Chapter 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 stoner crew, 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.
“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 a small 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.
“Like opera opera?” 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 uniformed American Fantasy employees 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 talk about 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 to begin after 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.