Chapter 2
Star
THE THIRD BUTTON WON'T close.
My fingers are slippery with cocoa butter, which I slather on every morning because Madame Gilles drilled it into me during training (keeps the skin soft, clients don't feel calluses, your hands are your instrument, étoile, treat them accordingly), and this tiny mother-of-pearl button keeps sliding right out of the loop like it's personally offended by my existence.
I pin it with my thumbnail. Try again. Nope.
Again. The fabric is white, stiff with newness, and it smells like industrial starch and someone else's idea of professionalism.
The trousers are half an inch too long. I've rolled them at the waist where nobody can see.
Note to self: hem trousers. Priority level: medium. Okay, low. Okay, I probably won't do it and I'll be rolling these at the waist until I die, but at least I'm aware of the problem, which is basically the same as solving it.
I don't belong here.
I know this the way I know the small, practical things that have kept me going for twenty years: the exact pressure it takes to release a trigger point in the trapezius, the price of the bus from Nice-Ville to the airport, the number of euros left in my account after last month's rent.
Forty-two. I don't belong on a ship like the Cerulean Royale because everything on it, from the brass fittings on the staff corridor doors to the thread count of this uniform I can't even button properly, was designed for people who have never counted bus fare in centimes.
And I touch things for a living.
The corridor is narrow, low-ceilinged, lit by strips of warm LED that turn the cream walls amber.
Staff deck. Below the waterline. The carpet's thin here, nothing like the plush silence of the guest levels I glimpsed during orientation yesterday, where the floors swallowed footsteps whole and the air smelled like gardenia and cold marble.
Down here it's laundry steam and the metallic bite of the ventilation system and, faintly, from somewhere aft, frying oil.
I finally wrestle the button through. Smooth down the front of the tunic. Check my reflection in the small mirror bolted inside my locker door.
Dark hair pulled back. No makeup, because Mr. Green was specific about that. The spa's aesthetic is "natural radiance," which is corporate-speak for: we want the therapists to look wholesome enough that wealthy clients feel comfortable being undressed around us.
I look wholesome. I look twelve.
Fantastic. Really inspiring start, Thornton.
Highlight this, self: you are a qualified professional.
You have a certificate. You have Madame Gilles's recommendation.
You have hands that can find a trigger point through three layers of muscle.
The fact that you also have the face of a child who should be asking for extra bread at a cafeteria is irrelevant.
I shut the locker.
MR. KOBE GREEN IS WAITING at the spa reception on Deck 7, and the spa is...
Okay. I need a second.
Because the spa isn't anything like the cramped studio in Nice where I trained, with its vinyl tables and dodgy overhead light and the landlord's cat that kept sneaking in during sessions.
The spa isn't anything like anywhere I've ever been in my entire life, and I'm standing in the doorway trying very hard to present as a professional who belongs here instead of a girl from Nice who wants to spin around in a circle with her mouth open.
The reception area alone is the size of my apartment.
Teak floors, pale stone walls, a long curved desk in white quartz with a single orchid in a glass cylinder.
Behind the desk, a wall of water. Real water, running down a panel of grey slate in a continuous sheet that catches the recessed lighting and throws soft, moving patterns across the ceiling.
The air is cool, faintly sweet, eucalyptus and something underneath it, cedarwood maybe, warm and grounding.
My shoulders drop an inch without my permission.
Mr. Green notices, because of course he does.
He's a tall man, early fifties, British-Jamaican, with close-cropped grey hair and the posture of someone who considers slouching a personal failing.
His uniform is identical to mine except that his buttons, I can't help noticing, are all fastened correctly.
"Thornton. Good. On time." He checks his watch, an actual watch, not a phone, leather strap. "The tour takes forty minutes. Keep up, take notes mentally, don't touch the art."
"Yes, sir."
"It's Mr. Green."
"Yes, Mr. Green."
He regards me for a moment. Those dark brown eyes have clearly assessed a hundred new hires and already know which ones will last.
I plan to last. I need this job the way plants need rain.
"Follow me."
THE SHIP IS A CITY.
Not a metaphor. A fact. The Cerulean Royale holds three thousand guests, twelve hundred crew, nine restaurants, four pools, a theatre, and a library with a domed glass ceiling that Mr. Green points out with the only hint of pride I've caught from him so far.
"Original Tiffany panels," he announces. "Salvaged. Don't ask from where."
I don't ask. But I do stop walking, because the glass is catching Mediterranean light and scattering coloured lozenges across the reading chairs below, amber and jade and a deep rose that pools on the open page of a book someone left face-down on an armrest, and it's so beautiful that for a second I forget I'm on a tour and just stand there with my mouth open like a tourist at the Louvre.
Oh chops, I could cry. I won't, obviously, because Mr. Green is three steps ahead and already giving me the look, but I could.
Because I'm here. I'm actually here. The girl who ate standing up in a studio flat in Nice and counted bus fare in centimes is standing under original Tiffany panels on a ship that people pay thousands of euros to board, and someone is paying her to be on it, and if Madame Gilles could see this she'd probably light a cigarette and say I told you so, étoile in that way she has, and I'd probably cry then too and she'd tell me to stop being ridiculous and use a tissue.
Add to planner: buy tissues.
Monaco is still right there through the windows, white buildings climbing the hill, the harbour packed tight with yachts, the casino district glittering even in daylight. All of it real. All of it happening to me.
We move through the guest decks. Mr. Green narrates without enthusiasm, reciting a route he's walked a thousand times. The main pool on Deck 12, saltwater, heated.
"Guests will ask you for poolside massage. The answer is always no."
The fine dining room on Deck 8.
"You will not eat here."
The boutiques on the promenade.
"You will not shop here."
A pattern emerges: the ship is full of beautiful things that aren't for me.
Mr. Green is essentially giving me a guided tour of all the places I'm not allowed to enjoy, which is actually kind of hilarious if I think about it, except he's delivering it with the solemnity of a funeral director, so I keep my face professional and nod in the right places.
It's fine. Truly fine. I grew up surrounded by beautiful things that weren't for me. Storefronts in Nice. Hotel lobbies I walked through fast. Other girls' coats. The difference is that now I get to be near them every single day, and that alone feels like winning.
What I have are my hands. They've always been enough.
On Deck 5, he stops.
"Tranquil Antique Gallery," he gestures through a glass partition.
I turn.
The space is dim, warm spotlights falling on individual pieces while the rest stays in shadow.
I can see a long room lined with display cases, and inside them: porcelain, lacquerwork, a jade figure the size of my fist that seems to glow from the inside.
At the far end, a writing desk in dark wood sits on a low platform, its surface bare except for an inkwell and a single sheet of paper, as if someone left mid-sentence two centuries ago and never came back.
My fingers press to the glass before I can stop them.
"I said don't touch the art," Mr. Green reminds me from behind.
I snatch my hand back. "Sorry. It's not... I wasn't going to go in. I just..."
"You were admiring."
I glance at him. His expression isn't disapproval. Something closer to recognition.
"It's beautiful," I blurt out, because it is, and because I've never learned to pretend beautiful things don't affect me when they do.
I've tried. I can't. A perfectly glazed piece of porcelain or a hand-stitched seam or light hitting old gold, and something in me just goes oh and my hands itch to touch and that's probably a character flaw but it's mine.
"The gallery consultant is Mila," he offers, already turning away. "You'll meet her. She's friendly. Come along."
I follow. But I sneak one more glance through the glass at the jade figure glowing in its circle of warm light, and I think: someone made that with their hands. Centuries ago. And it's still here.
I want to make things that outlast me too.
For now, I make people feel better for an hour.
It isn't the same. But it's what I have, and standing on this ship with these floors under my feet and that glass ceiling behind me and this gallery in front of me, what I have feels like it might be the start of something.
DECK 3. THE CASINO.
Ace Royale, the plaque reads, gold on black, flanked by an insignia I don't recognise: crossed swords behind the ace of spades.
Through the dark glass doors I can see the floor, even at midday, lit and populated.
Black marble reflecting crystal light. Dealers in dark waistcoats behind curved tables.
A bar running the length of the far wall, bottles backlit in amber.
And everywhere, on the frosted glass partitions, the leather chairs, the coasters, a crest. A diamond. Wreathed in flames.