by Harper Lin
In the meantime, I got into a conversation with Fiona, who sat to my other side. Other than Georgina, she took the most care in her appearance and was constantly looking into a compact mirror to make sure her (overly caked on) makeup was looking right. As we talked, she added an extra bit of powder to hide her drinker’s nose.
“I think I’m going to sue the DMV,” I said with a chuckle. “I renewed my license last year, and they did a horrid job with my photo. It’s just so embarrassing.”
I pulled out my driver’s license and showed her. It was, indeed, a bad photo.
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Fiona said in a tone that showed she thought the opposite. “The problem is that they’re so lazy there. I suppose it comes from having to process so many people and the fact that they only hire subnormals. You have to be assertive with that sort. Get yourself dolled up and looking your best, and make sure to adjust the lights yourself and clean the lens of the camera. They’re always so filthy. Look at mine. It came out all right.”
She pulled out her license. I murmured something nice about her picture and took note of her last name. Fiona Harrison. Bingo. That was all I needed. I could track her down and, through her, find the others and hopefully dig up something useful. I got her address too.
By now everyone had gotten into some serious drinking. Their morning hangovers had long since been forgotten, thanks to the Bloody Marys, and now they were drinking piña coladas and shrieking hysterically over some juicy bit of gossip about someone back in Schenectady. The food arrived, which prompted someone to order another round. I was beginning to feel a bit woozy. I used to be able to hold my own in a drinking competition, but by age seventy-one, I was well out of practice and did not have the iron liver this gang of harpies obviously did.
I tried and failed to get the conversation around to Maggie.
“Who wants to talk about that old loser?” Fiona sputtered, dribbling some of her drink on the tablecloth.
So instead of furthering the case, I had to endure lots of shallow conversation about nothing in particular. It certainly reinforced my perception of them.
“Oh, hey!” Octavian said to the table. Besides Georgina, he was the only one who the entire group would stop what they were saying and listen to. “I just remembered. Tony Iron and the Bar Belles are going to be playing in the disco in an hour. What do you say we get changed into our best duds and go dance the night away?”
They all thought it was a brilliant idea, especially Lauren, who sidled up to him. We finished our meal and went as a group back to our cabins, passing crowds of buoyant young gay men and rather subdued (one might say intimidated) senior citizens. Georgina and the rest of them sneered.
“Why did they have to put them on our ship?” Brenda grumbled.
“They had engine trouble,” Octavian replied. “I suppose there wasn’t much choice.”
“They should have left them drifting in the sea,” Brenda said. The others nodded.
That was the first time I had heard Brenda give an opinion on anything. I hoped it would be the last.
We went back to our respective cabins, Octavian stopping Lauren from coming into his, and got ready for the concert. I took the opportunity to drink a tall glass of water. It was a good way to stave off or at least reduce the hangover that was sure to come. If I didn’t moderate my drinking around these people, the next corpse might be mine.
I got into a nice blue dress I had bought especially for the cruise and waited for a few minutes. I wanted Octavian to work his magic before I went back into the hallway. He was playing his part admirably. When I did come out of my cabin, I saw Octavian had changed into a tailored suit that made him look ten years younger. The other “ladies” in our group had noticed, too, and were fawning over him.
I decided I had spent too much time playing the clueless dupe, and I needed to ramp up the tension.
“Octavian!” I scolded in my best shrewish-old-lady voice. “It’s like I’ve turned into the invisible woman.”
I shouldered my way through the crowd and hooked my arm into his, and we walked down the hall, followed by the poorly stifled snickers of the others.
Octavian looked abashed. I think that was more than playacting. I think he really did feel guilty. What a darling. He wouldn’t have survived five minutes in the CIA.
I think we were all surprised to find the disco packed, and not just by senior citizens who remembered Tony Iron and the Bar Belles from their youth but by a large crowd of gay men. Why these people would care about a band old enough to be their grandparents and whose last hit had come out before most of them were born was beyond me.
But there they were, eagerly anticipating the curtain coming up. As we passed through the crowd, I eavesdropped.
“The best song is ‘Powerlifting Love.’ I work out to that all the time.”
“My favorite is ‘Bench Press Baby.’”
“Oh, come on. That’s dedicated to a girl!”
“No, it isn’t. You have to read between the lines.”
“He probably wrote it for a girl just to make the public happy. But we know what he’s really talking about.”
I shook my head. Tony Iron and the Bar Belles had become some sort of gay icon? Why? I suppose back when he was young, he might have caught the eye of some gay men, but he always sang about women and surrounded himself with women. If they were going to pick an old star to follow, wouldn’t they rather latch onto Liberace or Elton John?
We found a place on the dance floor just in time for the curtain to come up. The polite applause from the senior citizens was drowned out by a roar from the gay men. Tony Iron and the Bar Belles were already in position, probably to spare them the embarrassment of having to hobble onstage in front of their fans.
Tony Iron flexed his arms, which were still impressively muscled for someone who had to be well into his eighties, and shouted into the microphone, “Who’s ready to sweat?”
“We are!” we shouted back. Tony Iron always started his concerts that way.
“Want to do some fly curls with me?” he shouted.
“Yes!”
He wiggled his eyebrows, still mysteriously black after all these years. “And how about some leg lifts?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, yeah, baby!” a man who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five shouted nearby, bouncing up and down.
I stared at him. What was going on?
Tony Iron shaded his eyes and looked around in mock surprise. “There seem to be a lot more passengers on board than when we left port.”
This brought some laughter and cheers.
Then in that soft, silky voice that had made him famous, Tony Iron asked, “You boys ready to party?”
The gay half of the crowd went wild while the old half looked around in confusion.
“Then let’s party!” he shouted and launched into “I’ll Be Your Stair Master.”
It was one of his biggest and raciest hits, about “climbing the staircase of your love to be your master.” All about a man sweeping a woman off her feet and her being helpless (and unwilling) to resist.
At least that’s what I thought it was about.
When five hugely muscular men, all clad in leather, leapt on stage and began strutting around, lines like “I’ll whip you into shape. I’ll crush you like a grape. I’ll be your stair maaaaster!” took on a whole new meaning.
I glanced at Octavian.
He was staring at his workout guru with utter disbelief. “No …” I saw his mouth form the word but couldn’t hear over the guitar solo. “Tony Iron couldn’t be …”
“Queer as a three-dollar bill, baby!” a young man beside us cheered.
Octavian turned to him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” the youth replied with a grin. “Why do you think a guy that popular never got married? And now that he can, he’s too old. Civil rights came too late for him.”
“But not for us,” said another young man, literally sweeping the first
man off his feet.
Octavian looked back at Tony Iron, cocked his head, squinted, thought for a moment, and shrugged. “Want to dance?” he asked me.
“All right.”
I felt happy to get some attention from him again, although I wasn’t quite sure how to dance to “I’ll Be Your Stair Master.” It wasn’t a slow dance, and I sure wasn’t going to dance the way those young men in the crowd were dancing, even if I still could.
I took Octavian by the hands and moved in close. He laughed and stepped back.
“Don’t you remember the Stair Master dance?” He turned to face the stage, had me do the same, and started moving his legs up and down like he was climbing stairs in time to the music.
“Oh, I remember that!” some octogenarian shouted and started doing the same.
“What’s that?” the young man who had been talking to Octavian asked.
“The Stair Master dance,” Octavian replied. “This was big when your parents were still courting.”
The man and his partner started doing the same, lifting their legs much higher than Octavian or I could manage.
Soon more and more fans, both old and young, started doing the Stair Master, knees rising high, arms pumping as we sang along with Tony Iron, “I want to be your stair maaaster!”
I glanced around, legs still pumping, glad I couldn’t hear my knees pop, and was amazed. The dance rippled out across the packed dance floor like a wave on a pond after a stone was thrown into it. Octavian had gotten the whole crowd doing the dance. Tony Iron flashed a thumbs-up from the stage. The Bar Belles beamed at us, eyes sparkling.
Lauren cut in front of me, Stair Mastering her way over to Octavian. He danced with her for a minute, flashed me a conspiratorial look, and danced over to Fiona, who blushed and bopped like a schoolgirl, basking in the attention.
Lauren, who was behind Octavian now, gave Fiona a nod of approval.
Wait. Lauren didn’t care that Octavian was choosing Fiona over her. Ah! The point wasn’t who got Octavian, the point was to take Octavian away from me. It wasn’t about their happiness. It was about my misery.
What a vile little crew we had landed ourselves among.
And Octavian had sussed it out. Clever man. Maybe he could have done well in the CIA after all.
I kept Stair Mastering, pretending to be so starstruck by what was happening on stage that I didn’t notice my boyfriend flirting with all and sundry.
The song reached its crescendo, the sound of a thousand feet stomping in time to the beat, when all of a sudden, there was a disturbance to my left. There was a feminine scream and a wave of people moving out of the way.
Alicia fell to the floor, smacking face-first into the smooth wood. She twitched a few times and then lay still. Blood began to spread from her body.
Nine
Nothing kills a fun evening quicker than a murder on the dance floor. Worried whispers and cries of fear spread through the crowd as fast as Octavian’s dance had done a few minutes previously. One by one, the Bar Belles stopped playing their instruments. Tony Iron, who was singing with his eyes closed, kept on going until the lead guitarist poked him in the back with her instrument.
“I’ll be your stair maaaa—hey, what’s going on?”
“She’s been murdered!” I shouted. “No one touch the body. No one leaves this room!” I shouted.
More gasps followed by a profound silence.
A young man pushed his way through the crowd. When I say young, he looked in his thirties, which made him notably older than the average in the gay crowd.
“I’m a doctor. Stand aside,” he said. He knelt by her, felt her pulse, and turned her over. Alicia’s nose was broken. A pool of blood glistened where she had smacked her face into the floor.
“You shouldn’t—” I started.
“Quiet,” he cut me off. He put an ear to her chest. “Get me the defibrillator!”
A waiter rushed up with the device, and the doctor applied it to Alicia’s chest. There was a loud thunk, and Alicia’s body convulsed. He listened to her chest again. I glanced at Georgina and her pals. They were all pale, obviously shocked. But who was faking? How had they killed her? And why?
The doctor applied the defibrillator again. Alicia convulsed again and groaned. The doctor felt her pulse, timing it with his watch. Then he nodded.
“The worst is over, but we need to get her to the infirmary.”
“What happened?” Georgina asked.
“She suffered cardiac arrest. Too much dancing and drinking for a woman her age,” the doctor replied.
“Are you sure?” I asked. Maybe she had been poisoned or something.
The doctor gave me a warning look. “You can’t party like you’re in your twenties anymore.”
Two sailors rushed through the crowd, carrying a stretcher. They put Alicia on it and hurried off, the doctor, me, and Georgina and her crew following.
“You’re going to be all right, Alicia,” Georgina choked out, walking alongside the stretcher, tears in her eyes. Alicia moaned, barely conscious.
We got to the infirmary, where we were met by the ship’s doctor and a nurse, who had already been alerted. They briefly consulted with the doctor who had revived Alicia then took her inside, closing the door on the rest of us.
It was then that I noticed Octavian and Fiona weren’t with us.
I felt a spike of jealousy, a wholly unworthy emotion since I knew Octavian was “on the case,” as it were. I hoped that was the only thing he was on.
For a moment, everyone stood there in silence. Georgina started pacing, giving me odd looks. Lauren burst into tears and excused herself.
“I can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it!” she cried as she hurried off.
Finally, a real emotion from one of these succubi.
Lauren came back a few minutes later, her mascara still a mess. She must have been really upset not to freshen up, as obsessive as she was about her appearance. Appearances were the only thing this group cared about.
After an agonizing wait, the ship’s doctor opened the door.
Georgina rushed up to him. “Is she all right?”
The doctor nodded. “Your friend is in stable condition. We’ve called a medevac. The helicopter will be here in an hour to take her to a hospital on the islands.”
“Can we see her?” Brenda asked.
“In a little bit, once she’s rested.” He closed the door on us again.
After a few minutes, the gay doctor from the disco came out.
“Where are you going, buster?” Georgina demanded. “My friend needs you in there.”
“The ship’s doctor can take over from here. He’s got a full clinic and has two nurses on duty. Don’t worry. Your friend is going to be just fine. She needs rest more than anything.”
Georgina’s face grew red. “So, what now? You’re just going to go back to the disco and booze the night away while my friend is dying in the infirmary?”
“She’s not dying,” he replied in a calm voice. “But she will if she keeps up all this drinking and partying.”
He turned and left.
“My God, how irresponsible!” Georgina shouted. “Come on, girls. Let’s get a drink while we’re waiting.”
We retired to the nearest bar. On this ship there was always a bar nearby. No doubt the designers had planned it that way.
The bar was quiet, most people still being at the disco. My companions each ordered a stiff one. I ordered a coffee. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
No one spoke much. For once Georgina was silent, pensive. The rest of her crowd, lacking her lead, couldn’t think of anything to say. I had the impression that if it had been Georgina who had been thrown off the ship or suffered a heart attack, they would have immediately gone in search of a new leader just so they would have some kind of identity for themselves.
After she had knocked back her drink, Georgina turned to Charlotte, Brenda, and Lauren.
“Girls, go
find Fiona. She needs to know what happened.”
All three got up. I found it odd that she wanted to send all of them when only one needed to go. They obeyed without hesitation, like they always did.
“We’ll look in the disco,” Charlotte said.
“And the cabins,” Lauren said under her breath but loud enough for me to hear. The others snickered.
Georgina turned to me, trying to control a smug smile. After a moment she grew serious.
“Why did you think someone had tried to murder Alicia?”
I shifted in my seat, unsure what to say. While I didn’t think Georgina was the killer, I couldn’t know that for sure.
It turned out I didn’t need to answer, because Georgina answered for me.
She glanced over her shoulder, leaned forward, and said in a low voice, “You were wrong about Alicia. Her doctor warned her of her heart condition. Fiona takes her vital signs every day. Didn’t you notice Alicia always drinks less than the rest of us?”
No, I hadn’t noticed. There had been so many drinks and so many rounds and so many quick nips in their cabins that I couldn’t keep track.
Georgina glanced over her shoulder again and whispered so softly that I could barely hear her. “No one tried to murder her, but somebody murdered Maggie.”
I didn’t have to feign my look of surprise. Here she was actually admitting one of her friends was a murderer!
“Who?” I asked. “And why?”
Georgina rubbed her temples, suddenly looking old and tired.
“I don’t know who. It could have been any of them. And why? Because Maggie was dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?”
“Back home she’s been spreading nasty rumors about us. Saying all sorts of horrible things like we were man stealers and that we tried to undercut other people’s relationships and happiness.”
“No. I couldn’t imagine you doing such a horrible thing.”
“And she claimed that we had been having dalliances with certain married men. Prominent ones too.”
“Impossible!”