Terns of Endearment

by Donna Andrews

  “Why don’t they just say free?” Angie rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t ‘free drinks’ pull people in even faster?”

  “Because technically the cocktails aren’t free,” Tish said. “We’ve already paid for them in those far-from-trivial ticket prices.”

  “Former English teacher,” Kate said to me, pointing at Tish.

  “What’s with the former?” Tish said. “It’s like being a Marine—once an English teacher, always an English teacher.”

  The latest announcement worked. People began showing up. Including two bartenders: Aarav from the Starlight Lounge and a tall blond woman. They began setting up a small bar along the port side of the room. Although it soon became apparent that the free cocktails would only become available when the safety drill was over.

  Mother and Aunt Penelope showed up, still carrying fragile-looking flowered cups and saucers and holding cucumber sandwiches so tiny they’d have been perfect to set the table with if you were having a few Barbie dolls to tea. Caroline arrived, shooing Grandfather and the two photographers before her, and ignoring Grandfather’s loud complaints that he already knew how to jump in a blasted lifeboat if he had to.

  “You seen Trevor?” Grandfather asked as he passed by my table. “Doesn’t answer his damned phone.”

  “If I see him I’ll tell him you were looking for him.” I repressed a brief spasm of irritation—at Trevor, for a change, instead of Grandfather. The whole idea of having Grandfather give lectures on board a ship had been Trevor’s to start with. He was probably hoping that organizing Grandfather would be a lot easier on board a ship—so many fewer places to get lost in when he was supposed to be somewhere else, for example. Grandfather had immediately seized the idea and run with it, of course. But still—Trevor had started this all. He should be here to do his job.

  My cousin Rose Noire arrived waving around a bundle of herbs—no doubt she’d been busy trudging from deck to deck, wafting sage and whatever else, improving the ship’s chi as well as she could, given the ban on setting anything on fire. She’d joined the expedition largely because she was concerned about our foolhardy plan to venture into the dreaded Bermuda Triangle and believed that only her protective herbs and charms could protect us from the dire consequences of our foolhardiness. I’d eventually given up reminding her how many cruise ships sailed safely to and from Bermuda every year.

  My brother, Rob, and Delaney, his fiancée, were among the last to arrive. Though not actually honeymooners yet, they were certainly acting the part. I didn’t expect to see much of them during our voyage.

  The room was getting crowded, and it was past the starting time, but evidently a few passengers were still AWOL from the safety drill. And clearly the crew members were getting more and more stressed and annoyed by the situation—although to give them credit, they were doing a decent job of disguising that fact with broad smiles and cheerful apologies to those of us who were waiting.

  Finally, about twenty minutes past our scheduled start time, I saw a flood of relief wash over the crew members’ faces. Presumably the last passenger had finally entered. I turned, and was not the least bit surprised to see Desiree the Diva entering the dining room, flanked by two male crew members who appeared to be half hustling her along and half holding her up. They plunked her down at a table near the door and one of them hovered right behind her as if he expected her to make a break for it.

  “We’re finally ready to start the safety drill,” the perky-voiced young woman said. “Please turn off your cell phones.” Meanwhile one of the other crew members was scanning Desiree’s Pastime card and looking as if he’d gladly confiscate it and escort her back ashore while there was still time. Although he was still doggedly smiling at her.

  The safety drill itself took all of ten minutes. A video showed happy passengers frolicking on a ship’s deck. They all looked up with implausibly unpanicked expressions when a disembodied voice—presumably from the vessel’s loudspeaker system—told them to collect their life jackets from their staterooms and report to their muster stations. Cut to a remarkably tidy stateroom so we could watch a cheerful young woman open her closet door and react with astonishment and delight to find a life jacket waiting therein. Cut to a close-up of the young woman very slowly putting on her life jacket with exaggerated care while another disembodied voice explained how to do it. Just in case the video wasn’t clear enough, half a dozen crew members scattered at intervals throughout the audience put on a live demonstration—though none of them appeared to be anywhere near as enthralled with the process as the young woman on the video. The video then cut to a group of life jacket-clad passengers smiling like Stepford Wives as they waited in a line—presumably to board a lifeboat.

  When the video ended a man stepped onto the stage—a tall, burly, distinguished-looking man with a lugubrious horsey face, a neat salt-and-pepper beard, a ruddy nose, and so much gold braid on his white uniform that I deduced he was either the ship’s captain or a visiting admiral imported to add zest to the otherwise uninspiring safety drill.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I’m Captain Detweiler, your skipper for this cruise. I’d like to welcome you aboard the Pastime Wanderer, and wish you a very enjoyable voyage. Thank you.”

  He nodded pleasantly at us and strode down from the stage and toward the exit. He didn’t particularly look as if he was hurrying, but his long stride covered ground, and he was out the door before anyone thought of any questions to ask him. I made a mental note not to expect an enthralling conversation if I were invited to sit at the captain’s table for dinner some evening. Assuming they even still did that.

  Another officer had hopped onto the little stage. The first officer.

  “Good afternoon, Pastime family,” he began. “I’m First Officer Martin. I’d like to echo Captain Detweiler’s greetings and assure you that if there’s anything I or anyone else in the crew can do for you, you have only to ask. And now if you’ll just keep your seats, the crew will be taking your orders for those complimentary cocktails or smoothies!”

  I bade the writers a temporary farewell and hopped over to the table where Michael and the boys were saving me a seat. Josh and Jamie were deep in a discussion of whether to repeat their favorite frozen concoctions or ask for something even more exotic.

  “This is going to take forever,” I heard Mother say at the next table. “They could at least have let us bring our teapot with us.”

  The half-dozen crew members in the room began circulating from table to table, taking drink orders.

  “I wonder if there’s any particular reason they want to keep us all here in the main dining room for what I suspect will be an unreasonably long time,” I said to Michael.

  “Maybe they’re loading something they don’t want us to see.” His voice was slightly muffled by the dinner napkin he was still wearing over his face to maintain his shark disguise.

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. Live whooping cranes and dodos and whatever other endangered species they intend to roast for our dinner. Kilos of cocaine. Caches of weapons for the Bermudian separatist movement.”

  “I think the cocaine gets smuggled into the U.S., not out, and is there even a Bermudian separatist movement?”

  “Beats me,” he said. “Probably they’re just sick and tired of people trying to run back on land to buy something they forgot to pack. Lot of that going on when we were boarding. And the crew were all very nice about it, but it had to have been annoying.”

  As the crew members took drink orders, First Officer Martin circulated from table to table, schmoozing with the passengers. He was perfectly pleasant, but I decided a little of him went a long way. He was so … “perky” wasn’t quite the word. Doggedly cheerful, perhaps. And yes, a little put-upon, as if once again he was stuck doing something that he thought should be someone else’s job. I found myself hoping there wasn’t such a thing as getting invited to the first officer’s table at dinner. It would probably be
a lot like dining with Trevor. Maybe the captain’s table wouldn’t be that bad—I could always bring a book.

  Taking the drink orders went fairly quickly, and the half-dozen crew members who’d been doing it disappeared, probably to take care of urgent pre-sailing tasks that were easier to complete without passengers underfoot. And clearly it was going to take a while for the bartenders—there were three of them now—to make all the drinks. To distract us from watching their frantic efforts, the first officer hopped back up on stage. As he waited for us to quiet down, his smile looked strained, and I got the distinct impression that making speeches to the passengers was his least favorite part of his job. I began feeling just a little sorry for him.

  “And now if you’ll look on your table, you’ll find a stack of game cards. We’re going to play cruise ship bingo! Every square on your card has a short description like ‘lives on the West Coast’ or ‘plays golf.’ All the cards are slightly different. Your mission is to go around and meet your fellow passengers! Find out which ones fit the descriptions in the squares on your card, and get them to sign it. The first person to fill out his or her entire card wins a surprise gift!”

  The room was instantly filled with murmurs that almost drowned out the sound of half a dozen blenders buzzing furiously. I felt a sudden twinge of guilt about ordering another frozen margarita—from the look of it, every single person in the room must have ordered a frozen concoction of some sort. Well, I had nothing else to do. I reminded myself to tip the long-suffering bartenders generously—if there wasn’t a way to do that now, I could certainly find them later in the trip—and settled back in my seat to study my fellow passengers. And the few visible crew members. One of them was hovering over Desiree, and I noticed that she was already halfway through another bright pink drink with a parasol in it. As I was studying her with disapproving eyes, First Officer Martin, who’d been going from table to table exchanging pleasantries with the passengers, arrived at hers. I couldn’t hear what he said to her, but I could have guessed from her thunderous reply.

  “No, everything isn’t satisfactory, dammit!” No one would ever accuse Desiree of not speaking up. I’d met opera singers who couldn’t produce that much volume. “I had to wait forever for my last drink! And I don’t want the same thing to happen with my next, so you tell them to bring it now.”

  The first officer said something inaudible—probably a reminder that there were other passengers who hadn’t even received their first drink.

  “Well, that’s their problem, not mine.” Desiree chugged the rest of her pink concoction and slammed her empty glass down on the table so hard that the paper parasol bounced out. Martin flinched as if she’d struck him.

  While everyone else—me included—was merely watching openmouthed, Mother took action. She sailed over to the table.

  “I just wanted to tell you how lovely your shoes look.” Neither her voice nor her face revealed what I knew must be a struggle not to add “What a pity they’re wasted on someone like you.”

  “They’re Christian Louboutin,” Desiree said. She lifted one leg rather suddenly, nearly skewering Mother, who had bent over to admire the red suede heels at closer range.

  “Yes—the Pijonina model, isn’t it?” Mother retreated ever so slightly—just out of kicking range. “I can never decide whether I like that or the Victorina Flame better.”

  They chatted briefly—although it was less of a conversation than a contest to see which of them could drop the most names of expensive shoe designers. After Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Ferragamo they lost me. Mother kept it up until Aarav, the bartender, carefully slid a frozen drink into place at Desiree’s elbow. Then Mother gracefully extracted herself from the conversation. She stopped at our table on the way back to her own.

  “What a … trying woman.” She gave a sidelong glance at the boys, and I suspected she’d have used a less polite word in the absence of her grandsons.

  “Did you find out if she wears your size?” I asked. “Because there’s no use getting me to mug her for the shoes if they’re the wrong size.”

  “Far too big for me, dear, but thank you anyway.” And with a deceptively benign smile she returned to her own table.

  “Mom! Aren’t you playing?” Jamie looked puzzled.

  “Why don’t you fill my game card for me,” I suggested. “And since you’re doing all the work, you can keep the prize if you win.”

  “And here, Josh—you can do mine.” Michael handed over his card.

  The boys dashed off, overjoyed at having two chances to win the prize, and began showing their cards to Mother, Aunt Penelope, and the others at their table.

  “Ah—there you are!” Grandfather had appeared at our table. “Trevor must have slipped out without waiting for a drink. Damn the man— Michael, any chance you could help Guillermo and Wim with something?”

  Guillermo and Wim were Grandfather’s cameramen and general tech experts.

  “Sure. If Meg doesn’t mind keeping an eye on the boys.”

  “No problem,” I said. “But aren’t any of you staying for the complimentary cocktail?”

  “Hmph.” Grandfather strode out as if mere cocktails were beneath his notice, with Guillermo in close pursuit.

  “Caroline is going to bring them when they’re ready,” Wim said. “She can bring Michael’s, too.”

  “Suits me,” Michael said, and he and Wim strode out together.

  Dad, who had been trailing after Grandfather, stayed behind briefly.

  “If you see Trevor, tell him we’ve got it covered,” he said. “And he should stay put, and use the anti-seasickness medicine I prescribed, and not worry about your grandfather until he’s sure he’s feeling all right.”

  “Oh, is that it?” I felt guilty over my harsh thoughts about Trevor. “Is he actually feeling seasick already? With the ship still docked?” That didn’t bode well.

  Chapter 5

  “To tell the truth, I think what Trevor’s feeling is anxiety over the possibility that he “might get seasick,” Dad explained. “Since he was starting to feel it while we were still on the pier.”

  “Or maybe just all-purpose anxiety,” I suggested. “Getting Grandfather safely on board is no picnic.”

  “Also possible.” Dad sighed. “But whatever the reason, he was definitely unwell. So I gave him a transdermal scopolamine patch and a couple of one-milligram Valium tablets. If he really is starting to feel any seasickness, the patch gives the best chance of stopping that, and if he’s only stressing out, the Valium should help without making him so relaxed that he can’t help your grandfather—one milligram’s the pediatric dose.”

  “Good,” I said. “A mildly Valiumed Trevor might be a lot less annoying to have around anyway.”

  “Unfortunately, I think Rose Noire overheard us,” Dad added. “I think she’s planning to take him some of her herbal tea.”

  “Yikes.” Rose Noire’s herbal teas were often effective, but unfortunately they almost always tasted vile. “Did you warn him?”

  “I did, and if she drops by with tea he’ll pretend to be napping. Please don’t tell her that.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, I should go help your grandfather.” He headed for the door, although I noticed that he was stopping to talk to people along the way. I hoped his presence wasn’t mission-critical for whatever Grandfather was doing,

  I glanced around. The boys had moved on to the writers’ table. The first officer, still making the rounds of all the tables, was already there chatting with them. As I watched, a crew member delivered a tray of drinks. Kate and Tish grabbed their glasses and fled. First Officer Martin said something—probably another reminder to let him know if there was anything they needed—and moved on. The poor man looked exhausted—clearly socializing with several hundred strangers was grueling for him.

  His departure left only tiny blond Angie, the mystery writer, and Janet, the fantasy writer. Janet had taken off a sweater, revealing that she
was wearing a National Park Service t-shirt. A clue to her day job perhaps?

  Mother and Aunt Penelope were discussing the ship’s decor—and how they’d have improved it if given a chance. Sooner or later Mother would try to drag me into the debate over whether chintz would have been a better choice for covering the dining room chairs.

  I decided to join the two remaining writers. They weren’t likely to be discussing the carpet or the light fixtures—or if they were, at least they’d be figuring out how to describe them in a scene, or maybe how to kill someone with them, not what to replace them with. So I promised Mother I’d be back soon and headed for the writers’ table.

  “It’s impossible,” Angie was saying as I came near.

  “For heaven’s sake, snap out of it,” Janet said. Now that I was closer, I could see that her t-shirt was from the Mordor National Park. So, not a day job. At least I hoped not.

  “I should have stayed home to work on that synopsis,” Angie said. “I can’t do this.”

  “You’ll figure it out. You always do. You’ve never yet missed a deadline.”

  “There’s always a first time.”

  I had paused a couple of feet from their table, realizing I’d barged in on a conversation they might not want me to join. Angie glanced up, forced a slight smile, and gestured to an empty chair.

  “Have a seat,” she said. “Don’t mind me.” Turning back to Janet, she added, “I’m just going to pace the deck for a while and try to think of a way out.”

  A way out? Of what—the ship? Maybe Trevor wasn’t the only passenger overcome with anxiety.

  “Good grief.” Janet shook her head, stood up, and looked at me. “See if you can cheer her up.”

  Janet headed for the exit. I sat. Angie made no move to go out to the deck for pacing. Maybe she was planning on finishing her drink first. Or just staring into it for a couple more hours.