, she has been watching me on her phone, screen hidden discreetly by the folds of the tablecloth. I have been her avatar while she watches events unfold like a TV show we have scripted ourselves.

  I was in the captain’s quarters as ordered, keeping track of Ariadne on the screens, so I did not miss it when she slipped away earlier than expected from her dining table. Switching to the screen showing her cabin, I could see that she was soon feeling a bit woozy after sipping her bedside refreshmen
t.

  Once Ariadne passed out on her cabin bed, I directed the menials to follow me to her cabin. She did not even stir when we felt under her mattress, nor when I splashed her face with water from a vase by her bed. Drawers gaped, suitcases were slashed, but we found nothing that remotely resembled the object of our quest.

  I dismissed the menials after the clean-up because the captain trusted only me for the next stage of our plan. I am not particularly strong, but it was easy to manage the levers and sliding platforms and load the still-comatose Ariadne onto the purpose-built laundry trolley. I then covered her with a sheet and wheeled her here, where I await the captain’s return from the banquet. At this stage, I am not sure how we are going to dispose of the body. The usual fridge, I guess.

  It is now ten thirty, and the captain is not due until after midnight, but I am not bored because I can replay the Ariadne footage as often as I like, the thrill doubled by the knowledge that Captain Kirstin has witnessed my masterful supervision of the underlings. Again I watch as they repair the damage, make up the bed, even re-light the tea candle on the weird altar and remember a chocolate for the pillow.

  Once the captain returns, I will be free to begin the execution of my own exquisitely crafted plans for Monica Frequen.

  10

  PERSONAGE D: MONICA FREQUEN

  Monica Frequen was still at her desk in her first-class cabin, sipping vintage champagne to ward off seasickness. Her wrist was aching from having signed hundreds of her slim volumes, in anticipation of massive sales after the banquet that night.

  But where was he? She couldn’t possibly appear without him, and anyway it was good for a star to be late. Putting down her Waterman pen, relic of more affluent days, she flicked open her debut novel, Sea of Love, at a random page.

  ‘In the howling gale that lashed the yacht, she heard a dreadful tearing sound and turned to see …’