Marcia Talley - Dark Passage

The maître d’ gave the couple a disdainful look up and down, straightened to his full five foot ten and said, ‘Perhaps sir and madam would be more comfortable dining in the Firebird café this evening.’

As the man huffed and the woman tottered away, Julie gave an arm pump. ‘Yes!’ Since we had made an effort to acquire the wherewithal to dress up on formal night, I was happy to see the cruise line maintaining high standards.

On the way to our table, we made a detour to visit the Rowes. Cliff and Liz were seated at their table with Elda, the schoolteacher, already enjoying their salads, but David’s seat was empty. Elda was all dolled up in a pink Michael St George suit that fit her slender frame like a dream and must have cost her a month’s retirement check. Her pretty features were accentuated with just a hint of makeup and her silver hair had been freshly coifed. She was probably in her late fifties, though she looked much younger. Liz had chosen a midnight-blue sequinned top for the occasion. ‘Do you think David’s coming?’ I asked.

Cliff shrugged his tuxedoed shoulders, seemingly disinterested, chewed on a forkful of bib lettuce.

Liz spoke for both of them. ‘I doubt we’ll see David at dinner again. Poor man. I talked with him about moving on, but that’s simply not on his agenda. Sometimes I just wanted to slap his face and scream, “David, get a life!’’’

We bid Elda and the Rowes goodbye, saying we hoped to see them later at the magic show. As we crossed the dining room to our table, I wondered if David was still in the Athena bar, curled up at the bottom of a martini glass.

‘Surf and turf!’ Julie squealed when our server handed her a menu. ‘I am so going to have that.’

I ordered a bottle of Vigonier for the table, and a Sprite for my niece.

‘ Vee-awn-yay ,’ Ruth repeated after the server left with our order. ‘Always wondered how to pronounce that. Helpful to have a French scholar in the family.’

I flushed. I’d majored in French at Oberlin College, but rarely had the opportunity to use it these days, with the exception of translating menus or watching Cinemoi on cable TV. The server had brought us some dakos, a kind of Greek bruschetta made with cheese and tomatoes, and as I munched on a rusk of bread decorated with the black pepper- and oregano-laced concoction, I scanned the room hoping to spot some of the plain-clothes guys who were supposed to be keeping an eye on us.

I didn’t spot anybody, but if I had, they wouldn’t have been very good at their jobs, would they? We didn’t see Buck Carney, either, which I took as a good sign.

After dinner, I left Julie in the capable hands of my sisters and nipped off to the ladies’ room to wash baklava off my fingers. Their plan was to walk off their steak and lobster on the jogging track encircling deck ten, while I made a detour to the Athena bar to check on David. I would meet them at the theater later.

With my hands smelling deliciously of cherry-almond soap, I hit the bar, but David wasn’t there. When I asked, the bartender told me that he’d staggered off about thirty minutes before. ‘Good thing, too. If your friend had ordered another one, I was going to have to cut him off.’

It was my experience that cruise ship employees rarely, if ever, cut passengers off. I could count on the fingers of both hands, and at least one foot’s-worth of toes, the number of times I’d seen passengers, blind drunk, attempting to negotiate their way back to their cabins. On one forgettable occasion, I’d had to circumnavigate a pool of vomit in order to get to mine.

I thanked the bartender, then headed on a path that would take me forward through the casino, directly to the theater. Dee-doo, dee-doo, clack-clack-clack, cha-chunk, ra-lurl, ra-lurl – the sounds and strobe lights were an assault on the senses; it was enough to send anyone into an epileptic seizure.

Do you want to play a game? a disembodied avatar inquired from the screen of an electronic blackjack table; his digital eyes were fixed supernaturally on mine. I quickened my pace, seeking the oasis of the elevator lobby ahead, a bright white light at the end of a kaleidoscopic tunnel.

I stepped on the gas, scooting around the roulette table as if the avatars were hot on my heels chanting: Would you like to double down?

I was so focused on getting the hell out of Dodge that when someone tapped me on the shoulder, I actually yelped.

I pressed a hand to my chest and spun around. ‘Oh my gawd! Connor, isn’t it? You scared me!’

‘I’m sorry, but I just wanted to talk for a moment. You’re Julie’s aunt, right?’

I admitted that I was. ‘Please, let’s get out of here,’ I begged.

Once in the relative sanctuary of the lobby, I stopped and faced the Crawford lad who had been the target of truly inventive invective from my sister, Georgina. I planned to ask if he’d made the phone call to my sister’s cabin the other day, but decided to wait and see what he had to say. ‘What can I do for you, Connor?’

‘Not here,’ Connor Crawford said. ‘Somebody might overhear.’ He led me out onto the deck, where we paused under one of the lifeboats that was suspended from davots overhead. He looked right and left, as if planning to cross the street, and then crossed it. ‘I know who kidnapped Julie.’

I thought I did, too, but coming from Connor Crawford, the news shocked. I gasped, gaped, finally asked, ‘Who?’

‘Well, not his name exactly, but I know what cabin he’s in.’

I was dying to wring the cabin number out of him, but Connor was wound so tight that words erupted in one nearly breathless stream. ‘I was up in the Internet room on deck eight, you know, and coming down this hallway when I ran into an old dude with his arm around Julie. She had a hoodie on, you know, but I recognized her from her hair. Oh, shit, I thought, that dude is not her dad. And Julie was stumbling all over the place, getting her legs all twisted up, and falling down, he was practically carrying her, like, and I thought This. Is. Not. Good.

‘So they stagger past me and I’m thinking, shit, what do I do now, so I turned around and saw this perv practically dragging Julie into a room, and the door shuts and I go Oh. My. God. This is so sick! So, I go to the door and check out the number, and I’m heading off to set off a fire alarm or something, then I think, no, he might have really done something to Julie by then, so I go back to the room and I pound on the door…’ Connor demonstrated by jack-hammering both fists in the air above his head. ‘Then I listen and there’s, like, nothing.’

I’m sure I was nodding like a bobble-head doll. ‘And then?’

‘So I go off to get help, and I find this steward named Leon at the end of the hall, changing one of the rooms, like they do, you know, and he kinda laughs and tells me to chill, that this kind of thing happens all the time on cruises. Girls who dress like sluts are just begging to get laid, I beg your pardon, ma’am. So I think, this asshole is no help at all! So I remember that there’s a concierge club across from the Internet place. I run down there and I tell the receptionist, and she calls some guy in Security who meets me at the room. He pounds on the door but nobody answers. I’m yelling, like, break it down, break it down, so he uses his pass key and… nothing. Room is empty, nothing looks off.’

‘Are you sure you got the right room, Connor?’

‘Damn sure!’

My heart raced as I imagined what might have happened to Julie if Connor hadn’t been checking his email that day. ‘What was the cabin number, Connor? Please tell me you remember.’

‘I said it over and over, so I wouldn’t forget. 8622.’