Getting Old is the Best Revenge (28 page)

The wave crashes. The ship creaks ominously, but holds, as the wave hits hard against the hull below us. Thank God. We didn't drown, but we sure got soaked.

There is silence as everyone stands unmoving, unsure of what might happen next. The winds have lessened.

Evvie, Sophie, and Bella stagger their way back to where Ida and I are still hanging on to our rails.

"Wasn't that invigorating?" says Ida.

We look at her as if she's crazy.

We all hug, glad we're still alive.

Evvie says, "I have such a headache. When I was leaning against that lifeboat, something moving inside kept knocking against the side and kept hitting my head."

"Maybe the anchor," says Ida.

The seven blasts haven't stopped. That means they still haven't found Bob Martinson. I turn and look at that lifeboat. "Maybe not an anchor?" I look at Evvie.

"Maybe not," she says, reading my mind.

Evvie and I make our tortuous way toward the boat. The other girls, surprised, follow carefully after us. I put my ear against its side, listening.

Suddenly, the cover is kicked off and there, disheveled and disoriented, is Bob Martinson, tearing himself out from under the canvas. He sees us. We see him. For a moment we are like some frozen tableau, no one moving.

Then Bob looks behind him, seeing nothing but a great fall down to the ocean. Looks back at us again.

Bella says, amazed, "Just like in the movies. They always hide in the lifeboats."

I yell to the passengers, "Someone call the captain!"

Ida can't resist. "Get out,
putz.
Women and children first."

Bob makes his decision between the deep blue sea and us "devils." He jumps out of the lifeboat and onto the deck, knocking us aside like a row of bowling pins.

He runs through the crowd. We run after him. "Stop him! He's a murderer!"

People are confused. Some move out of his path. Some grab for him and miss.

Amazingly, Ida manages to take hold of his fancy dance jacket and now he is pulling her along.

"Hold on!" I yell.

"Cha-cha-cha," Ida yells back gleefully.

Meanwhile the girls are looking for weapons. Sophie grabs at a shuffleboard stick hanging on its hook. Bella seizes a life preserver off the wall.

"Make way!" I shout. Some people let us through, others get in our way.

I can still see Ida hanging on for all she's worth, while he keeps trying to shake her off. Now she's down almost on her knees and she makes a grab with both arms for one of his legs. He drags her along and now she's nearly flat on the ground, the toes of her shoes scraping the deck.

Sophie is almost up to him and she flails her shuffleboard stick out, trying to hit him.

"Ouch," says one of the passengers near her.

"Sorry," says Sophie.

Bella takes her best shot and skims the life preserver like a Frisbee into a perfect ring toss. Only it's landed on the head of a befuddled little old man in a wheelchair.

"Oops," Bella says as she pulls it off.

Other passengers seize upon the excitement and join the chase. All of us are still wobbling from side to side, slipping and sliding. Some are hitting the deck. Literally. The girls are chanting, "Stop him! Stop him!"

With elbows flailing, Robert plows through the crowd, shoving people out of his way.

And finally he has shaken loose of Ida, who lands flat on her face. I catch up to her and help her up.

I hear a familiar voice ahead of us. Who could forget that midwestern twang? It's the Green Bay Packers guy, Greg. "Don't worry, ladies," he shouts. "He ain't gonna make that first down."

With that, we see him dive for Robert. He tackles him, and the two of them go flying. Three other men jump into the scrimmage and grab on, too. From under the resulting pile, I hear Greg gleefully say, "Brett Favre, how do you like them cheese curds!"

And here comes the cavalry--oops, I mean the captain--and his gang for the coup de grace. Roberto is toast.

And, when he gets up, we girls hug Greg in another kind of scrimmage.

We never do get to eat. Due to the storm, the French Gourmet Night and the midnight buffet are canceled. It doesn't matter because we wouldn't have made it anyway. Terror and excitement wore us out. When we get to our room, we notice our message button on the phone is blinking, but we're too tired to check. We are asleep as fast as we can drop out of our sopping wet clothes, shower, get into our jammies, and fall into our beds.

47

Two Jacks

I
wake up from my dream, smiling. At eight a.m., waddaya know. A dream ending at a decent hour. Or maybe it was Evvie's leg heavily thrown over mine that woke me.

I sit up. Both girls are still asleep. Ditto the two in the next room. No surprise after the exhausting day and night we had. I hope the sun is shining after that horrific storm. Too bad we have no porthole.

The dream. What a dream! I relish the quiet so I can savor it.

New York City. In front of the main branch of the public library on Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. The place where I worked. Jack is going up the stairs. My husband, Jack, wearing the de rigueur outfit for the fifties' college professor, a tweed jacket with leather patches, cords, black horn-rimmed glasses, and a pipe in his mouth. Usually unlit.

"Where did you leave it?" he asks me.

"In my desk, right-hand drawer," I tell him.

"What's the name of it?"

"Paradise Lost,"
I remind my absentminded professor yet again.

He gives me one of his dazzling smiles, waves, and goes inside.

I wait, happily basking in the bright sunlight.

The two famous, originally pink, now gray, marble lions that guard the stately front doors turn to me. "You must have patience," says the one whose name is Patience. "You must have fortitude," says the one named Fortitude.

I giggle. This is delicious. Originally the lions were named after their benefactors, Lord Astor and Lady Lennox, but our famous mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, renamed them to inspire people to persevere during the economic depression of the thirties.

One of the front doors opens again. It's Jack, grinning and waving a book at me.

But it's Jack Langford. Dressed in a suit and tie and an open trench coat, with a shiny brass NYPD police badge attached to his lapel.

"Jack?" I say in the dream, surprised.

"The book you wanted was gone, but this one was there in its place."

He hands me
All This, and Heaven Too.

How perfect. A real soppy soap opera of a book now given to me on a ship called
Heavenly.

I laugh. And then I cry.

48

All's Well That Ends

P
eople breakfasting in the dining room are all

abuzz. Everyone is talking about last night's storm and the great chase on the Starlight deck. And sure enough, this morning, the weather is gorgeous, as if nothing had ever happened.

As we dip into our oatmeal, the Bingo Dolls barrel toward us. "Where were you?" Judy snaps at us. "We've been looking all over."

Rose says, "Don't you girls ever pick up your phone messages?"

We apologize. "Hey, the storm--" begins Ida.

"Storm, shmorm," says Judy. "Who cares. What matters is you won the big prize." With that, Judy opens her ample bingo bag and spills a thousand dollars in cash onto the table.

We are dumbfounded.

Sophie asks excitedly, "Whose packet won it?"

"Who knows?" says Rose. "You ran off so fast you never marked your names on them."

The girls paw the money happily as the Bingo Dolls watch us with great satisfaction. "You won it on the last coverall."

Evvie smiles. "So how come you told us? You could have kept it all for yourselves."

Rose is insulted. "That would be stealing."

"Just teasing," Evvie says, grinning. "So take your half. That was our deal."

Sophie sputters, wanting to object, but Evvie gives her a dirty look. We all know Sophie will say
she
never made that deal.

The Dolls hesitate. "Take it," Ida insists.

They happily count out their half as Sophie turns away, unable to bear the sight of money being given away. Evvie puts the rest of the bills in her purse.

"So how come you ran off so fast?"

"We had to catch a killer," Bella says brightly.

"Yeah, yeah," says Judy scornfully. "Can't you think of a better excuse?"

"Well, we're off," says Rose. "Aren't you going ashore to see Antigua?"

We look at one another. What with all yesterday's excitement, we never got around to discussing that.

"Probably," says Evvie. "A little later."

"See ya," the Dolls say as they head out. We can hear Rose comment, "I told you they'd share."

Our oatmeal is cold, so we are glad when our

warm scrambled eggs arrive. Just as we're about to dig in, we hear:

"Hey, detectives. How are ya?" Elio and Angelina are hurrying toward us. What's this? Angelina is wearing a yellow pantsuit?

"How are you?" I ask her gently.

She manages a small smile. "Life goes on. Elio went ashore early and bought me this."

"I like color," he says shyly. "And this is for you." Elio whips out a check already filled out. Sophie grabs it, attempts a whistle. It comes out a whoosh. "That's a lot of money."

"You don't owe us anything," I say. I hear Bella and Sophie groan.

"Yes, we do," says Angelina firmly. "If it weren't for you we never would have learned the truth, and he would have gotten away with killing my cousin." She quickly wipes away tears.

"We have news," I say. "The captain called this morning to tell us Bob sang like a canary as soon as they grabbed him. He wants to make a deal, dumping all the others."

"Always thought he was a coward," Elio comments. "Never could figure out what she saw in him. Always dancing around on tippy-toes. What kind of man is that?"

"We're leaving the ship," Angelina adds. "We're taking Amy with us. We need to get home and be with our families."

We get up and take turns hugging the Sicilianos.

"Please stay in touch," I tell them. "I mean it."

"If we don't see you sooner, we'll expect you

for Christmas Day dinner," Elio says. "We throw a hell of a party. And if you play your cards right, there might be a little something under the tree for each of you."

They wave and head out.

We brush away tears. Poor Amy. I wonder if she'll ever get over this trauma. All of it such a sad misunderstanding.

Our eggs are cold.

"I like this," Bella says.

"What? Cold eggs?" Ida asks.

"People coming over and throwing money at us."

Hugo, our gorgeous waiter from Stuttgart, brings us coffee and an assortment of lusciouslooking pastries. The girls dig in fast before anyone else can come over to distract us.

"All right," I say. "Thanks to Robert telling the captain all, we finally have the last piece of the puzzle."

Evvie takes a notepad and pen from her purse. "OK, let's get it down." She writes names and draws lines along the names. "Margaret is killed by Tom, Elizabeth's husband. He was a male nurse and knew how to cause a heart attack with a hypodermic needle."

"Causing a bubble of air forcing an embolism," I add. "Her husband, Dick, gave Tom her golf schedule."

"Okay," says Evvie, making a check mark next to Margaret's name. "Let's call this one Death by Hypo Needle."

Taking another bite of her bear claw, she goes on. "Josephine is killed in her spa by Dick, Margaret's husband, who used to be a plumber."

"Right," I say. "Dick snuck in and rigged the temperature, making the steam so hot it would boil the poor woman. Death by Steam."

Evvie writes. "Elizabeth has an asthma attack brought on by a parrot, urged on by Harry, former veterinary employee and Amy's husband. Obviously her husband, Tom, informed him of Beth's phobia. Death by Parrot."

"And Amy would have been killed in 'an accident' by Bob 'Roberto' Martinson, who knew in advance that she was going on this cruise and got a job as a Latin dance teacher, his former occupation."