“Pancake,” Sarah said into her walkie-talkie. “Help is coming your way.” Would it be one minute or two before Tyler called for backup? She could only wait to find out.
10
Thursday, 8:09 p.m.
Deck 10
The buffet was on the aft tip of the lido deck, which meant that Annie and Maira could eat quickly and then get into their spots for the party, which were the same spots they’d had for the sail-away, two stools facing outward under the faux thatched roof of the tiki bar, near the stage. Annie hadn’t been to the main restaurant on the ship yet, but Maira said that was better for breakfast and lunch, that it took too long for dinner, when they could be doing something else. Annie loved Maira’s confident control of the entire cruise universe—it reminded her of the friend she’d made the first week of high school, Jennifer Barren, who’d told her which cliques sat at which tables, which teachers would hover over your shoulder to look down your shirt, which bathrooms had the most privacy for when you had to poop at school. Jennifer had been a teenage bulimic and probably an alcoholic too, now that Annie thought about it, but she’d seemed as wise as a twenty-five-year-old woman when they were fourteen. Jennifer had taught her to French inhale, to roll a joint, though Annie had never been good at either of those, and weed always made her throw up. By sophomore year, Jennifer had gotten scooped up into the true stonercrew, leaving Annie to tech theater and the newspaper. They always said hello in the halls, but it was never the same.
The buffet was endless, three consecutive rooms of different hot bar stations—roast beef and potatoes, lasagna and meatballs, lo mein, tacos, hamburgers—and then an equally long string of desserts, including three different flavors of Jell-O cubes dotted with raisins. As far as Annie knew, the only people who ate Jell-O were small children and adults preparing for a colonoscopy. She took a picture and sent it to Claudia, who had loved Jell-O when she was little, and then to Katherine, who responded with a string of crying-face emoji. Annie and Maira both picked up trays and wandered, eyes glassy with possibility, surrounded by crowds of Talkers doing the same, what high school might have looked like had there only ever been one clique.
The late-night deck parties were why people came on the cruise, as Annie understood it. This was what Katherine had told her, as it was what littered the Facebook group year-round, and was in no small part the reason Katherine had wanted to come—so many videos of the guys in funny outfits, all of them looking a little bit drunk, dancing with the dark sky above them. They had done Disco Night, Prom Night, Pop Night, Rock Night, Sports Night, Hippie Night, ’80s Night, Naughty ’90s Night, Millennium Night. Claudia had taken one look and asked, “How have they not been canceled yet? That is a full Native American costume,” pointing to a video of Scotty in a headdress and war paint. “That is not okay.” But the Talkers didn’t seem to believe in cancellation. The ship was in international waters, in a bubble of space and time. It was a zone free of embarrassment and shame, except for her own. It was Annie’s problem, clearly, her discomfort—with the Jell-O, with the faces staring out from all the T-shirts, with the bedazzled homemade everything. She was the odd one out. Katherine might have fit in just fine—Katherine would have made friends! Katherine wouldhave thrown her arms around strangers’ necks and swayed back and forth.
Maira pointed her chin toward a table by the window and they sat down. The tables and chairs were made of smooth molded plastic, like fast-food restaurants in the 1980s. The view out the window was of the ocean, but otherwise, it felt like lunch at the mall. The Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire cruise fantasies that Annie had been harboring popped in the air like so many children’s birthday party balloons. Annie regarded their meals—for Maira, a bowl of orange Jell-O and two slices of pepperoni pizza, and for herself, a bowl of pesto pasta and a chocolate chip cookie—and then Maira whipped her phone across the table to show Annie photos of cruises past.
“Wow,” Annie said. Maira’s Jell-O wiggled along with the ship’s movement. There was picture after picture of people in wigs and fake mustaches, so many elaborate things crafted out of cardboard and glue. Group costumes that required extra suitcases. Suddenly, the fleet of steamer trunks she’d seen at the curb in Miami made sense.
Maira waved a hand. “But I don’t do much.” The theme was Game Night—not to be confused with the Quiz Show. Each night had its own set of instructions. Annie had already seen several pairs of dice walking around and a few sexy Monopoly men. “I have T-shirts. You’ll see.”
Outside, the water crested gently, with small white caps. They seemed to be moving slowly, which made sense—the boat didn’t go very far, and it had whole days at sea. Annie imagined the boat sailing in slow circles, or maybe a pattern to entertain the officers—a figure eight or a portrait of Snoopy.
“So, what do you do for work?” Maira asked. “I mean, I know you were talking to your boss, and it seems like things are changing, but what’s your job?”
“I work at an opera magazine. Marketing and sales, though it’s asmall staff, so really I’ve done just about every job in the place.” Annie took a bite of pasta. She thought about all the catered lunches she’d arranged over the years, all the tiny sandwiches, all the Pellegrino. Geoff would have died on the spot if she’d ever brought in Jell-O. Kayla had probably never heard of Jell-O, or if she had, she would have thought that she’d discovered it. Annie imagined a video of Renée Fleming singing an aria through the center of a Jell-O bundt mold. People would probably love it. Sales would triple for both opera tickets and Jell-O itself.
“Likeoperaopera?” Maira asked. “Bugs Bunny in the Viking helmet?”
“Yep, that kind of opera,” Annie said. Even when someone thought they didn’t know anything about opera, they knew Wagner, the blond pigtails, the warrior princesses. Their readership had an average annual income of $300,000, but you didn’t need to be rich to know the basics. Sometimes Annie wondered if anyone who got the magazine actually read it, or if they just flipped through and then left it on their coffee table for other people to see.
“I bet Scotty likes opera. I know he likes musicals. Corey too.” Maira wobbled a cube of Jell-O onto a spoon.
A group of women in matching T-shirts (Checkmate, Shawn, with Shawn’s head photoshopped on a chess piece) walked by carrying trays of food, and Annie watched as one of them saw Maira, made a face, then elbowed her friend to make sure that she saw Maira too. The little herd moved on into the second room, but Annie could still see them through the clear glass door that kept in the air-conditioning, and they were all taking turns to get up and stare.
“Don’t worry about them,” Maira said. “We used to be friends. There is a lot of love in this community, but there is also a lot of jealousy, and drama. Fandom, am I right?” She rolled her eyes and put the Jell-O in her mouth.
“Okay,” Annie said. “I didn’t think their shirts were good. Vaguely threatening, no?” It felt cruel to say out loud, but Annie was thinking it—those women didn’t look like they even played chess.
“Oh yeah,” Maira said, nodding. “They’re idiots.” She waved her fork in the air like a magic wand. “But who cares? Let’s go get a drink.”
The parties were supposed to start at 10 p.m., but it depended on how late the guys were to the evening entertainment and how much of a break they took in between. They’d done two Quiz Shows back-to-back, performing for half the ship each time. In the tiki bar, half the stools were covered with purses or towels or the ubiquitous ID badges that every cruiser wore. In front of Annie, two uniformedAmerican Fantasyemployees dragged what looked like a volleyball net across the surface of the shallow swimming pool. A woman wearing a dress printed with photos of Keith’s shirtless torso on it leaned out of their way but kept dancing.
Nearby, a blonde dressed as the maid from Clue said, “I hear Corey’s actually already divorced.” Everyone was talking about the guys all the time—sharing their insider knowledge or relaying what they’d read on some fan page. A lot of chatter was about Corey West’s legal troubles but not all of it. Annie hadn’t yet formed an opinion, other than that Corey West had a lot of work to do on himself, like most middle-aged men. “I think Corey has a drinking problem,” a bowl of Chex Mix said, “but I also heard that he has an open marriage, so maybe it’s not such a big deal. We can’t judge.” A foosball player in a wheelchair said to her husband, “Scotty’s selling vitamins on Instagram now.” Annie had seen those ads too, in the days leading up to the cruise, her algorithm clearly having cottoned on to her travel plans, and at first she’d been shocked, seeing Scotty’s face there, so clearly lit by a ring-light and filmed by his own phone. She hadn’t seen his adult face ever, not really.
It was as if everyone on the ship had taken an oath to only talkabout the ship, or the guys, as if the rest of their lives had vanished—their jobs, their other interests, their daily to-do lists. Maybe this was what orgies were like—Annie wouldn’t know. Her phone beeped with a text—Claudia had sent a photo of herself watering the plants in Annie’s apartment. She was overwatering the succulents, but they would survive. Could Annie still think of it as Claudia’s apartment too? When did that happen, that her child’s home was somewhere else? Annie didn’t think it had happened yet, or at least she hoped not. She gave the picture a heart and put the phone back in her pocket.
“I think I’m going to get another drink. You want one?” Annie asked Maira, who nodded. Annie spun around on her stool and inched her way toward the bar, where she ordered two more Sexy Sunrises.
It was so much nicer on the deck at night, cool and clear. Annie was an early bird by nature, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had been up and out, waiting for something tobeginafter ten at night. There was a breeze, and all around her, costumes fluttered. The crowd thickened by the minute, and now there was a dense wall of women between the barstools under the thatched roof and the large speakers next to the stage. Annie smiled at the women who moved aside to let her squeeze back in, annoyed but obeying the laws of the land. She’d never been surrounded by women like this, never in her life. She’d never been in a sorority or gone to an all-women school. Even the Women’s March had had significantly more men than this. Two women dressed as playing cards were standing in the shallow end of the pool with their feet submerged up to their ankles, and in between them there was a man in flip-flops and a tank top with a comically large red Solo cup on his head. Human Beer Pong. Annie had never played beer pong, and this man certainly hadn’t in at least twenty years, but he had nice-looking arms, thin and muscled.
Annie watched as Mr. Beer Pong kissed each of the playing cards on the cheek and handed them bottles of beer from a bucket at his feet.He looked approximately her age; it was hard to tell in the dark. The man put his hand on one of the playing card’s lower backs, and together they swayed back and forth in time to Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler.” He didn’t look like someone’s husband, and he didn’t look gay. What a concept, to be a straight man alone on a cruise like this! Annie felt a small laugh tumble out. She hadn’t had sex with anyone after Chris—honestly, she hadn’t even wanted to. Annie hadn’t had sexwithChris in two years! It wasn’t that she wanted to sleep with Mr. Beer Pong—she didn’t—but for the first time all year, Annie thought,Maybe. She was a woman sitting at a bar, looking across at a man. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t her type and that he was dressed as a binge-drinking game played by college students. It was a possibility. Annie felt like a small door somewhere inside her was creaking open on rusted hinges.
It was all there suddenly—her first kiss with George Bellingham in the middle school bus parking lot. The first time Jamie Johnson felt her up in his parents’ basement and how quickly he yanked his hand out of her shirt when his mother opened the door. When a boy had licked her neck at a party during the first week of college, a stranger! Her first orgasm, Jake Hutchison. Oh, she had loved him. Nothimhim—she’d hardly known him, really—but Jake had been so handsome, just the most handsome person she’d ever seen naked, and he’d done that for her. It was almost too much to bear, even then, like some sort of Make-A-Wish program, despite the fact that he’d quickly ditched her for a girl with pierced nipples. Annie thought about her first real boyfriend, Clarence Brown, who had been so kind to her, he’d made her a crossword puzzle from scratch, he’d written her songs on his ukulele. She tried to remember the reasons she’d broken up with Clarence—he was a hacky-sacking hippie and lived in a co-op on campus, he loved the Grateful Dead and smoked pot out of a tiny glass one-hitter every night before he went to sleep. He had seemed toomessy for her then, but maybe she could have used the messiness, incorporated it into her system. She could have married Clarence, and maybe she should have. She’d waited to get married, and look what good that had done. Annie didn’t want to think about her husband, and so she didn’t. He wasn’t anywhere near these memories. These were first—these were just for her. Boy Talk had been there too, though. Lurking in those early feelings, putting words to what she wanted to feel. Words she wanted someone to sing to her.
DJ Pancake was already deep in his set, and even before the Kenny Rogers, Annie had heard other songs that hadgamein the title: Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” Backstreet Boys’ “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart).” Talkers could be counted on to sing along to songs by other boy bands, it seemed, and for a second, Annie wondered whether these women were the type to go onotherboy band cruises too, if they split their affection. Claudia had had a passing interest in One Direction when she was in middle school, and Annie had been delighted to relive the joy of having afavorite, of learning tiny facts about people you would never meet. Annie wondered if her predilection for Boy Talk had been living dormant in her body, the way chicken pox stayed quiet for decades and then bloomed into shingles. Annie didn’t feel like she was blooming, exactly, but she did feel the way she’d felt when she and Chris and Claudia were on vacation in France, several decades after her most recent French class, finding certain vocabulary words swimming back to her from some deep folds in her brain.
Maira tapped Annie on the arm and pointed. Above them, on the balcony, a thick-bodied middle-aged Black man in a baseball hat gave someone a fist bump and then walked down the stairs.
“That’s their manager, Bobby,” Maira said. “I could introduce you later. I have his email address too. [email protected], ha! Can you believe it?” She set her drink down and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Bobby! Bobby!” He looked over to where they were sittingand gave a point and a nod. Maira flushed with satisfaction. “Last year, I saw him at the airport afterward. He was so tired, he said.”
