It doesn’t help that I agonized my family with my drinking, and the fallout, for two decades.
“Fine,” I say to my sisters. “I’ll withstand a few minutes of show tunes if it means I can end this abuse.”
“The show is an hour,” Prue trills. “You’re going to love it.”
We go into a large, dark theater with deep velvet couches arranged around cocktail tables. A waiter comes to take our order. The girls get Manhattans and I order a double espresso and pop a nicotine gum. I’ll need fortification to get through this.
The girl who threw crab in my hair at lunch—Hope—sits down with her friend on the sofa in front of us. Prue jabs me in the rib with her elbow.
“Look,” she whispers. “It’s the pretty crab girl.”
I edge away. “I’m going to be bruised tomorrow from all of your manhandling.”
“Go cry in the infirmary. Maybe there will be a fit nurse to bandage you up. A little shag would be good for you.”
“Please don’t talk to me about shagging.”
Pear is reading the program for the show and distracts Prue with some babble about Andrew Lloyd Webber.
I hear the American girls chatting in front of us. I lean in slightly. Eavesdropping is rude but I’m curious what two young, beautiful women are doing on a cruise for sixty-year-olds.
“Guess what?” the blond one says. “That handsome Swedish guy, Lucas, asked me to meet him for a drink in the Largo Lounge at eleven while you were in the bathroom.”
“Well done,” says Hope.
“Ooh, look,” the friend says, gesturing at the program. “They’re doing a medley fromChicago. Don’t you just die for Bob Fosse?”
“As discussed, at length, I do not love any musical theater and am here against my will.”
“Same,” I want to say. But that would reveal that I’m spying on them.
The theater darkens and a man in a crisp white uniform with ostentatious gold epaulets walks onstage in the glow of a spotlight and welcomes us to the show, which he assures us features the finest performers fresh off the stages of Broadway.
He’s not lying, as far as I can tell. The singers are spectacular, if you like that kind of thing, and the dancers so lithe and acrobatic that for a minute I forget that I hate this. I would have thought that the cast of a floating theater troupe would be made up of the desperate and talentless, but even I can tell these people aregood. Not to mention attractive. I work out religiously, but their musculature makes me question the skill of my trainer.
I’m intrigued enough by the mechanics of the performance to make it through excerpts fromCabaretandPhantom of the Opera, but I draw the line atThe Lion King.
“See you in the morning,” I whisper to Pear. Luckily, even she would not interrupt “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” so I slip out without protest.
As I reach the doors, I sense someone behind me.
I look over my shoulder.
It’s Hope.
We both step out of the theater and into the bright lights of the corridor.
She gives me a little wave, wincing against the glare.
As my eyes adjust I see what she’s wearing—a retro turquoise cocktail dress that is not obviously clingy but shows off her figure remarkably well. It’s prim and alluring at once—something like Joan fromMad Menwould wear. (I harbor filthy thoughts about Joan fromMad Men.)
“Slipping out?” I ask.
“Couldn’t take it,” she says. Then she seems to feel bad about the bluntness of this statement because she adds, “Sorry. They’re very good, but I’m not a musical theater person.”
“None taken.” I lower my voice. “Can’t stand the stuff.”
“Sorry again about throwing crab in your hair,” she says. “I’ve never done that before.”
