by Cindy Brown
I motioned them away. “Later. I just want to be Nancy for a while.” A minute later, I slipped into a Cockney accent and into Victorian London. Theater had been my place of refuge ever since Cody’s accident. It was the one place I could forget everything around me and still feel safe.
Some people don’t understand the “safe” part. They think it must be terrifying to be onstage in front of an audience. For me, it’s more like reading a good book. I become another person, transported to another place and time. But it’s even better than reading, because my chosen family is there onstage with me, reading the same book at the same time.
So by the time we took a break, I was feeling better. Still, I didn’t want to talk about Cody, so I searched my brain for something else.
Oh! How in the world had I forgotten that I’d found Harley’s knitting in Val’s room?
“Hey,” I said to Timothy, who stood next to Val and David onstage. “Do you know if they’ve recast Madame Defarge? Candy could use a job.” I let my face fall. “Oh, would she have to knit? I don’t think she’s crafty.” But I was, so to speak.
“She’d definitely have to knit,” replied Timothy. “I swear the audition consists of knit one, purl two.”
“Makes sense.” In A Tale of Two Cities, Madame D. knits the names of the condemned into a scarf. I snuck a look at Valery. He was watching us, but his face was relaxed. Interested, but not nervous.
“What did she do with all the stuff she knit?” Still no change on Val’s face.
“Half the time she’d just unravel it and start again,” Timothy said.
“But sometimes she gave presents,” Val said. “Like to me. I have nice scarf. It says Val.”
“She knitted you a scarf?”
“Sure. We were buddy-buddy.”
“Everyone!” shouted Jonas from the front row, his eyes on his cell phone. “A little change in schedule. I want to run ‘Gruel, Glorious Gruel.’ We’re not going to have time to run the other numbers. Val, Timothy, you can go.” The guys exited through the wings. Jonas walked to the edge of the stage and held out a hand to help me off the stage. “Ivy, could we talk a minute?”
I took the hand he offered. It was warm and strong and comforting.
“Timothy told me about your brother going missing. You doing all right?” He kept my hand in his.
“Yeah,” I said, as much to convince myself as anything. “There are a lot of people in Phoenix working to find Cody, and there’s nothing I can do right now anyway. It’s good to have something else to think about.”
“You sure?” I nodded and he smiled at me, one side of his mouth tipped up like a mischievous boy. “Well then, I could give you something else to think about.”
Was Jonas flirting with me? First he said I had a delicious ass, and now…
“How about dinner tonight? At the captain’s table?”
He was flirting with me. Hmm. Jonas was handsome and he seemed nice enough, but I didn’t think I was into him. And there was another thing. “Don’t we have silk rehearsal for the magic show?”
“Dinner is at the early seating. We’d be done in plenty of time.”
“I didn’t think crew members could eat at Delmonico’s.”
“We can eat in the dining room when we have family onboard. And you get to sit at the captain’s table when your family is Theo Pushwright.”
That decided for me. I didn’t have anything solid on the theft ring or Harley’s death yet, but I could find out more about Theo and Harley at dinner. Besides, I really wanted to dine at the captain’s table. “Sure,” I said. Visions of a fancy dinner danced in my head, with silent waiters and crystal goblets and men in tails and women in…Oh. “Um, I hate to sound like a girly girl, but I don’t have anything to wear. Aren’t we supposed to dress for dinner in the dining room?”
“More than you know. We dress in period clothing when we’re at the captain’s table. But don’t worry. There are several onboard costume shops. Go to the one on the Upper Pickwick Promenade and tell them I sent you.”
CHAPTER 21
All the Treasures of the World
I popped into Mrs. Chickenstalker’s Sundries Shoppe on my way to the costume shop. I’d run out of Tums and needed more before dinner. My stomach hadn’t felt exactly right for days, and Cody and Stu’s disappearance sat heavy and queasy in my gut like slightly off Mexican food.
Or maybe it was slightly off Mexican food.
Like everywhere else, the store was done up Dickens-style, the walls lined with floor-to-ceiling dark wooden shelves.
Signs with fancy lettering announced the goods for sale, though if you looked carefully, you’d see iPod accessories among the aspirin and deodorant.
I took my purchase up to the counter and handed it to the shopkeeper. “We have better stuff than that for seasickness, you know.” The shopkeeper wore a white shirt and brown vest, a sort of string tie around his neck, and a long white apron over the whole outfit. “Would you like to try some Dramamine?”
“Sure.” I slid my packet of chewable Tums toward him too, just for good measure.
He turned and picked up a packet of Dramamine from a mirrored shelf behind him, which in a very un-Dickensian manner was filled with vaping supplies and cold and allergy meds.
“Why do you keep the Dramamine back there?” I asked. “Seems like it’d be pretty popular.”
“Kids.” The clerk sniffed. “They can abuse anything if they put their minds to it. I guess it has some hallucinogenic properties.” He rang up my purchase.
I thought about asking him if Dramamine might also help with that dizzy feeling you got when you were twirling on a flimsy piece of fabric forty feet in the air, but figured I could find that out on my own.
I walked the few feet from Mrs. Chickenstalker’s Sundries to the costume shop next door. Each Get Lit! cruise featured a fancy costume ball, so every ship had several shops full of outfits that fit its literary theme. A bell jingled as I opened the door to Madame Mantalini’s Temple of Fashion.
Oh my. I’d reached heaven. Actors’ heaven, at least. I reverentially entered a room that shimmered with light reflected off silken ball gowns. Beaded bodices sparkled and velvet capes whispered of walks through manicured gardens. Neatly pressed men’s suits in black and gray and brown looked proud and pompous, even on the rack. A few brightly colored waistcoats winked from among them. Bowlers and boaters and top hats perched on a shelf above the men’s clothes, while a half dozen free-standing hat racks held confections for women made of feathers and lace and ribbons. Nearly hidden among all this finery were worn-looking cotton and wool costumes like the one I wore, and behind the shop’s counter was a rack filled entirely with what looked like black robes. As I peeked over the counter to get a better look, a short elegant man emerged from a back room. “How may I help you?”
Once I told him what I needed, he brought out several gowns. I tried on a scarlet velvet dress (a little too low-cut for dinner), a gold silk-looking one (did nothing for my complexion), and a brocade gown in a soft sage green that set off my eyes. Perfect. Its off-the-shoulder neckline dripped with tea-dyed lace and its full skirt (hoop skirt included) emphasized my small waist. Or so I thought.
I came out of the dressing room to look at myself in the larger mirror in the shop.
“Hmm,” said the costumer shop manager. “Do you want to try a corset?”
“Uh…Sure.”
He sized me up with his eyes and handed me a front-lacing corset from a drawer behind the counter. I went back into the dressing room with the contraption. Once I was laced up tight, I slipped the gown back over my head and checked my reflection. Oh, that’s why he suggested it. My waist looked tiny, which made the skirt look fuller. Plus I stood up straighter, probably because I couldn’t bend in the middle.
“What do you think
?” he asked from outside the door.
“I’ll take it,” I said, somewhat breathlessly. “Maybe it’ll help me to eat less at dinner.”
As the manager helped me pick out a blonde wig (neither my one-and-a half-inch orange hair nor my Nancy wig were going to fly), I gazed at the beautiful clothes in the shop. “Are all these costumes historically accurate?”
“They’re of the time period,” he said. “Though maybe not very Dickensian.” He handed me a wig, an elaborate style with swept-up blonde hair and a few long curls spilling down the back. “Most customers want to dress like the upper classes, even though most of Dickens’s major characters were low or middle class.” He settled the wig on my head. “And our most popular costume doesn’t fit into any of those categories.”
“What do you mean?” I said, admiring the way the short curls on the wig framed my face.
He gestured at the rack of black robes behind the counter. “Our biggest seller, so to speak.” I must have looked confused, because he said, “Bestseller is a bit of a misnomer. Costumes are free to all guests for the duration of the costume ball. Or when they’re invited to sit at the captain’s table.”
“But what is that costume?”
“The Ghost of Christmas Future.”
“The scary faceless ghost who points at Scrooge’s grave? That’s your most popular costume? Why would anyone want to wear a black robe when they had all this to choose from?” I waved at the finery that surrounded us.
“I know.” The manager put my wig in a hatbox and handed it across the counter. “I think some people wear it because it hides absolutely everything. Allows the shy ones to still dress up, you see.”
“You said some people wear it because they’re shy. What about the others?”
“I think the others are just plain creepy,” he said. “Do you want to see my absolute creepiest costume?”
“Of course.”
He turned to the rack behind him and pulled out an innocent green velvet robe from among the black ones. “A Ghost of Christmas Present costume,” he said. “But a special one given to us by a theater company.” He opened the robe. From the white satin interior scowled two horrifying faces, gaunt children staring out of dark eye sockets, the flesh tight around their skulls.
“Ignorance and Want,” I said, “the two monster-children who clung to the ghost of Christmas Present.”
“‘No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread,’” the clerk quoted.
“The costume almost looks new.” The green velvet was plush and no stains or rips marred the white lining.
“It is.” The clerk nodded. “Hardly anyone wears it. Who wants to be reminded of ignorance and want?”
CHAPTER 22
A Strong Appetite for Contradiction
I would have been on time to dinner, but I had to pee.
“Easier said than done,” I mumbled to myself as I stared at the restroom stall, which was a good foot and a half skinnier than my hoop skirt. I squished the sides of my skirt down and walked into the stall. Doable. Wall-to-wall hoop skirt, but doable. I turned my hiney toward the toilet seat and felt a tug on my skirt. I let go of my hoop skirt so I could see what caught me, and whoomph! I felt like one of those exploding Poppin’ Fresh crescent roll thingies, fully expanded to fill the space. I pawed through miles of green brocade, but couldn’t see what had grabbed my skirt. “Dammit.”
“Are you okay?” A small girl peered in the open stall door.
“Kind of,” I said. I tried to push my skirt down at the sides, but now whatever I was caught on had grabbed my skirt but good. I let go of my skirt again so I didn’t tear the fabric. Whoomph!
The little girl giggled.
“Can you see what my skirt is stuck on?” I pointed to the side of the stall where I thought my skirt was caught.
She stuck her head inside the stall and shook her head.
“Maybe if you come closer?”
She stepped into the stall with me and looked down at my skirt. “Oh, it’s stuck on that thing.”
“The toilet handle?”
“No.”
“Toilet paper roll?”
“No.”
“Toilet cover dispenser?”
“It’s a box. Where my mom puts her mouse.”
“Her mouse?”
“You know. It’s a white mouse with a tail.”
Hmm, white with a tail. “Her tampon.”
“Yeah.”
I am a detective, you know. So I was stuck on the tampon receptacle. “Could you unhook it for me?”
“It’s stuck underneath.”
“Maybe if I lift up my skirt, you could reach it.”
“Okay.”
I raised my skirt and she crept under it.
The door to the restroom opened. “Eloise? Have you fallen in? Whatever is taking you so…Oh.” Eloise’s mom skidded to a halt in front of my stall. “Is that my daughter under your skirt?”
It took several minutes to calm down Eloise’s mom, a few more to get me unhooked from the tampon receptacle, and then several more to figure out how I was going to use the toilet (I really had to pee by then), so I ended up ten minutes late for dinner.
“My apologies, everyone,” I said as I approached the captain’s table. I decided not to go into the whole bathroom/tampon/hoop skirt story.
“No worries. I ordered for you.” Jonas stood and pulled out a delicately carved wooden chair for me. He wore a well-cut black tailcoat. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Though the skirt and corset were pains in the ass, the glimpse I’d seen of myself in the bathroom mirror was small-waisted and full-skirted and pink-cheeked (probably from lack of air). I felt beautiful.
Until I sat down. Then my devil hoop skirt flipped up and hit me in the face, exposing my bright pink Victoria’s Secret underwear, which I suspected weren’t historically accurate despite the name.
“Oh dear.” A woman jumped up from the table and helped me wrangle my skirt into place. “It happens to most of us the first time we wear a hoop,” she said. “The trick is to sit on the edge of your chair. If you lean back, whoops, up goes the skirt.”
I thanked the woman, who was dressed in a high-necked gown of deep blue. “I’m Rose,” she said, sitting down next to a man dressed in a double-breasted navy blue suit with epaulets on his shoulders. “I’m married to Captain Steerwell here.”
“How do you do, everyone.” I nodded slightly at the five couples seated at the table. “I’m Ivy Meadows.”
“Where are your manners, Jonas?” Theo sat next to Jonas and wore a similar tailcoat.
“My apologies. I was just about to introduce—”
Theo stood. “You probably know of me, Miss Meadows, but allow me to introduce myself. I’m Theo Pushwright, and this is my literary assistant, Madalina Botchick.” Madalina was dressed in a gown of dove gray silk trimmed in black, her ash blonde hair pulled into a bun wound about by a braid of her own hair. My lacy dress and wig felt costume-ish by comparison.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Pushwright,” I said. “I understand you’re Jonas’s stepfather.” A waiter silently deposited bowls of soup before each of us.
“Yes.” As Theo studied Jonas’s face, his eyes narrowed in disappointment and his lips puckered in disgust. “If I’d been his real father, perhaps things would have turned out differently.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I’m the black sheep of the family.” Jonas sank in his seat.
“Has to be old news,” I said. “A directing gig for Get Lit! is quite a coup.”
Jonas shook his head.
“Of course it is. Most theater directors have to
go from job to job, or wind up doing theater administration too, which, let’s face it, is not what most creative people want to—”
“I think our onboard theater is marvelous.” The captain’s wife broke in, obviously noting the tension I had ignored in favor of defending Jonas. “Both the entertainment and The Royal Victoria Theatre itself. I saw that you filled the space for your lecture, Mr. Pushwright. You must have many fans onboard.”
At the mention of fans, Theo’s face took on the charismatic glow I’d seen at his book signing. “Why, yes, I’m honored to have so many people who believe in the power of positivity.”
“My former roommate Harley must have believed,” I said.
Jonas gave me a sharp look. No one else seemed to notice that I used the past tense, though the captain’s wife set down her water glass with a thump.
“She must have really been looking forward to your visit,” I continued. “She already had a signed book and everything. You said she was positively perfect.”
“Probably came to one of my Positively Perfect seminars.” Theo sipped his wine. “They’re weekend retreats designed especially for women, to help them realize the power and beauty of their femininity.”
So the signature on Harley’s book didn’t imply anything—unless Theo helped Harley realize her feminine power and beauty in a one-on-one, up-close-and-personal situation. I watched him carefully, but his face showed nothing. No. The signed book was a dead end.
“Maybe you’d like to attend one of my weekends?” said Theo. “When you’re in port, of course.” He smiled at me, a bit too warmly it seemed. “I could arrange a discount.”
Jonas shifted in his seat next to me. This was getting weird. Theo was now studying my face with an expression of interested delight, as if he’d just discovered a new Rembrandt. It was especially strange since the incredibly beautiful Madalina sat right next to him. I had the distinct impression he was using me to goad Jonas.
“Ah.” Theo turned his charm on me full tilt. “I remember you. I wasn’t sure because you wore a different wig and costume, but I recognize you now. You wanted to quit smoking.”
