“Siofraaa!” she trilled with glee. “Yer mammy’s got a fun wee game planned for the rest of the trip! Like a treasure hunt, so it is, love!”
Fionnuala tripped over the hose of the vacuum cleaner that was flapping around the carpet, unattended, like a lunatic snake. She spat a stream of curses as her head cracked against the corner of the desk. She looked angrily around the room. There was no Swagger Jagger, no twiglet arms or babbling on about hunger. Only the hum of the ship's generator and the caw of a seagull outside the porthole.
“Siofra!”
There were only two places she could be: the closet or the bathroom. Fionnuala popped her head inside both. She saw only furniture and dirt. Her confusion dissolved into anger.
“Quit them flimmin foolish shenanigans, would ye?” she fumed, searching under the bed, in the drawers. “Show yerself now or ye'll feel the force of me hand on yer bony wee arse!”
She heard a crack! under her left heel, and stooped to pick up something next to the trash can. It was a purple butterfly barrette.
“Siofra?” Fearfully, this time.
She searched under a pillow on the bed, but no matter where she looked and how hard she stared, her brain still struggled to comprehend what her eyes were telling her: Siofra was gone.
CHAPTER NINE—HEADING TO THE SAVAGE ISLANDS
“THAT WAS SOME MEAL!”
As Jed said it, his hands fiddled under the table. Ursula hoped to God he was just letting his belt out a few notches. She watched Louella pick at her teeth with a matchbook cover. The three sat around chipped china plates that moments before had groaned under mounds of 'gourmet' food but were now just bits of gristle and whatnot. Slim was on safari at the buffet again.
Jed's hands surfaced, and he downed some Bailey's from a champagne flute. He stuck his pinkie out as he drank, a nod perhaps to the fact that he was on a cruise ship. He leaned back and inspected the women under the brim of his hat. Ursula took a sip of tea.
“I don't know what we're on this cruise for,” Jed said, “but I'm sure glad we came. Everything's great. Well, except the non-smoking areas but, hey, at least the casino's all smoking. And,” he moved aside a bowl and pointed to the wrinkled tablecloth, “if these old cigarette burns are anything to go by, there used to be smoking here in the dining room too.”
Louella smiled and looked down at the Jell-O fruit salad she was too full to touch.
“I'm glad you're enjoying it.”
“Best time of my life! Getting out of Wisconsin for a while is going to do us a world of good. And you know I love the sea. Devoted my life to it in the Navy. And I hear there's some deep sea fishing we can do too while we're here. I can't wait! Just relaxing on the waves and enjoying the good life.”
Ursula faced him with a fixed grin. She swished the tepid tea around her teeth and wondered if her husband was drunk, had misinterpreted the words 'the good life,' was entering an early dotage, or was somehow on a different cruise. She knew Jed was prone to optimism, and she knew he wasn't a fugitive on the run like her, but she struggled to match his view of this supposed pleasure cruise with her own.
On the first day, the Queen of Crabs had ferried through the English Channel like a taxi, loading up more victims at Cherbourg, France and Cork, Ireland. Ursula and Jed, Louella and Slim clutched the hand rails of the gangway for support, the waves heaving under them. But they were denied the opportunity to step foot on land and, as they stared wistfully at the shores, they couldn't know it was the only concession to the route of the Titanic EconoLux could afford.
They decided to check out the on board amenities, and perhaps this was where Jed's love for her hell on the waves began. He and Slim found the casino, and the women spectated with folded arms while the men crammed bills into the penny slots. They watched the men's heads tilt to the left and sway to the right. Jed won a bonus round and got fifteen free spins. The rum and cokes clutched in their hands spilled over their thumbs then their pinkies, and their shoes were rooted to the carpet for balance. Jed's bonus total was $1.16. Ursula's fox-shoulders slumped.
“Och,” she tutted, “these men and their endless obsession with gambling. We're better than that, aren't we now, Louella?”
She turned, but Louella was already, eyes agog, on her third spin of Texas Hold Em two aisles over.
Ursula tugged her out of the casino, and the two staggered down the shape-shifting hallways and clutched each other like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John on the undulating funhouse platform at the end of Grease. They poked their eggplant bob and gray flip into the movie theater (showing Snakes On A Plane), the desolate shuffleboard area, and the pool which was empty was being dredged. They tried the disco—Phun, the sign said—but were told they were too old for it, and that the more age-appropriate ballroom opened every night at eight on Deck C and that they could sing karaoke there if they couldn't dance.
The less than enchanting amenities and activities wasn't the only cause for Ursula's concern. Next to door that led to the mountain-climbing, she tripped over a bucket some staff member had placed on the floor to catch the water leaking from the ceiling. Ursula found it disturbing, and kept scanning the walls of the decks for fissures and leaks.
And she was filled with a vague sense of foreboding from the golden-toothed staff. Ursula would have imagined them to be freshly bathed, their uniforms laundered and pressed to perfection for the maiden days of the voyage at least. But, no. Every baggy pair of jeans, every teardrop tattoo on an unwashed face, every filthy fingernail, every Eastern European with a shaved head and menace in the eyes, the type who, it always seemed to her, spent time in remote wooded areas shooting snuff films for fun, each one she and Louella encountered as they rounded a corner made Ursula shackle her purse against the brass buttons of her turquoise jacket. She suspected many had recently been released from a variety of penal institutions the world over, similar to the one that might lay in her and Louella's future. Some seemed from former Soviet satellites, others from the Indian subcontinent, or Biafra, or Ursula didn't know where.
And there seemed to be precious few Operas Of The World passengers to commiserate about the staff with, and a disproportionate amount who had been rerouted from the hip-hop cruise that she had heard about. Ursula wasn't a racist as far as she could tell; she loved Lionel Richie's “Hello,” after all, and did have her collection of the ceramic heads of people of different enthnicities in the hallway back home. It had taken her years to gather them all together, especially the limited edition Azerbaijani. On the north wall of her house, the people of the world were growing and living in harmony, but now in Urusla's life they seemed to be living in anything but. (The heads were expensive, but after tossing the Frisian and the Tutsi at a home intruder once, she realized they were money well spent: not only decorative and informational but functional as well.) But, back to the passengers, she couldn't comprehend those who chose to greet their fellow cruisemates on the decks with a swagger of menace instead of a smile.
By the time the ballroom opened, she and Louella had passed out in their cabin from nervous exhaustion. Slim and Jed staggered in from the casino at what time Ursula didn't know, but she hoped, as she thrust her head further under the pillow and wished she had taken an extra Lunesta, they hadn't lost big.
The next morning, the Barnetts found the ship had bypassed the sunshine and fun of the Canary Islands and was making its way glumly towards the largest of the uninhabitable Savage Islands. Ursula jostled through the throngs before the activities bulletin board and signed them up for the onshore excursion that afternoon; if these were her last days of freedom, they may as well make them fun. The dining room had been closed for renovation on day one (they had had to scavenge at the machines in the mini-mart for Snickers and Puff Doodles past their sell-by date), so they were delighted to see a scribbled note that said it would be open for lunch. And that's where they were now. Having lunch.
And this dining room was more like a mess hall, Ursula thought; she should know,
having eaten at many military bases across the globe as Jed's dependent. She looked around, but what renovations they they had made she couldn't detect. Ursula always thought these cruise lines had master chefs, but the Queen of Crab's must've phoned in sick. Shrimp was on offer, it was true, but neither shelled nor devined so they had to do all the dirty work themselves, éclairs, yes, but frozen. And the leaden mashed potatoes she had forced down her throat still had the eyes in them! They sat in her stomach now like cannon balls. Ursula wondered who she might speak with to have a word with whatever imbecile in the kitchen had peeled them. She could teach him a thing or two.
Slim arrived, his plate straining to hold a third helping of burnt ribs and bratwurst and soggy sauerkraut and runny macaroni and cheese and egg rolls and Kung Pao chicken and fried chicken and shepherd's pie and onion rings and tirimisu that looked like they had been flash-thawed.
“Hey, you guys!” he said. “They're handing out the fantasy Titanic boarding passes over by the ice cream machine. I got our four passengers. I had to put my hand into a bag.”
He gave them their slips of paper.
“I'm the Countess of Rothes, Lucy Noël Martha Leslie!” Ursula squealed. “The countess and her servant, Miss Cissy Maioni.”
“I'm Mabel Skoog.” Jed scrunched his scrap of paper.
Louella eagerly unfolded hers. She flinched.
“You gotta be kidding! Yousif Wazli?! I'm a foreigner, for crying out loud! And...” Her eyes became mere slits beyond the red circles of her glasses, and she whispered like a man revealing erectile dysfunction. “...an Arab! I didn't even know they had them back then!”
“I'm a woman,” countered Jed.
“If youse've not got a Mr. or Mrs. or a Major before yer names, youse must be two of them third-class passengers. Ye'll probably die. Wasn't most of them what couldn't get in the lifeboats the poor people? The non-Americans and non-English? And...Irish...?”
They stared at Ursula, wondering where she got her information from.
“Open your paper, Slim,” Louella urged. “Let's see who you are.”
The three leaned in eagerly.
“Pista Ilmakangas,” Slim revealed.
While they were consoling him, a thug-type youth slouched through the chewing passengers towards them. Louella bit short a scream of fear.
“This for you,” he said.
He handed Ursula an elaborately embossed envelope. Louella held out her hand, expecting one as well. But all she saw was three-quarters of his ratty underwear as he slouched away.
Ursula slipped the envelope open with her fingernail, tugged out the parchment and read a few lines. She squealed as if she had just been told to Come On Down on The Price Is Right. Slim almost speared his tongue with the fork.
“It be's a special surprise invitation! They talked about em in the brochure, do ye mind?”
She grappled Jed's arm with excitement.
“Och, Jed, Jed, Jed! We've been invited to the captain's table for dinner!”
Jed stared around the tablecloths, startled.
“Now?”
“Naw, on the seventh night, sure. What will we wear, do ye think?”
Louella's eyes flashed across the rumpled napkins.
“And what about me? And Slim?”
Ursula checked the invitation again.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Wazli,” Ursula said. “Ye've not been included.”
Secretly, Ursula felt bad as she slipped the envelope in the special pocket of her purse, but she suspected Louella and Slim hadn't been invited because Slim wouldn't fit at the table. She didn't want to embarrass him by bringing this up; Slim's obesity was always the elephant in the room.
Jed cleared his throat.
“Now that the fun and games for the afternoon are over...”
His frank tone cast a sudden cloud over the table. Ursula knew that tone from years of marriage, and the look on his face as well. He seemed to be on the verge of asking many questions, formulating them in his mind beforehand the way Ursula had seen Detective Scarrey do. (She had seen that look, for example, after she had accidentally filled the family car with diesel instead of regular once in 1979, and again the morning after she had, on a whim, dyed her hair platinum blonde while he was sleeping in 1972. She still remembered after all these years the exact tone of his scream when he woke up.) She bent her head as if she were sipping tea from the cup she grappled, but considering the taste, it was the last thing her mouth wanted. She was hiding her eyes from her husband.
She felt the panic and shame fill her again and clutched Louella's knee under the table. It was bony.
“Now that me and Slim know what the anniversary surprise is,” Jed continued, “now that we're on it, and we're definitely away from the States, isn't it about time you two fessed up? What are you two running away from?”
To look busy, Louella picked up a fork, Ursula thought maybe it was the fish one, and crammed fruit salad into her mouth. Ursula rearranged the salt and pepper shakers.
“Don't think I haven't seen the looks you give each other. Ursula, you were fidgety for a week before you started telling me all about this surprise. And our anniversary isn't for months.”
“Ursula's always been a fidgety-gidget,” Louella said. She forced down a pineapple chunk.
“And I seen you, too, Lou,” Slim said through a leg of chicken. “Jumping every time the doorbell rang, hiding in your garden. Watching Law and Order and Cold Case reruns at night as if your life depended on it. As if you were doing research. Don't deny it.”
Jed gawped.
“You mean the cops are somehow involved?”
Ursula and Louella threw their napkins on the table in tandem.
“The meatloaf!” Louella barked, making as if she had just remembered it. “It wouldn't fit on my plate!”
“And I want some of them asparagus spears!” Ursula squealed. “We've to make wer way to the buffet again.”
They grabbed their handbags; they weren't going to leave them unattended, what with the staff. They scuttled away. Jed drank and Slim chewed in suspicion at their retreating backs.
Ursula grabbed an empty plate, and her eyes looked as if they were examining the the food before her, but she saw nothing. Her handbag dangled from her elbow over the cauliflower as the plate hovered aimlessly.
“Och, Louella,” she whimpered. “This cruise be's turning out to be a misery, so it is. Me brain be's on the verge of exploding, and I kyanny keep deceiving Jed no longer. The fear be's gnawing a hole in me soul, pure and simple. I've to keep me eyes peeled for coppers every corner I round, every room I enter. And there be's loads of rooms on the ship. I keep shoveling them tablets, them Xanax, down me throat, hoping for to calm me nerves. Them tablets doesn't be helping, but. I've to find a church on board Did ye see one in the brochure?”
“A church?”
Louella stared over by what looked like a selection of pork rinds. She gingerly placed three on her plate.
“Aye,” Ursula said, her handbag swaying above the wasabi and California rolls. “The guilt be's gnawing at me. I'm of the mind that if I confess me sins, or wer sins, I should say, it'll give me head and heart peace.”
“I don't think you're going to find a confessional on board But,” and Louella grabbed Ursula's arm so hard she filched and almost dropped her plate. She hissed so vehemently Ursula saw spittle spray the length of the rack of lamb, “don't you dare rat us out. You're in this with me. We made a pact.”
“Louella, but,” Ursula said, hating the tremble she heard in her voice, the tears she felt collecting in her ducts, and the fact she couldn't locate the asparagus, “we made a pact, aye, but if ye recall I hadn't a clue what ye were up to with them church funds. Ye roped me in and all. And I wouldn't mind so much, but ye've not been rightly civil to me for weeks now. I kyanny comprehend it. Ye looked like ye were smiling when ye pointed that gun at me, like ye were enjoying me fear. What have I ever done to ye?”
Ursula shrank at the look Lo
uella passed her over the selection of salsas.
“Anyroad, priests be's bound by the silence of the confessional. And ye hurt me arm. And where in the name of all that be's sacred be's them flimmin asparagus spears?”
She looked over the counter for help, and was surprised to see the staff, a group of three youths, smiling for once, smiling and laughing over one thing or another in their mother tongue.
“There they are,” Louella said, pointing.
Ursula rushed over to the asparagus gratefully, but stopped short.
“How am I meant to transfer em to me plate? Where's some tongs or a big fork or the like?”
She looked the length of the counter. She could take that spoon out of the egg drop soup, but...
“Wee boy!” she called across the asparagus to the staff member with the mole. “Wee boy!”
Something suddenly caused them great hilarity. Ursula hoped it wasn't her. She fumed at Louella, “Themmuns is behaving like I doesn't be standing here.”
She should be used to it, the contempt and impatience the youth of the day had in those over 25, but it angered her how companies worldwide seemed to be hiring younger and younger people the older she got; the people she was forced out of necessity to conduct purchases on a daily basis with were those who seemed plucked from a hiring process where only the annoyingly perky, the shrill and those who felt certain aging would never happen to them were deemed fit by management. She had spent the past ten years struggling to maintain a sense of dignity and wishing she belonged to an Asian culture where, and she had seen an episode of 60 Minutes on it, elders were revered and treated with respect and even had a special celebration day during harvest time in the fall where womenfolk gathered in circles and sang songs and ate crescent-shaped rice cakes stuffed with sesame seeds. She had long ago given up expecting a smile at McDonald's, but she had paid $5000 for customer service on this ship.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 72
