“There we go,” Maira said, clearly satisfied with herself.
Annie sat down but checked over her shoulder. “Are you sure?”
Maira nodded once, firm. She took out her phone and started scrolling through videos that other people had taken on the beach. “Lookslike Keith was seasick, huh?” she said. “He should stay on the ship, like me. It happened once before, on the second cruise, I think. That one went to Cabo.”
“Actually…” Annie said. She hadn’t been sure if she wanted to bring it up, but this wasn’t high school, no matter what the accessories looked like. “I heard a few women talking about you—or another Maira—and I wanted to ask you about it. I wouldn’t have thought they were talking about you, but I guess what you said the other day—”
Maira put up a hand, cutting Annie off. “Oh, it’s me. What did they say? Who was it? Was it Crystal? Theresa?” Her mouth was a tight line.
“I don’t know who it was. They were all wearing airbrushed T-shirts, but that’s, like, everyone.” Annie paused. “They said something about lying? I don’t really know.” She kept her voice low. All around them, women were chattering, drinking, waving to friends across the theater. Annie wasn’t sure if she wanted the women she’d heard talking to be proven right or wrong. It didn’t actually matter. What was good or bad anymore at this stage of their lives? Annie wanted to live and let live. No matter what, Maira was her roommate for the next two days. She missed her sister, whose broken leg could have stuck out into the aisle so easily. They probably could have sat even closer. Katherine would have gotten even more attention than usual. She was a Leo, like Scotty.
“Oh, please,” Maira said. “Like I said, people get really jealous. I used to work for Scotty, I told you that, right? When he got started with the SkinSentials, a lot of Talkers joined his team, and it was so small then, we had a lot of time with him—on the phone, in private Facebook groups, that kind of thing. And some people just don’t know how to act. If they’re not good at their business, that’s not my problem.” It wasn’t much of an answer, but Annie didn’t need a microscope to understand what Maira was saying.
Of course Scotty’s businesses were multilevel marketing schemes—that was obvious. And they weren’t the only ones on the ship—Annie had passed so many rooms with elaborate Avon and Mary Kay displays, and there were a lot of women in LuLaRoe leggings. Maira didn’t seem like an evil person. It was impossible, in this context, to identify anyone as genuinely crazy because they wereallcrazy. Claudia hated when she said things were crazy—“So ableist, Mom”—but how else could you describe what was going on? Half the people in the theater were wearing pajamas, and the other half would be in a couple of hours. They were walking down Bourbon Street in the middle of Mardi Gras. They were children trick-or-treating. It was sanctioned, organized madness.
A waitress came by and held her pen expectantly. “Two Sexy Sunrises, please,” Annie said, and then turned back to Maira. “I’m reading a book that has dragon sex in it, like the dragons are having sex with each other, but I’m pretty sure this one woman is actually going to have sex with an actual dragon too.” There was no point trying to resist. Operas were full of women going mad, and so was the cruise. If Maira was a liar, it didn’t actually matter to Annie. This was not the time or place to draw lines. Annie was having more fun than she’d had in years—so many years that it would depress her to do the math. Everyone in the room was going to start screaming; it was just a question of when. Maira nodded in approval.
31
Saturday, 8:12 p.m.
Deck 3
For the first time in a few cruises, Corey had decided that he wanted to fit a solo show into the schedule, which Sarah was happy to accommodate. He’d been in a movie adaptation of a musical, and even though the movie had gotten panned for having too much CGI, he’d been doing covers of Broadway show tunes in a series of TikTok videos. Show tunes were the opposite of a scandal. Show tunes were geeky. They were wholesome. Sarah was glad because here, finally, were some songs she liked! The set list was good: some Sondheim, some Lerner and Loewe. There were no props and no costume gimmicks. Sarah checked in backstage and found Corey barefoot and pacing slowly, doing his vocal exercises.
“All set?” Sarah asked, offering a thumbs-up.
Corey nodded and finished doing his scale. He ran a hand over his chin, a practiced motion. “Anyone coming?”
“Anyone coming? Um, yes. Everyone is coming, actually,” Sarah said, laughing. “It’s almost like you have a captive audience.” She stopped when Corey didn’t laugh too.
“No,” Corey said. He ran his hands over his jeans. “I meant, areany of the guys coming?” A pair of shiny shoes sat nearby, and he slid into them and did a little tap dance. Sarah wondered what it was like having such easy charisma that it just slipped out of you, even when no one was watching.
“Oh,” Sarah said. They were not. Scotty sometimes showed up to things, but Keith slept as much as possible, as if unconsciousness was the answer to all his problems, and Shawn was glued to his laptop and cell phone whenever he wasn’t mingling. This was work time, no two ways about it, and sitting in an audience did not count. “You know, I’m not sure. I know there are a few VIPs on the list for the JackRabbit row, but I think it’s just the weather girl and a few of her friends. Do you want me to check?” She reached up for her walkie-talkie button, but Corey put out his arm to stop her.
“No, no, don’t,” Corey said.
“Okay,” Sarah said. The theater was already full, but it was quieter than before the full band concert. There were some people, Sarah knew, who were skipping it, not just the other members of Boy Talk. There was a certain level of fatigue that set in by day three, especially after beach day, when everyone just needed to decompress for a little bit, have a little day-drunk nap. The JackRabbit staff would tell people in the back rows to go down to the main level and take any empty seats they could find. She didn’t tell Corey that. No one wanted to hear that they were coming in second place to a snooze.
“You enjoying yourself so far?” Sarah asked. Corey was stretching, bending his lithe body in well-practiced parabolic shapes that made Sarah’s body hurt just to watch.
“Oh, sure,” he said from a downward-facing-dog position. “Having a blast. Half the people on this ship are wearing my teenage face on their T-shirts.”
“Is it weird?” Sarah asked. “I mean, aren’t you used to it by now?”
Corey leapt gracefully up and rolled his head around on his neck.Sarah felt like Corey was from some other, better planet. She was just from Virginia. “Every year I get a little further away from that kid, you know? Like, do you remember believing in Santa Claus? That was a long time ago, right?” Corey said.
“I’m Jewish,” Sarah said. “So I never believed in Santa Claus. In fact, it always seemed really creepy to me, even though I was jealous.”
“But you know what I mean.” Corey had a set list written out on a sheet of paper.
“Yeah, I do.” Sarah’s walkie barked at her shoulder, where it was clipped to her shirt. “They’re ready if you’re ready.”
Corey nodded. He looked older when he wasn’t around the rest of them.
“Oh, ‘Being Alive,’ ” Sarah said, pointing to his list. “I love that one. I used to listen to the cast album on my very first iPod. I was cool, Corey. I don’t know if you knew that.”
“These guys wouldn’t know a Sondheim lyric if it hit them in the head,” Corey said. “Maybe Scotty.Maybe.But probably not.” He stopped and looked at her, and in the light, Sarah could see his movie star bone structure, his movie star stubble. It was so cruel what popularity did to people, what culture did to people, what magazines and TV news shows and the internet and social media did to people. He wasn’t amurderer. He was just a beautiful asshole who had gotten famous when he was too young, and so what hope did he have to evolve? He was like a tiger who had been bred in captivity and then set loose. It wasn’t exactly his fault if he ripped out a few throats. Sarah had gotten too drunk. She’d cheated on girlfriends. She wasn’t the morality police. “Fuck ’em,” Corey said. “Let’s go.” He didn’t wait for the lights to go down before he walked out onto the stage.
