by ML Banner
“Ah, Mrs. Carmichael,” Al stuttered. “Ah, this was how I found Mon-sewer this morning.” He wanted desperately to avoid bringing up last night’s events. “Have you noticed any behavioral problems before this trip?”
As if slapped, she recoiled, her own anger boiling over at this man’s insolence. Still, his words rang true. Monsieur had been confused before they left Paris and then he acted a little aggressive yesterday morning when he was checked onto the plane. Maybe her baby was just scared of traveling. She knew she would often get tired and cranky after waking up from a long day of travel, like now. It’s probably worse for an animal traveling in a cage, something she would otherwise never do to her Monsieur. Perhaps this man wasn’t to blame after all, though he would have to explain what happened to his foot. Still, she was sure he didn’t know how to calm her pup.
She’d try what always worked when he was frightened.
“Leave us alone for just a moment,” she said to the man. When she spoke to Monsieur, her voice went up an octave and down a few decibels. “Monsieur’s mommy knows how to settle him down.”
The worker, whose name tag listed an unpronounceable name and indicated he was from Mauritius, nodded and walked back to the front of the room and sat down at a small desk she hadn’t even noticed when she pounced on him from the door. She knelt back down and tried to relieve her tiny boy’s anguish, talking to him in baby talk as she normally did.
Monsieur emitted a long rolling growl, punctuated by a sliver of saliva hanging from its mouth.
A better idea struck her like a thunderbolt, and she almost shuddered at her own brilliance.
A guilty flash at the little dark man confirmed he wasn’t looking her way. Feeling safe, Eloise opened her Hermès and yanked out a prescription pill bottle from her own stash of narcotics. She kept an ample supply for just about every occasion. Her doctor had given her these particular babies for her anxiety—she’d been having more of it lately, although she didn’t know why.
She pulled out two large, white capsules.
She was allowed to have two of these at any one time. So one, for a dog maybe one tenth her weight, should more than do the trick. Okay, maybe Monsieur is more like a twelfth of my weight, but who’s counting?
She flashed a glance once more at the little man and when she was sure she was alone in her next crime, she tossed one tablet into her mouth, then opened the door to Monsieur’s enclosure just enough to thrust her hand inside. She kept her eyes glued to the man and blindly held her hand out for Monsieur, insisting he take the second tablet out of her palm, the way he’d usually take treats from her. When she felt the tablet drop out, she attempted to withdraw her hand—and Monsieur bit her.
She yelped, clicked the door closed, and bolted upright, clutching her injured hand. She gave a deep scowl at her dog for adding to her indignity. With her throbbing hand held at her side, she clamped down on it with her other, so the man couldn’t see it.
“Are you all right?” He was bounding in her direction.
“Yes!” she blurted.
She glanced back down at Monsieur because he’d finally stopped growling. At first she was shocked to see the droplets of her own blood on and around the pill. A trail led to and pooled under her hands. Her dog’s next action disgusted her.
Monsieur busied himself licking up her blood like some sugary treat, and with the blood, he ingested the pill. The sight turned her stomach. Holding back her nausea, she felt some measure of relief knowing her mission was accomplished. That downer should calm him pretty quickly.
She turned back to the man, keeping her body between her hand and him. “And I think Monsieur will be fine pretty soon, too.”
With her back to him, she snatched a silk handkerchief from her purse and tightly wrapped the wound. She wondered if she needed medical attention, or if just a band-aid—perhaps many band-aids—would suffice. No-no, a band-aid would not look right with this evening’s special gown, she thought. It was her fondest hopes that the gown alone would be enough to stop Edgar's heart. That wouldn’t happen if her hands were covered in band-aids. Presentation was everything to her.
When she returned her attention back to the little man, she noticed that he was staring at her ass—at least he had a pulse, which is something he couldn’t say about her Edgar—and then, startled at his own dalliance, returned his own gaze up to her eye level.
She sashayed past him and strutted to the door. “Thank you... Ahh ...” She acted out a harsh squint in the direction of his name tag, but wasn’t going to even try to figure out what to call the man.
“Al is my name, Mrs. Carmichael,” he said with a very sweet grin. He is kind of cute, in a small-man sort of way.
Eloise snickered at this and his chosen nickname.
“Thank you, Al.” She gave him a genuine smile and paraded out the door, knowing where his eyes were now. Her smile grew even larger.
She hesitated after the door closed behind her, holding up her throbbing hand. The damned thing hurt a lot now, and it was still bleeding. She couldn’t very well go to dinner bleeding all over the place. She caught a glimpse of the Regal Medical sign, conveniently located right next door to the Pet Spa. Perhaps the doctor had a skin-colored bandage. Then she remembered she had some white gloves she could wear over the bandage.
She didn’t want anything to spoil her grand entrance tonight.
12
T.D. Bonaventure
T.D. Bonaventure, as he was known to his millions of readers, asked everyone at the captain’s table to refer to him as Ted, and to his wife, Theresa Jean, as TJ.
Captain Christiansen still couldn’t get over the disparity between “Ted” and “T.D.” He had presumed someone different. Although T.D.’s stories dealt with one apocalypse or another, his writing style was literary, almost like poetry. And he often injected British idioms into his prose, which had led Jörgen to believe that T.D. was British, perhaps even belonging to the aristocracy, as he remembered reading something about a Bonaventure family in a British historical novel his wife had once given him. When he briefly met Ted on the bridge, and more so now, he could see he was completely mistaken.
His image of the aristocratic Mr. Bonaventure clashed greatly with the real-life Ted, in spite of Ted’s handlebar mustache. Besides using a name some would consider uncivilized, instead of his given name of Theodore, he spoke with the coarse parlance of a common American, attaching primitive colloquial phrases to otherwise well-thought-out sentences. Yet, in spite of the clash with his assumed persona, Jörgen actually liked him better as “Ted.” He was far more real.
“I’m so glad you’ve chosen to join us. I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you about your books.”
Captain Christiansen spoke with jovial animation. Ted wondered if it was the same man he had met earlier on the bridge. But he reasoned that the captain was just keeping up appearances, and was attempting to play down what they both knew were growing problems closing in fast. Ted feigned a smile, trying to play along too. “Thank you, Captain. It’s an honor for us to be invited to your table.”
Being in the giant dining hall was already pushing Ted’s limits. But sitting at the center of this fishbowl was almost unbearable. It took almost a bottle of the gifted wine to ply his nerves to a manageable enough level and get to dinner, albeit late. He’d need another bottle to make it through this.
His stomach was already in knots over reliving the events leading to their cruise. Ted felt his nerves ramp up even more now, eager to deflect the attention from himself. Before he considered the implications he blurted, “I’m curious, Captain, were you able to get most of your crew and guests on board before you had to depart early?”
This was the one conversation Jörgen had hoped to avoid while at the dinner table. His turn to deflect. “First, Mr. Bonaventure—”
“—Ted, please, Captain. Besides, you know Bonaventure is just my nom de plume. My British roots are pretty far removed from the Ted you see here.”
/>
“Yes, of course, Ted. I just wanted to thank you and your wife for your assistance in alerting the guests and some of my crew, so they could get on board before... we had a bigger problem.”
“And thank you, Captain.” TJ interrupted, “for the wine.” She held up her glass of the wine served at their table, the same wine as their cabin gift.
Ted noticed that she was enjoying the wine as much as he was.
“It’s my honor, Mrs. Williams.” The captain raised his glass with a smile.
“Oh please, call me TJ. Everyone does.”
“Theresa Jean sounds much better,” Jean Pierre interjected, with a wider smile.
“Just TJ, please.” She flashed a sloppy grin in return.
Ted noticed once more the familiar comfort they had with each other, and that they held one another’s gazes for longer than normal.
“If you don’t mind,” the captain continued, “I’ll call you Theresa Jean, which sounds far lovelier to me, too.” He offered his own grin to her, but Ted found it to be more practiced, expected.
“To answer your question, Mr... Sorry, Ted. We have a total of 738 guests on board, and we had bookings for 1325. We’re short 195 crew, but because of the lower guest number, we’re in good shape. The good news is you can have seconds of everything!” The captain announced this with laughter. Again, practiced.
Ted caught the staff captain mouthing something to TJ. Ted glared at her, and she flashed him the look of a Cheshire cat with a canary still in its mouth. It was not like his wife to flirt with another man, except for her job, and certainly not in Ted’s presence. But this was more than flirting. They knew each other and yet both were pretending otherwise. It was one more puzzle he did not want to have to solve.
“Excuse me Mr. Bonaventure?” Zeka, the ship’s cruise director chimed in, interrupting his mental meanderings.
“Please, just Ted.”
“Oh, ah yes, Ted. In your first novel, Bugs, how did you come up with the story of insects taking over the world?”
“Didn’t you know?” TJ said with laughter in her voice. “He’s actually an entomologist.”
“Retired,” Ted cut in.
“Yeah, he studied the mating rituals of praying mantis, or is that manti”—she flashed her sultry grin and raised her glass in his direction. “Anyway, he studied praying manti and other interesting shi... stuff.”
“Of course, a praying mantis ate its mate... after.” He clicked a smile and raised his glass.
“Touché, dear,” TJ said clinking his glass.
“And what do you do Theresa Jean?” Zeka asked.
“Just TJ.”
“Oh, don’t you know,” Ted said in his fake British voice, “My wife is a secret agent for the US government.” He offered a smirk, exaggerated a look upward, while twirling his mustache.
“No, really?” asked Zeka.
TJ leaned forward and said, “But if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
There was a break in the table’s conversation as food was being served. But it also seemed that an invisible bubble separating them from the rest of the guests had been pierced. At that moment, the din of the main dining room or MDR flooded their ears. The MDR’s dinner guests were abnormally loud in their conversations. And there was little doubt about what they were discussing.
Although earlier the captain had publicly announced that they had set sail without problems, at their table he had just let on—loud enough that many around them could hear—that several of his crew and several hundred guests had not made it on board.
Ted was sure that this, along with what they had witnessed earlier in Malaga, was the subject of the nervous chatter rumbling around the room.
Many heads were glued to their phones, mouths reporting what their eyes saw. Because of the ship’s proximity to the coast, many still had Internet or texting capabilities by connecting to nearby cell towers, in addition to those who ponied up for the ship’s high-priced Internet service. Besides the stories around the Internet, word was bound to spread with communications from worried friends and family back home.
Ted’s eyes wandered from table to table and took in the uneasy faces. It was like worry had taken on a palpable presence of its own, as it floated from group to group, like some dark cloud that rained down disquiet upon each table, and then moved on to the next one.
The person with the phone at each table, after sharing their news to their table mates, then shot dark glances in Ted's direction at the captain's table to see if they shared in their same worry.
Then everything changed.
Another presence commanded the attention of all those with eyesight at the MDR.
It was Eloise Carmichael.
A very attractive woman with long black hair strutted along the port-side walkway running through the MDR, an elderly man in tow. Even though it was the first formal night, it was not unexpected to see all manner of formal and wildly informal dress every night of the cruise. But formal nights often brought out the most outlandish. This woman’s dress, or lack of one, was what drew everyone’s gaze. Men and women, guests and crew, all gaped at what they saw.
Every curve was visible through her sheer gown, which looked as if she had delicate white lace flourishes painted directly onto her arms, shoulders, breasts, torso, groin, and legs, all of which conspicuously covered just barely more than a sheer negligee might. As she approached their table, it appeared to Ted that the dress’s long skirt and train—also nude-colored—hid everything from her hips down. But everything else above this was all her.
TJ’s elbow found Ted’s gut, in a not too subtle chide. “You’re staring, dear,” she huffed.
“Everyone is staring, dear,” Ted chortled.
“Good God Almighty, what is that?” quipped Urban, one of the captain’s first officers, who was known among his fellow crew members for his often prudish comments about guests and their poor taste in clothing.
“That would be Eloise Carmichael, and her fourth husband,” announced Zeka.
“I’m sure she married this one for love,” TJ offered sarcastically.
There were a couple of snickers, but Zeka ignored the comment and continued, seemingly more mesmerized than the others. “I have that same dress. J. Lo wore it to the ‘13 Golden Globes. Hers and probably this one are by Zhair Murad. Mine was a knock-off from China. Besides, I don’t look like that.”
Most of the dining hall gawked at Mrs. Carmichael as she paraded to a table for two in the middle of the two-story hall, only one table away from the captain’s.
“Fourth husband? That’s a lot of divorces in a short time. She doesn’t look that old,” Ted mused out loud.
“The other three died of quote mysterious causes end quote,” said Jean Pierre, who seemed more interested in Ted’s wife than Mrs. Carmichael, now directly behind them. Ted looked at Jean Pierre and then around to the Carmichaels’ table.
Carmichael made eye contact with them, flashed a big smile, and waved a white-gloved hand in their direction. She paused while her husband waited for her to sit, but she changed course and headed in their direction, leaving her husband waiting for her.
“Oh look, dear, she’s coming over to meet you,” TJ continued to tease her husband.
“More likely Captain Christiansen,” he responded, but he felt his panic increase as he watched her advance and stop directly in front of him.
“Mr. Bonaventure,” she said through an exaggerated smile accentuated by oversized lips. She daintily offered that white-gloved hand. “I’m a huge fan. I’m Eloise—”
“Mrs. Carmichael,” Ted said in a somewhat British accent. He stood and accepted her hand, although he was unsure if he was supposed to give a peck on a knuckle or shake it. The dilemma and the pause made him immensely uncomfortable. He hadn’t even wanted to come to the damned dinner, preferring the anonymity of room service. Their checked bag arrived and with it their formal clothes. Without any more excuses, TJ insisted, and so they came and he was thr
ust into this situation. But then something caught his eye.
“Mrs. Carmichael? I’m sorry, but I think your hand is bleeding.” Ted released her. The back of one of her gloved hands looked padded, like it was full of wads of cotton balls. On the top of the padding was a moist semi-circle of red, apparently from a wound that had bled through. That explains the gloves.
“Ah, thank you, Mr. Bonaventure,” Eloise said, covering her injured hand with her other, shrinking back from him. She stared past her hands for a moment, seemingly befuddled. She snapped back to attention. “I better go back to the doctor,” she announced. “Captain,” she nodded in Jörgen’s direction.
“Mr. Bonaventure. Until later, I hope.” She turned and left, following the same parade route she had arrived on. This time was not for show. She hurried, not even waiting for her husband who attempted unsuccessfully to catch up.
“See, Mr. Bonaventure, your fans even bleed for you,” TJ snickered.
“Before you sit down, Ted, would you offer a toast?” boomed the captain.
Ted, already completely out of sorts, was now mortified to see he’d not only drawn his table’s eyes, but those of the entirety of the dining room.
TJ leaned toward him, whispering just loud enough for him to hear. “And don’t fuck it up.” She smiled, knowing it was probably exactly what he needed to hear.
He just glared at her. But his glare turned into a winsome smile. His wife always knew which buttons of his to push at the right time.
Ted reached down to grab his wine and noticed a flute of champagne at each of their place-settings. He hesitated only a moment before raising his, waiting for everyone from their table and the dining room to follow. A character from one of his books was in a similar situation—if that was even possible. And from it he offered this toast:
"May the wind be at our backs and the seas ahead be calm as we sail on to our next port of adventure."
“Cheers,” the table said in unison, followed by the entire dining room.
All clinked their glasses, sipped their champagne, and the MDR’s chatter built back up. Finally, Ted sat down, shrinking into the more comfortable confines of his own chair.
