“Thank you so much.”
“We will leave you to get comfortable,” Crisanto says. “Don’t hesitate to let us know if there’s anything we can assist you with.”
“Will do, will do.”
They show themselves out and I throw myself down on the bed, whichis among the more comfortable surfaces on which I’ve ever rested my body. I groan in pleasure, then wonder if the neighbors will hear me through the wall and think I’m having a wank.
Probably not. This ship is too grand for thin walls. It’s so hushed I can hear myself breathe.
I pull out my phone to check my messages—specifically to see if there’s anything from Sophie, my operations manager, concerning my pubs. Like, for instance, that they’ve burned down in the first eighteen hours without me.
There isn’t.
I’m a bit disappointed. I helicopter over my businesses, and fancy myself indispensable to their daily runnings. This is the first time I’ve left them unattended for more than two days in years.
I didn’t want to. My mother coerced me, saying this anniversary trip might be our last chance to holiday as a family before everyone pairs off and has kids of their own.
I owe her too much to disappoint her, but breaking my routine for two weeks is the most frightening thing I’ve done since entering detox.
I decide to shower before lunch. I’m taken aback by the showerhead, which does an obscene swivel jet maneuver I’m sure several of my ex-girlfriends would have been intimately fond of.
It certainly takes my mind off my pubs.
I slather myself in sun cream and head upstairs to the Lido Deck, where a crowd of waiters in white are serving a handful of guests who have already set themselves up by the pool. (All of them are quite bronze already—it seems the elderly don’t believe in SPF.)
I follow the signs to the restaurant, where I’m greeted by a buffet so epic its array of stations requires three rooms. I pass cheeses, a raw bar, salad, pasta à la minute, a lamb roast, and all manner of hot things I don’t pause to identify, dished out by men in white chef’s coats.
The restaurateur in me shudders at the idea of buffet food. All that labor and waste just to serve mediocre cuisine. But I force myself to withhold judgment. This is, at least, a very opulent spread.
“We’re over here,” one of my sisters calls. (They have the same voice, the way they have the same hair and figure and capacity for profiting from distressed debt.)
I notice they’re sitting a few tables away from the two girls I saw in the hallway.
As I pass them, I hear the curly-haired one mutter “I hate buffets” to her friend.
Clearly, the woman has good taste.
Hope
“I can’t believe you’re complaining about too much food,” Lauren says to me as I side-eye the buffet. “Youlovefood.”
“I like curated meals,” I say. “Not the opportunity to eat camembert, mashed potatoes, and Singapore noodles on one plate, with a side of E. coli.”
“Please. This place seems more sanitary than a doctor’s office.”
“That’s because you go to that sketchy place in the dirty thirties.”
“They do a fabulous Botox,” she says.
“Your forehead does look like it came off an eight-year-old.”
“Thank you! Anyway, go pillage the raw bar or something. You’re the worst when you’re hangry.”
I get up to survey the fare. I decide not to risk raw cruise ship oysters, but reason that steamed crab legs probably won’t compromise my intestinal tract.
I return to our table to find Lauren tearing into a steak—her primary food group.
“Look who just sat down,” she says in what passes for sotto voce if you have the loudest voice in the world, which she does. “Behind you.”
