Marcia Talley - Dark Passage

‘It’s karaoke night, boys and girls,’ he drawled into the microphone as he cued up the next number, a song I’d never heard before. The singer was ditching her boyfriend for good, and she didn’t sound terribly broken up about it, either.

I asked Julie who the artist was. ‘Taylor Swift,’ Julie said, her body jiving in time to the catchy beat. ‘She’s my absolutely fave !’

‘I thought you were in love with Justin Bieber, Julie.’

My niece screwed up her face. Even in the inadequate lighting it said, plain as day, you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me . ‘I am so over Justin Bieber, Aunt Hannah. Besides, he’s going with that Selena. She sucks!’

‘Thank heaven’s for small favors,’ her mother commented, raising her voice so I could hear her over the chorus of ‘we are never, ever, ever, evers’ blasting out of Phreakin’ Phil’s speakers. ‘But I don’t like you using that word, Julie.’

‘Whatever,’ my niece grumped.

Floyd from Arizona, a twenty-something counselor who was ruggedly handsome in a Hugh Jackman sort of way, explained that Phreakin’ Phil – Phreak to his friends – was a pro at beat-matching, phrasing and slip-cueing, but Floyd might as well have been speaking to me in Greek. Smiling broadly, his teeth whiter than white under the psychedelic lighting, and oozing boyish charm out of every pore, Floyd helped Julie overcome her reluctance to join the karaoke party. After Floyd worked his magic, Julie shyly agreed to sing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ by Bonnie Tyler toward the end of the evening, but she made us promise we’d be nowhere in the vicinity.

Amused, we agreed. Georgina and I left Julie in Floyd’s presumably capable hands and wandered off to find Ruth. She’d promised to save seats for us in the Trident Lounge, four decks down from Tidal Wave and at the other end of the ship. We found her there, holding down the fort at a small round table. ‘The place was filling up, so I ordered drinks for you both. I hope they’re all right.’

I sank gratefully into the upholstered chair, then reached for my drink. ‘Ah, a mojito. You know me too well, sister.’

Ruth grinned.

From her frown, I gathered that Georgina wasn’t quite so pleased with her drink – a gorgeous, peachy-pink mai tai, loaded with fruit, but she thanked Ruth for it anyway. ‘When does the show start?’ she asked, her lips pursed around the straw.

Ruth checked her watch. ‘Eight o’clock. Any minute now.’

As if the producer had overheard, the lounge lights dimmed, the spotlights flared and four middle-aged musicians – two guitarists, a pianist and a drummer – charged onto the stage. They wore white, button-free tuxedos with Nehru-style collars over electric-blue vests. Matching blue-striped ties were knotted at the necks of ordinary, pointed collar white dress shirts.

Georgina choked on her drink, coughed and whispered, ‘The Da Doo Ron Rons are Japanese?’

‘Korean,’ Ruth corrected. ‘Or so says Wikipedia.’

I melted into my chair. ‘This should be interesting.’

‘They’re a rock and roll band, so they cover tunes of the fifties, sixties and seventies,’ Ruth continued while staring at the stage and absent-mindedly chasing olives around the bottom of her dry martini glass with a swizzle stick. ‘A good choice for our demographic, I should think.’

Without preamble, the combo launched into their signature tune, ‘Da Doo Ron Ron,’ a faithful tribute to The Crystals rather than that young upstart, Shaun Cassidy, who covered and re-popularized the song in the late seventies. Then they segued into an equally authentic cover of the Monkees’ ‘Daydream Believer’ with the lead guitar channeling Davy Jones.

The lead guitarist was equally well cast as Jim Morrison. ‘Morrison could light my fire any day,’ Ruth said as she flagged down a server and ordered another round. ‘His father was a navy admiral, did you know that? When Dad was stationed in San Diego they overlapped.’

I raised my glass. ‘Missed opportunity, Ruth, but then, had you actually snagged the guy, you’d have been a widow at twenty-something.’

She raised her glass. ‘True, but a rich one.’

The bass guitarist sported a Beatles-style do and managed a credible Paul McCartney, but when the voice of Elvis Presley or Roy Orbison was required, the job fell to the pianist. Alternately gravelly or sweet, the Korean’s amazing voice soared effortlessly into the higher octaves in his rendition of ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ which he performed complete with Orbison’s trademark dark glasses. By the time he lit into ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’ the whole audience was singing along. At the end of the set, we put our drinks down on the table and clapped until our palms stung.

I went to bed that night with an earworm. Long after Ruth had turned out her light, plunging our stateroom into darkness, I lay on my back with Orbison’s ‘Crying’ looping through my brain.

The tune was still haunting me at breakfast the following morning – cry-y-y-y-ing, over you, cry-y-y-y-ing, over you – as hard to shake as ‘It’s a Small World After All,’ until Cliff and Liz Rowe showed up at our table and drove the melody, and all other thoughts, clean out of my head.

‘Invisibility was the ultimate concealment.’

Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant ,

Da Capo, 2004, p. 90

We’d agreed to meet for breakfast at 7.30 a.m. but that plan got shot out of the water when Julie, burrowed deep into the sheets under her duvet, had turned into a block of stone. Georgina stood in the connecting doorway, gazing back into the darkness of her own cabin. She excused her daughter with an indulgent smile. ‘Julie’s not used to staying up so late, even on weekends. If Scott knew she didn’t get in until almost midnight last night he’d have a conniption.’

I checked my watch; it was nearly 8.00 a.m. I was working on a headache, and if I didn’t pump some caffeine into my veins pretty soon, I’d be more than grumpy. ‘Ruth and I will go on down, then. Shall we bring you something, or do you want to call room service?’

Georgina stepped all the way into our stateroom and closed the door quietly behind her. ‘I’m coming, too. Let her sleep. If she wants breakfast later she can pick up something to eat in the Firebird.’

My sisters and I headed aft toward the Oceanus dining room, conveniently located – at least for us – on deck four. We emerged from the narrow passageway into a bright, spacious lobby that was also home to the Oracle, the Islander ’s trendy wine bar. An attractive young barkeep was already at work dumping ice into large, shell-shaped basins – one at each end of the sprawling, horseshoe-shaped bar – where splits of sparkling wine would be kept properly chilled. I made a note to check out the wine bar later.

Breakfast and lunch aboard the Islander was open seating, but that didn’t mean it was a free-for-all. We were met by the maître d’, who greeted us like long-lost cousins, then handed us off to the first in a long line of servers – Paolo from Brazil, who escorted us to a table for eight near a window. Not that there was much to see. Overnight we’d sailed out of the Chesapeake Bay, past Norfolk, Virginia and into the Atlantic Ocean, well out of sight of land.

A squad of Paolo’s fellow waiters materialized out of the woodwork to hold our chairs until we were seated, whip open our napkins and float them gently into our laps. Then, with a slight bow, we were each provided with a menu.

Ruth studied the menu through her reading glasses. ‘Ah, just like home.’

Georgina giggled. ‘I don’t know about you guys, but I have Eggs Benedict every morning.’