“First cruise?” Greg asked. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
“It is. Have you done this…” Annie paused. The tender had begun to move and rumbled away from the dock. The boat vibrated under her feet.
“It’s my third,” Greg said, answering her unasked question. “I love it, you know? Everyone is so friendly. It’s like being in college again. But no homework.”
Annie nodded. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Not that she was checking. It was just that he was talking with his hands, moving them in front of his face—a gesturer.
“So, what do you think so far?” Greg asked.
The boat rocked a little, and their knees knocked together. Annie laughed. She’d touched so many bodies on this trip—gentle little hands on each other’s shoulders as they squeezed by, high fives, even some hugs. Why did it feel different to touch a man’s body? Annie was no prude. She’d kissed a girl once. Sure, it was during a game of truth or dare, but that counted. Claudia had suggested that, post-divorce, Annie try dating a woman. There wasn’t a woman’s knee that had ever sent this feeling into Annie’s body. That was the truth.
“I think you’re having a great time,” she said.
“I am,” Greg said. “Have you noticed?” He raised an eyebrow.
Annie tried to think of the last time she had genuinely flirted with someone. Not given someone else’s husband a friendly touch at elementary school drop-off, not kissed a male friend on the cheek after two glasses of wine, but truly flirted with an available man. She couldn’t remember. She and Chris had been married for twenty years, and they’d dated for five years before that. The last year Annie hadbeen single was 1998, literally in the previous millennium. How did one ask someone out in a closed environment? It was like trying to date in the biosphere. Tonight’s theme party was Pajama Night. Maybe she’d start there.
“What do your pajamas look like?” Annie said, and felt a little bolt of lightning run through her, right there on the tender.
“You’ll see,” Greg said, and grinned.
29
Saturday, 5:14 p.m.
Deck 7
They’d only been back in the Sanctuary for half an hour when Keith heard a knock on his door. He was fresh out of the shower and in the complimentaryAmerican Fantasyrobe. One of Keith’s favorite things about the Sanctuary was the robes. Last year he’d asked Sarah if he could take one home, and she’d left a clean one in his room on the last day, so it also felt like being at home. Keith pulled open the door and saw his brother and Jonathan standing in the hallway.
“Come on in,” Keith said, wishing that he were wearing actual clothes. If he were a different kind of person, he would have told them to wait while he changed.
The cabin had a small sitting area with a couch, and Shawn and Jonathan lowered themselves onto it in unison. Keith spun the desk chair around and sat facing them, holding the heavy cotton closed on his lap.
“I just wanted to put this together,” Shawn said. “Jonathan and I have been talking a lot about really exciting opportunities. Really exciting ones.” Shawn took his hat off and put it on again.
“Okay,” Keith said. As far as he knew, his brother had never gone totherapy, but he’d done a lot of this—finding people to agree with him. The Papa Fiore’s pizzerias had a laminated list of goals hanging on the wall in every location, and Keith could hear each of the goals in his brother’s voice:Our goal is to provide our customers with sustenance for their body and soul. We strive for greatness in every bite. We promise to serve you from our hearts. We aren’t satisfied unless you want to come back again tomorrow.That was Shawn. Never satisfied because he was never sure people were coming back tomorrow. How could he know for sure unless he checked? Keith knew at least half the things that Shawn and this guy were about to say, so he just closed his eyes and waited for them to start.
“Well, Keith,” Jonathan began. Keith opened his eyes. “Your brother has told me a lot about you. About your talent, about your voice, about your gifts.” Jonathan pulled on his beard with one hand and then the other, like it was a rope he was trying to climb.
“You know you’re the best of us,” Shawn chimed in.
“Thank you,” Keith said. “That’s generous.” It wasn’t true, at least not now, but it may have been true once upon a time. He actively avoided thinking about things in those terms, and Keith didn’t like hearing other people say it either, that there was such a thing as the best of anything. The past was over. It was so far away he couldn’t even see it anymore. They’d been together longer as adults than they had as kids. Maybe that didn’t matter to the Talkers, but it made a big difference to Keith. This version of himself was the real one, not vice versa.
“Let me ask you this: How are you using your talent? How are you using your gift?” Jonathan leaned forward. Keith felt suddenly like a teenage actress being hit on by a disgusting movie producer, even though he was the one in the bathrobe. He didn’t respond. Keith lit a cigarette, even though Shawn hated when he smoked. Keith wasn’t embarrassed that Shawn did paid Instagram posts for his Botox injector—why should he care that Keith smoked? Why was that worse? It was thehustle, that’s what Shawn would have said. Everything was for the hustle. Keith took a long inhale and then blew a plume of smoke toward the ceiling.
After a minute, Shawn cleared his throat and said, “So?”
“I thought that was a rhetorical question,” Keith said. “Like ‘what are you doing with your life,’ or whatever.” He leaned back. If Keith could have leaned back far enough that he was in the next cabin, he would have. They both looked at him expectantly. “I’m here, aren’t I? I’m singing the songs that make people happy. That’s how I’m using my talent. How are you using yours, Shawn?”
“That’s fair, and I’m glad you asked,” Shawn said. Shawn was a big believer in fairness. Sometimes the Talkers got upset about something or other—the cruise selling out, merch not being available in all sizes, the price of meet and greets—and Shawn was always the one to respond. That was his talent: total devotion. Keith wondered if Stacy found it irritating, the way Shawn spent hours every day pressing the little heart button on posts that fans had made.
“But do you think you’re using your full potential?” Jonathan said it like Keith could be an astronaut or cure cancer, like the possibilities were limitless.
“I don’t know,” Keith said. He thought about how he’d sung everywhere as a kid, even before the group, and put on little dance shows for his parents, singing in his socks on the living room rug. Applause was better than allowance, better than ice cream. That was when talent had meant something to him—he’dfeltit, the thing inside that made him different from the other kids, the thing that made him special. But now—for so many decades—the thing that made him special was being Keith Fiore, and talent had nothing to do with it.
This was what Corey had complained about when he’d quit the band—he wanted to do more. He wanted to act. He had all theseambitions that took what they had built and used them as a staircase to actual credibility. Keith didn’t see it like that—for him, what they had built was a cliff, and there was nowhere to go but down, and so he’d been sitting in that spot for twenty years, thinking about jumping off. He had almost jumped last year. He felt like jumping now too. Keith made a promise to himself: If Shawn kept talking for more than ten minutes, he would never speak to his brother again.
“Jonathan had an idea. Well, it was both of us, really,” Shawn said. “It’s a way you could make Steffani and Madison really proud, not to mention make fucking bank.”
