“And,” Boomer continues with a dramatic pause, “we have a special surprise. After reviewing yesterday’s footage, I’ve decided to include our resident cruise experts, Bess and Nettie, as special guest commentators!”
Nettie nearly drops her walking stick in excitement. “Did you hear that, Bess? We’re going to be famous!”
Bess huffs at the thought. “Honey, at our age, being recognized in public is called being identified by witnesses,” she quips, though she’s already adjusting her scarf and patting her hair.
The trophy wives exchange looks of horror, clearly not thrilled about sharing screen time or the limelight with women who qualify for the early bird special.
“Do we need to rehearse?” Nettie asks, already striking poses that could throw out a much younger person’s back. “I’ve been told I have my good side. Though at eighty-four, that’s mainly the side that still has original parts.”
“Just be yourselves,” Boomer assures them. “Your authentic reactions to these iconic moments are exactly what we want.”
“Oh, I can be authentic,” Bess promises. “Especially when it comes to appreciating Santino’s delivery.”
Santino DiAngelo winks at her, causing both Bess and Nettie to collide into one another while swooning.
This is going to be a long day.
“First up,” Boomer announces, “Dirk Rothschild, recreating Victor Darkmore’s famous confrontation fromThe Bitter and the Beautiful, Season 27, Episode 542!”
Marlie’s ghost materializes beside me so suddenly that I nearly jump off the platform. She’s wearing her signature emerald gown, which looks particularly out of place against the rugged Norwegian landscape. Although, come to think of it, the emerald blends in seamlessly with the evergreens around us. She always did know how to color coordinate with the best of them.
“This should be good,” she says with her signature lethal sarcasm. “He practiced this speech in the shower for two weeks before filming. Our water bill was astronomical.”
Victor Darkmore steps forward, his expression morphing from bored celebrity to intense soap villain with alarming speed. He turns to face the waterfall, then spins back dramatically, his finger pointing accusingly at an invisible adversary.
“You thought you could destroy me?” he growls, his voice dropping an octave. “I built empires while you were still learning to tie your shoes. I’ve buried better men than you before breakfast. You don’t end Victor Darkmore—VICTOR DARKMORE ENDS YOU!”
The last three words echo across the fjord like thunder, startling an entire flock of nearby seagulls.
“Oh my word,” Nettie gasps, clutching her chest. “I remember that episode! It was right after he discovered his evil twin wasn’t actually evil, just misunderstood due to a rare medical condition that made him seem evil!”
“And before he found out his real father was his arch-nemesis’s best friend’s gardener,” Bess adds knowledgeably.
“Precisely,” Victor confirms with a gracious nod, clearly pleased with their soap opera literacy.
“Next up,” Boomer calls, “Lance Williams with Dr. Luca Carrington Jr.’s courthouse confession!”
Luca steps forward, running a hand through his suspiciously thick hair. “Your honor,” he begins, his voice trembling with emotion, “I may have committed securities fraud, identity theft, and faked my own death. I may have married my brother’s wife while suffering from amnesia. I may even have sold my own mother’s kidney on the black market to frame the Ukrainian mafia. But I did NOT—” his voice breaks, a single tear tracking down his cheek, “—I did NOT cancel her magazine subscription!”
“Bravo!” Bess and Nettie applaud enthusiastically, while the trophy wives dab at non-existent tears.
I’ll admit, I’m sort of moved, too.
“That episode won him a Daytime Emmy,” Beth informs me, like the proud wife she is. “The kidney storyline ran for three seasons.”
Santino takes his position next, somehow having acquired a black eye patch from nowhere. “You think you know pain?” he growls, his accent suddenly thicker. “I was buried alive twice. I survived six assassination attempts. I was imprisoned in a Bulgarian gulag, escaped using only a spoon and my superior knowledge of Eastern European railway timetables, swam the Black Sea with one arm tied behind my back, and infiltrated my own funeral disguised as the priest! So don’t talk to me about PAIN!”
He rips off the eye patch and tosses it dramatically into the fjord, where it floats sadly toward the waterfall.
A collective gasp circles our group.
“He’s littering,” Ransom mutters in my ear. “I should write him up.”
“For the eye patch or the overacting?” I whisper back.
“Both.”
Bridge Blackthorne begins his iconic fashion empire monologue with appropriate intensity, complete with a runway walk along the narrow viewing platform that has several crew members lunging forward in anticipation of a potential fall.
