Viola considered. “Theodore.”
“Theodore Bear?”
“Exactly. When will I get to see him?”
“He’ll be delivered to your cabin just as soon as he’s finished,” Bellatrix promised. “I’m making him look just a touch old-fashioned, okay? You strike me as a conservative sort of person, a bit old-fashioned yourself.”
“I am,” Viola said, and knew it for the truth.
****
“Four Four-thirty,” she said to herself, as she left the Captain’s Club, “and the ship’s rolling a little. I hope I’m not too seasick for dinner.” It seemed odd that she had not noticed the roll while she was talking bears, but she left that unsaid.
A different and somewhat more Spartan elevator carried her from Deck Nine to Deck Five, where-eventually- she found her cabin. A large pink teddy bear in a black vest lay upon her bed, propped by two small pillows.
“Well, hello!” It did not seem possible. “Hello, Theodore!” Sitting on the bed, she picked up the pink bear. His expression, she decided, was indecipherable. From one angle he looked severe, from another he appeared to plead, from a third he smiled warmly; he was a bear of many moods.
His paws felt soft-yet hard at the ends. Looking more closely she found lifelike claws, not sharp but long and curved. Playing with his face did little to alter his expressions, but led to the discovering of actual bearlike teeth behind his furry lips. “I’m taking you to dinner, Theodore. I want to show you to whoever I’m seated with today.”
Her questing fingers found a ring on the pink bear’s back. She pulled it, but not too hard.
“I’d like that,” the bear said distinctly; his voice was deepish with a squeaky “I,” and gruff overall.
“Very apropos.” Viola patted the bear’s furry back below the ring. “Now then… You will have observed, Theodore my bear, that our cabin boasts a small porch, balcony, or outdoor viewing area, called by captain and crew a veranda. Besides a little table and a great big footstool, it includes two wicker chairs. The first is large, with a splayed back. Rather a peacock-tail back, actually. It’s clearly intended for the gentleman. That’s you.”
The pink bear appeared to smile.
“You, that is to say, when you are not on my lap-I fear your fur may quickly prove over-warm in the salubrious air prevailing on our veranda. I shall occupy the other chair, a lesser seat of the wing-back persuasion. At times you may occupy it with me-not that I’ve a great deal of lap to offer. May I have your opinion of the arrangement I suggest?”
She pulled the string as before, and the bear said, “I’d like that.”
Only one phrase. She felt a little disappointed. “Is that all you can say?”
“Two,” the bear added equally distinctly. Or perhaps “too” or “to.”
Violet sighed. “I hope that extra noise doesn’t mean you’re broken already.”
The bear did not reply; and so, not knowing what else to do, she picked him up and carried him onto the veranda, plumping him down in the wide wicker chair before seating herself in the smaller wing-backed one.
Beyond the Plexiglas-faced railing, a sea impossibly blue spread small swells to the horizon. Over it arched a sky equally blue. Someone had told Viola once that the sky was blue only because it was reflecting the blue of all the world’s oceans. Looking at that sea and that sky, she felt that it might almost be true. “Cities,” she thought, “have scraped away the sky with their skyscrapers. I wonder why they wanted to?”
Five o’clock. The dining room would not open for dinner until six. She leaned back, and when her eyes chose to close themselves she let them.
****
She was awakened by a tickling nose. Dispatched to wipe the tickle away, her hand encountered something large and soft.
Her eyes opened. “Theodore my bear, please mind your fur…”
It took three moments and two blinks to bring the pink bear into focus. “Did I put you in my lap? Never mind.” She glanced at her watch-six thirty. Dinner would be in full swing. “What about it?” she asked. “I am going to get something to eat, Theodore. You may remain here if you prefer, or-”
He might blow away.
“Inside on my bed, I mean. Or you may escort me. Which will it be?”
She pulled the string.
“I’d like that,” the pink bear said distinctly.
“I thought you would. Dinner it is.”
The Grand Dining Salon (as the ship called it) was at the stern on Deck Two. It was, as its name implied, very grand indeed. Wide glass doors in a glass wall opened on a specious spacious chamber resembling an amphitheater, wherein white-coated gladiators wrestled valiantly with laden trays. Spotless white tablecloths were embraced by massive chairs of wood well-carved-chairs that should, as Viola reflected at each meal, make excellent life preservers.
Five persons were already seated at the table to which she was brought to fill the last chair. She glanced at the faces of the three men as she took her seat, expecting signs of disappointment. There were none, and she smiled.
A blonde smiled in return and offered her hand, “Lenore Doucette.”
Viola accepted it and introduced herself.
“I love musical names,” the other woman said. She was meager and almost swarthy, with the hard, secretive eyes of a professional gambler. “I have one, too. I’m Raga.”
“Bone and a hank of hair,” Viola thought. Aloud she murmured, “Pleased to meet you, Raga.”
Lenore was looking at the pink bear. “Do you always carry that with you?” Her somewhat attractive face had the tight-skinned look that bespeaks plastic surgery.
“Only on the ship. Theodore’s my bodyguard.”
“Since the men will not introduce themselves-”
“Perhaps he’ll let me do it.” Viola smiled again, more relaxed than she had been at any of her previous meals. “What about it, Theodore? May I introduce you?” She pulled the string.
“I am Viola’s bear,” the pink bear said distinctly. “You may call me Theodore.”
“You’ve more vocabulary than I thought,” Viola muttered from behind her menu.
The round-headed, round-shouldered man seated on the farther side of Lenore said, “Don Partlowe,” as if he were a little ashamed of it, to which the big, heavily handsome man on his left added, “Blake Morrison.”
The waiter arrived, and Viola told him, “Five oh five four, and I’ll have the split pea and the roast beef.”
The man to Viola’s immediate right coughed. “T-Tim Tucker, Miss Neudorf.” He was small and looked (Viola thought) like a spike buck caught in the headlights.
“You have to call her Viola,” Lenore instructed him. “Rules of the ship.”
Raga smirked. “Another rule of the ship is that no more than six may eat at one table. I’m afraid that means
you’re out of luck, Viola. What would your bear like?”
“Honey,” Viola told her firmly. “As in mind your manners, honey.”
There was a brief, pained silence before Don said, “That’s not on the menu, Viola. I’m afraid you’ll have to eat for him.”
The big man, Blake, leaned toward her. “Can he say honey?”
“He doesn’t have to. I know his tastes.”
Lenore tapped her wineglass. “I believe the score is Viola three and Table nothing. Would anybody else like to try?”
“I would,” Tim whispered. The whisper was so soft, and his lips were so near Viola’s ear, that no one else could possibly have heard it.
When dinner was over and she returned to her cabin, Viola dropped the bear on the bed and kicked the door shut behind her. “I’m fed up,” she told him, “and do you know who I’m fed up with?”
An accusatory forefinger stabbed at her considerable chest. “Me, that’s who. “Baked Alaska! I ordered baked Alaska, and I ate it, too. When I had finished mine, I ate half of poor Tim’s.”
With a violence that threatened to tear it, she pulled her blouse over her head. “I should go to the show tonight and watch for Bellatrix, and what am I going to do instead? I’m going to sit right here, by myself, and hate myself.”
A step took her to the mirror. “Look at that tummy! What’s the use of paying a thousand dollars for a singles cruise with a tummy like that?” She was sitting on her bed trying to wipe away the tears when she felt a small, soft embrace. For the next two hundred rollings of the ship, she hugged her bear and, occasionally, sniffled.
When the hugging and sniffling were over, she sat the bear on her lap and addressed him in the tone those near to tears generally use. “I love you, Theodore. I do. You’re a-a much nicer toy than anybody has a right to expect. I… Well, I didn’t even know… You’re the-the most wonderful bear in the whole darned world, and I certainly don’t deserve you.”
Quite distinctly, the pink bear’s head moved from side to side.
“I don’t! I-I want people to like me.”
Soft pink paws touched the pink bear’s own well rounded middle.
“Yes, you do. I know that. You’ve proved it. Can-will you tell me what I can do to make other people like me, too?”
Kindly, dark eyes opened, closed, and opened again, and the bear’s large, pink head nodded.
“You can?” Viola pulled the string.
Distinctly, the bear said, “Smile.”
“I do! I did! I was smiling all through dinner and nobody liked me.”
Again the bear’s head swung from side to side.
“All right, Tim did, and I imposed on him. Nobody else.”
No signed the bear, and Viola pulled the string again.
“Lenore likes you.”
“I don’t believe it.” Another pull of the string.
“Don liked you, too,” the bear said distinctly. “She did not like that.”
“He did not!” Viola insisted.
There was a knock at her door.
“Wait a minute!” Her robe was pink, too. As she knotted the sash she wondered vaguely whether the bear would approve.
“Miss… Viola?”
It was Tim. She nodded, groped her mind frantically for something to say, and settled for “Hi.”
“I… You’re-uh-getting ready for bed? I, um, there’s a nice little-uh-cocktail lounge. The Seastar. It’s-uh… ”
“On this deck.” Viola felt the need to speed things up.
“And I- uh-thought perhaps… But you’re-”
She gave the smile her best try. “Why I’d love to have you buy me a drink, Tim. Could I meet you there in ten minutes or so?”
Tim gulped audibly.
“I won’t bring Theodore. That’s a promise.”
“Oh, no!” Tim’s eyes had flown wide. “I didn’t mean that at all. Bring him, please. I-uh-I-uh… ”
Smile again, Viola told herself firmly. Remember what Theodore said. “Then we’ll both meet you there in ten or twelve minutes.”
Tim’s words rushed upon her like terrified birds. “It’s-not-him-I’m-scared-of-it’s-you.” And Tim fled.
“Toward the bar,” Viola, reflected. “I wonder how many he’ll have before I get there.”
It seemed wise to hurry and she did, resuming the blouse she had discarded and spending no more than five minutes touching up her hair and makeup.
Tim was at a table near the all-glass wall. He stood and waved the moment she came in, then pulled the table out for her. It was a very small table, bare save for an ashtray and an almost-empty glass that had probably held a Tom Collins. Smiling, she accepted the offered chair, arranged the pink bear on the chair next to her own, and smiled some more.
“You’re such a nice person,” Tim said without a single uh. “I wanted to tell you that, and at dinner I couldn’t.”
A soft paw tapped her thigh; and she nodded, although only very slightly. “I know how you feel,” she told Tim. “It’s hard say things like that to-to anybody. Hardest of all when you’ve just met the person. At dinner I had to try very hard to look at the others, and not just at you all the time.”
What remained of the Tom Collins vanished in a single swallow that brought a bowing, foreign-looking waiter. Viola ordered Dry Sack up, while Tim handed over his glass and said (in a voice that squeaked a trifle), “Do it again.”
He turned to Viola. “That was one thing I wanted to tell you. This is the other. I hated this cruise for the first two days. Hated it right up till dinner tonight. All these women shopping for men as if they were at a white sale. All these men hoping to get laid by a woman they can forget about as soon as the cruise is over. “I… I-uh-I came… I came looking for-uh…”
She whispered it. “Love.”
“Yes. I knew you’d know. You-you’re-you’re not married?”
“No. Of course not.” Viola held out her left hand.
Tim almost took it. “Neither am I. A lot of these men are. Did you know that?”
“Are they?” It was a new thought. “I thought they were divorced.”
“There’s a lot of that, too. A lot more, actually. And nearly all the women are divorced.”
The question hung in the air until Viola said, “I’m not. I’ve never been married. Once I thought-but it didn’t work out.”
“I haven’t been either.” Tim’s smile was small and brave. (Like Tim, Viola told herself.) “I write software, Viola, and I’m good at it-really, I am. I’m not good with people.” He drew a deep breath. “Even if this doesn’t work, I’ll always, remember you the way you are right now with the purple sea behind you and stars in your hair and the moon building a road across the water to you that only angels can follow.”
As their drinks arrived, Viola murmured, “You’re good with me.”
On their way back to her cabin, the pink bear had to nudge her twice and point to keep her from getting lost. “I’m high, Theodore,” she told him as she slipped her key card into the lock. “One little glass of wine, an
d I’m higher than-than any angel.”
Her cabin was in the same, rather confused, state she had left it, her pink robe flung on the bed and makeup scattered across the top of the tiny dresser. She dropped the pink bear on the bed, too, sat there herself in utter disregard of her robe, and positioned him on one crowded knee. “He’s never been married, Theodore, he’s not dating anybody, and he has his own little software company. Did you see the way he looked when I told him I was a systems analyst? Did you?”
Distinctly, the pick bear nodded.
“We go together like ham and eggs, milk and cookies, roast pork and apple sauce.” Viola paused to consider the final pairing. “I’m the pork, but I don’t care.”
There was a sound behind her, which she ignored. “I’m going to quit my job and move to New Orleans, Theodore. I didn’t tell Tim that, but I am. This is not going to slip away. I won’t let it. I’m-”
“Going to get hurt if you scream.” The voice was deep and soft, carried on a gust of warm sea air. Half the lights in the cabin came on as the verandah door closed.
For a second she failed to recognize the big man in the aloha shirt, perhaps because so much of her attention was focused on the blue steel automatic he held.
“You’re keeping quiet,” Blake Morrison said. “That’s good. That’s smart. Now just relax and let me tell you how it’s going to be between you and me.”
Viola held up both hands. “If you think I’ve got a lot of jewelry, you’re wrong. You can take what I’ve got. I’ll tell you where everything is.”
If the big man with the blue steel automatic had heard her, he gave no sign of it. “You’re going to take off your clothes. All of them. You’re going to do everything I tell you-and I mean everything-and you’re going to act like you enjoy it. You’re going to beg for more. Have you got that?”
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 35
