Bon Bon Voyage

by Nancy Fairbanks

  The gym really pissed me off—all those extra-fit, good-looking kids supervising senior citizens, who were sweating it out on a bunch of machines that would have crippled me for the rest of the trip. Vera said that she’d had enough of gyms to last a lifetime since her heart attack and had no intention of ever visiting this one again. Of course, Carolyn reminded her that she was supposed to take regular exercise. That went over like finding a scorpion in your shower. Vera reminded her that she was going to get her exercise walking the decks in the fresh air with me. I think Carolyn was hurt not to be invited along.

  Then Miss Perky in formfitting spandex bounced over and asked if I’d like to try out a machine. I gave her the Spanish designer routine, and Vera translated it, “She says no woman of fashion would sweat on fine clothes.” Perky girl turned red, and twelve sweating blue-hairs jumped off bicycles and treadmills to prove that they, too, were “women of fashion” with “fine clothes.” Vera added, “Señorita Vallejo wants to know what exercise you recommend.” Actually, I used to like working out at Central Regional Command with my fellow cops, mostly guys, but those days were long gone.

  Then the trainer, who had bigger boobs than you’d expect of someone who worked out, came up with the idea that I could lie on a mat raising my arms and legs in a leisurely fashion and avoiding unfashionable sweat. “I can do that in my own living room,” I muttered.

  “Señorita Vallejo says you should consider breast reduction so that you can wear fashionable clothing,” Vera translated.

  That woman was a hoot.

  “Large breasts are only attractive to infantile men who still long for the mother’s nipple,” Vera added for good measure. Blushing down to her cleavage, the kid claimed someone needed her advice and rushed off to encourage a fat guy who was puffing away on a stair-stepper.

  Carolyn asked if I’d really said that, because she didn’t think it was a kind thing to say. “Hell, no,” I told her. “Would I embarrass a girl who probably has a bra size bigger than her IQ?” But I had to wonder whether Carolyn thought her mother-in-law was translating comments that I’d actually made. Good thing Carolyn didn’t understand Spanish. She wouldn’t have liked what I said in Spanish any better than what I said in English.

  After that we headed for the library, which was full of soft leather chairs I’d never be able to get out of and way too many books. “Who-oa,” I murmured to Carolyn, “not much like the library downtown, is it? No smelly homeless guys coming in out of the heat.”

  Carolyn whispered back, “Luz, homelessness is a tragedy and a terrible social problem in our society.” She was scanning the fiction section and yanked out a book, which she handed to me. “You should read this. It narrates the lives of three women, one of whom is a formerly middle-class lady who ended up homeless in Boston, working as a maid and sleeping wherever she could, often in the homes of employers who were out of town. It’s a terrifying situation into which any woman could fall if her husband divorced her and she had no particular skills. Until I began writing my column, it could have been me, had Jason and I fallen out.”

  “Which is just why you should have been working instead of staying home cleaning house and cooking,” said Vera, who had been looking over another section of books. “I don’t think they’ve got a single feminist publication in here.”

  I looked at the book in my hand. Marge Piercy. The Longings of Women. Reading about a homeless woman sounded like a downer to me. I could have been homeless if I hadn’t had my police pension. Of course my family would have taken me in, and we’d have driven each other crazy. I put the book back on the shelf while Carolyn was off looking for a book on Morocco.

  After the library, we visited the spa, where I was kind of interested in a capsule where you were supposed to lie down and stretch out. The top part closed over you, like a coffin, only rounded, and then some spa woman turned it on so the capsule could do God knows what to you and pop you out in twenty minutes feeling as if you’d had a “refreshing, full night’s sleep.” The full night’s sleep bit sounded good to me, but Carolyn told me that spa services weren’t free and were undoubtedly extremely expensive. When Vera asked, “What if you got stuck in there?” the spa attendant showed her the release latch inside.

  Too bad they don’t have more release latches in Juárez, I thought. Then all those maquila girls who get thrown in trunks, driven out of town to the desert, raped, strangled, and dumped would have a fighting chance to get away. Wouldn’t matter, though. The drug dealers, gangs, rich guys’ sons, or whoever was doing it would just tear the latches out.

  “Carolyn, don’t take that copy of the price list,” Vera ordered when the attendant offered one. “Just because you put it on your account and it gets charged to your credit card doesn’t mean Jason won’t have to pay for it next month.”

  “I know that,” said Carolyn, looking indignant. “And I can pay my own bills, thank you, Vera. I make money writing my column. If I want to give myself a Mother’s Day spa treatment while my husband is attending expensive scientific conferences on the plains of Canada . . .”

  They argued all the way to the lecture hall where we were reunited with the guys. Their tour included looking at the ship’s engines and navigational stuff. Commander Levinson gave us a sarcastic description of the bridge and the captain in his pretty uniform and his fancy Star Wars captain’s chair. After that, Barney had insisted on seeing the real engines and not some movie, and Froder, the engineering officer, complained about having passengers wandering around his engine room.

  Barney summarized the tour by announcing that we were paying big money to ride around on a fancy, oceangoing barge, not a ship. Thank God I wasn’t paying big money. In fact, I figured I might be making a profit. Food and drink free and all these clothes. As long as I didn’t sweat on them and have to pay dry-cleaning bills, it was a pretty good deal.

  Then we all sat down, for which my knees gave thanks, and listened to a really boring lecture and slide show on Tangier, the Arab place we were going tomorrow. They’d have done better to give self-defense lessons to all those clueless millionaires.

  13

  Dinner with Embarrassing Friends

  Carolyn

  Once our tour was over, I planned to write a column. Several of the dishes at lunch were certainly worth my attention, especially the desserts. I don’t know what got into me. I ate two. It was probably the stress. I never knew what Vera and Luz were going to say next. I did get a few paragraphs completed, sitting on the balcony with the laptop on my knees. However, the sound of people chatting on the balcony next to ours, which was separated only by a sort of plastic divider, was distracting, not to mention the smoke from their cigarettes. The Bountiful Feast was supposed to be a nonsmoking ship with only a few areas reserved for smokers. Maybe balconies were among those areas, although I didn’t see why they should be since the smoke drifted in my direction into my nonsmoking space.

  Finally I gave up on writing and went in to take a nap. Luz had had the right idea. She was fast asleep in her underwear. I noticed that she’d even hung up her new clothes, but surely they’d provided her with a nightgown she could have worn. I also noticed a dreadful scar on her thigh and her puffy knees. Was that the arthritis? Vera had gone off to take a walk around the deck with the submariner. I’d heard him saying as they departed that it was nice, in some ways, to be on a ship that had enough room to walk around, unlike a submarine, where you couldn’t walk three feet without ducking to miss a pipe or a hatch frame.

  “Probably doesn’t smell too good on a submarine either,” said my mother-in-law. “Bunch of men sweating in an enclosed space. Now that I think of it, no woman would want to be assigned to a submarine.”

  “You’re right,” replied the commander. “My wife always complained that my clothes came home smelling like a men’s locker room. Made me throw them in the shed with the lawnmowers until I got a chance to take them to one of those Laundromats that do the washing for you. Can’t say that I blamed her
.” And that was the last I heard as I drifted into a nice nap.

  Vera woke us both up and told us to get ready for dinner— formal. Luz looked very stylish in an amazing blue gown and silver heels that must have been very uncomfortable. Vera and I were less stylish. She had on a long skirt and a jacket she probably wore to teach, and although my low-heeled sandals were more dressy than her flats, my long skirt and top were dress-down formal, chosen so I wouldn’t make Luz feel uncomfortable in the clothes she’d bought at Ross, all now lost in Lisbon. I have to admit that I felt a bit peeved. I could have packed fancier evening wear if I’d known Luz was going to reap a fashion bonanza because of that thieving Luis at the Lisbon airport. Well, at least my feet didn’t hurt. Luz would be sorry about those high-heeled sandals when she had to dance with the left-footed doctor.

  Luz

  I’ll swear that Dr. Beau’s mouth dropped open when he saw me in my blue dress. Babette had insisted that I take this bra that pushed my boobs up above the neckline. The damn thing was so frigging uncomfortable I was expecting to feel a rib give way when I sat down to dinner, and then there were the shoes. I’d have been better off in work boots with steel toes. I noticed that Mrs. Gross, wearing that ugly brown sparkle outfit again, didn’t put up with high heels or exposed toes. She’d been the one to insist on these silver heels; I’d only stood up in them for about a minute in front of a mirror. Walking in the suckers was hell.

  And dancing? I’d never make it, but the way the medical examiner was looking at me, I figured he was going to insist on more dancing. Problem was I liked him well enough, but I sure as hell didn’t want to dance with him again. Lucky me. Harriet Barber took him in hand for the first dance and gave him some lessons—prefaced by, “If you step on my feet, young man, I’m going to step on yours. How do you like that?” I had to admire her determination.

  By the time he got to me, he wasn’t very good, but he didn’t mash my toes. I’d threatened to knee him if he did. He laughed heartily and said, “An’ after that, what, sugah? You gonna shoot me?” Then he pulled me in real close and didn’t make any dangerous foot moves. Kind of nice. It had been a while since I’d been pressed flat up against a man, especially one that was taller than me, even in those frigging shoes.

  Dinner was pretty good too—except I was beginning to have jalapeño withdrawal symptoms. Should have had my mother pack me up some emergency Tex-Mex to take along.

  Carolyn

  I had an excellent tilapia dish with a black-bean, corn, and mild-chili relish for dinner while Mr. Marshand told me about the wonderful motorized golf cart he’d given his late wife for her seventieth birthday. “Right,” said the commander. “Greg took it out one day when his was in the shop and damned if it didn’t run away with him. He jumped ship, and the cart ended up in the lake.”

  “I had it fixed,” protested the cereal king.

  “Oh sure,” Commander Levinson retorted, “but it never was the same. Alicia was furious. I always figured the stroke that killed her was brought on by that golf cart that kept stalling.”

  “Alicia died of pure frustration after she three-putted on a par-four hole,” snapped Marshand. “She was a very excitable woman, and she took her golf seriously.”

  Commander Levinson then asked my mother-in-law to dance, and she said, “I don’t know. Probably not if you’re the kind of Jew who expects women to wear wigs and spend all their time washing multiple sets of dishes.”

  I was so embarrassed that I accepted a second dessert when it was offered, a lovely chocolate cup filled with lemon curd and drizzled with raspberry coulis. I’ll never maintain my size 10 figure if I keep on like this, I thought, but with less regret than I should have felt about my own gluttony. Still, it was hard to feel regret when the chocolate and lemon curd had been so tasty.

  Much as I like chocolate, I came to the conclusion on the cruise that any dessert provided relief from stress. This recipe is delicious and easy to prepare if you don’t insist on making all the ingredients from scratch when you can buy them in a supermarket. Also, it does have some chocolate.

  Lemon Curd in Chocolate Cups

  with Raspberry Coulis

  Buy jars of lemon curd and packaged cups made of dark chocolate in your supermarket. Fill cups with lemon curd, assigning as many cups to each guest as you think proper.

  In your food processor or blender, puree 2½ cups fresh raspberries; ¼ cup sugar (10 to 1 if you need more coulis); and 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (or more to taste). Pour mixture through a fine sieve (pressing on the solids) into a bowl.

  Drizzle coulis on and around the individual servings for a pretty and flavorful dessert.

  Carolyn Blue, “Have Fork, Will Travel,” Madison, WI, State Courier

  14

  Entertainment at Sea

  Carolyn

  What I needed was to head straight back to the room and complete my column, but everyone else at the table insisted that we watch the evening’s entertainment. Since they weren’t intending to visit the casino, I let myself be persuaded and ended up stuck between the cereal king and an executive from a Silicon Valley computer company.

  The first act, a comedian making jokes about his wife, set Vera off again. She listened to about three minutes of his routine and then said, loudly, “That man’s a sexist pig.”

  The comedian stopped talking, cupped his hand to his ear, then leapt over to our half-circle, shouting, “Granny. I love you.” He tried to kiss my mother-in-law, which was a serious mistake because when she jerked away from him, she spilled her martini on the fly of his baggy trousers and snapped, “What happened to you, you moron? Your mother tried to abort you, and it didn’t work? I have to give the woman credit for trying.”

  The comedian, who was billed as Russell Bustle, grasped his fly and yelled, “Look. I came. This is one sexy old babe.” Commander Levinson, grimfaced, stood up and gave the man a shove that sent him staggering backward. I tried to scoot down in my seat, embarrassed to death, and that ugly security officer, who was wearing a tux instead of his white uniform, came over to intervene.

  “I intend to file a sexual harassment charge against this oaf,” said Vera, and ordered another martini since her glass was empty after the drink landed on Russell Bustle.

  Mrs. Gross could be heard croaking, “Way to go, Granny!” Luz and the doctor from Atlanta were laughing their heads off, and Randolph Barber got the whole incident on video while the security man and the comedian had words, most of them interrupted by feminist threats from my mother-in-law and Luz’s remarks in Spanish, which Vera translated.

  “Our friend, the famous designer from Madrid, says that your comedian should be put off at the next stop for—not sure of what that means—perhaps abuse of respectable women.”

  The comedian, who was unquestionably disgusting, was marched away by Mr. Hartwig, and the dancing girls came on. Still, the thought that they might actually put Russell Bustle off the ship in Tangier worried me since I doubted that Tangier was a friendly place for an American to be stranded.

  While Vera stared angrily at the chorus line of skimpily clad dancers, gritting her teeth and muttering about women being seen only as sexual objects by chauvinist cruise lines, Commander Levinson ignored the dancers completely and took it upon himself to talk Vera into a moonlight stroll on the deck. He thought the walk would be good for her heart and her blood pressure. Although I’d expected her to insist on staying to harass the rest of the entertainers, she surprised me by agreeing and stood up, leaving me wondering what exactly he’d meant by a moonlight walk being good for her heart. He had a surprise coming if he was imagining a romantic interlude.

  The chorus girls were followed by a second round of drinks for the rest of us—including Mrs. Gross, who, carrying her own bottle of wine, invited herself to join our party—and a pianist playing and singing romantic songs from Kurt Weill’s Broadway period. Luz listened to two rounds of what she called “sentimental crap” and then left as well, accompanied by Dr. Be
aufort E. Lee, who was obviously enchanted by her or her new dress.

  I felt quite melancholy, having been deserted by my roommates and left with the cereal king; the computer executive, who looked about twenty, but claimed to be thirty-six; and Mrs. Gross, who declared over the music that she had found a cockroach in her raspberry crème brûlée at dinner and planned to sue the cruise line. Raspberry crème brûlée sounded good to me. If it turned up again, I’d certainly try it. Then Mrs. Gross advised us to do as she planned to do—not sign up for any of the shore excursions, which were overpriced and boring.

  “But I want to see Tangier,” I protested.

  “Get off the ship, flag down a taxi, and take your own tour,” said Mrs. Gross. “You can come with me if you want to.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked, thinking a woman her age shouldn’t be wandering around an Arab city in a taxicab. Still, for me the tour was free, and I intended to get the most out of it. I doubted that a Moroccan cab driver would make a very knowledgeable tour guide.

  When I explained, she shrugged and said, “Suit yourself,” and she left.

  “She’s one of those people who spend their lives cruising and getting freebies from the cruise lines with a lot of loud complaining,” said Greg Marshand, interrupting his own monologue about successful putting on wet greens. “She probably brought the cockroach with her.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say,” I retorted.

  “Well, she better watch out. The companies keep lists of those people, and they share the lists. I saw a guy get put ashore at the next port for posting a newsletter about the high price of drinks at the bars. He wanted to organize a buy-no-alcohol boycott, so they charged him with mutiny. His wife was furious and yelled at him all the way down the gangway.”