Ed Gorman - Several Deaths Later

It was while she was slathering her rather nice twenty-eight-year-old body with a bar of moisturizing soap that she got the idea for the letter and she started composing it immediately. Not literally, of course-she was after all taking a shower, and writing underwater was a trick she'd never mastered-but figuratively. Figuratively she started immediately.

She'd use her best stationery-the baby blue with the monogram at the top-and she'd write with the special Cross pen her mother had given her for her last birthday and she'd send the letter to Aberdeen, the plump secretary she worked with at the life insurance company-Aberdeen sort of lived vicariously through her. The letter would read:

I don't know if you remember the TV show several seasons back called "High Rise" but I just thought I'd let you know that its handsome star (now host of the game show "Celebrity Circle"), Ken Norris, can rise just as high as you might think (if you get my drift).

Aberdeen, it's my first night on the St. Michael cruise ship, and I'm already in love with a TV star-and I think he's really interested in me, too! More sordid details later!

Then she'd add, as a tease: "But please don't tell anybody!" knowing that with Aberdeen's tendency to blab, she'd probably do everything but announce it over the PA system so that the entire company would hear about it.

Cindy McBain went back to slathering.

Much as she was excited, she was nervous. Right outside her bathroom door sat TV star Ken Norris himself. Waiting. For her. Cindy was staying in what they called a Mode 4 cabin aboard the gigantic superliner, which meant it had the same sort of severe look the motel rooms of her business college years did, which meant that all Ken Norris had to amuse himself with were those glossy but boring magazines they left in every room. Fortunately, he was pretty drunk-he'd sort of been babbling, matter of fact; and maybe he was taking a short nap.

Cindy had insisted on the shower. She wanted her one and only night with a TV star to be perfect. And that's why she kept slathering, because a TV star like Ken Norris (my God, was he handsome!) would be used to women who served themselves up like pastries. And a lot of work went into pastries. A lot!

As she tilted her head back, letting the water blast at her face, she congratulated herself again for being sensible, for mentioning right in the middle of a kiss what a stickler she was for protection, given all the grave diseases around these days. And promptly he'd waggled a little plastic box at her that listed all the scientific stuff that had been sprayed on to this particular form of latex protection. Why, this stuff would do everything except kill crabgrass!

So, feeling safe now, and feeling clean now, she started to step from the shower, knowing that he was probably tired of waiting for her. The last she'd seen of him, he'd been sitting on the cramped built-in red couch in a black dinner jacket, pouring some more scotch into a drink he said looked "too much like a urine specimen. I like 'em a little darker than this." And looking so dreamy saying it!

She knew that men liked women's hair wet so she didn't do anything more than dry it with a towel and wrap the towel turban-style around her head. Then she stood naked in front of the steamed-over mirror and wiped the critical areas clean so she could get a quick appraisal of herself. For a Kansas City girl who'd never slept with a TV star, she looked-why be unbecomingly modest? — pretty nice. In fact, very nice.

She checked one breast and then the other. They had begun to sag a teensy bit, but sag at least in an interesting way, and then she checked her bottom which had begun, but not so interestingly, to droop, and then she checked her neck, which bore not a trace of impending middle age. She had the neck of a sixteen-year-old.

She was imagining how her second letter to Aberdeen would open when she thought she heard something drop just outside the bathroom door.

Dear Aberdeen,

Don't tell anybody, but he's asked me to come visit him in Hollywood!

He hadn't of course asked her any such thing. But imagine if he did! Imagine if Aberdeen blabbed that throughout the insurance company! Imagine if she got to tell that story at her ten-year high school reunion, which, after all, was coming up in ten months.

Her only concession to modesty was a white terry-cloth robe that smelled cleanly of fabric softener and matched in color and texture the towel on her head. She knew she wouldn't have them on long, anyway.

They'd be heading right for the bed. He'd been ready to go. All ready.

She opened the bathroom door.

The first thing that surprised her was the darkness. He'd apparently turned off the light.

The second thing that surprised her was the quietness-just the soughing and roll of the ocean and the distant sound of a disco band.

The third thing that surprised her was that he said nothing. She shuddered, recalling how, at an insurance convention in Las Vegas she spent the night with this guy who'd taken great delight in jumping out of the shadows and scaring her. Maybe Ken Norris was like that!

The fourth thing that surprised her was when she tripped. It was one of those things you see the Three Stooges do-your arms flailing, your mouth dropping open, your head kicking back-and then you land right on your tush.

Her head landed right next to his head.

She said, "God, you really scared me. You get sleepy or something?"

Nothing.

"I hope you didn't see me trip. I must've really looked stupid."

Nothing.

He just lay there in his dinner jacket, his handsome head turned handsomely toward her.

"Wouldn't you be more comfortable on the bed?" she said.

Then she got this horrible thought.

Maybe he'd been a lot drunker than she'd realized and had simply keeled over. What kind of letter would that inspire to Aberdeen? She'd really have to embroider that one to make it sound like anything at all.

"Why don't you let me undo your tie?" she said. "Maybe that'll make you feel better."

The waves; the roll of the massive ship; the scent of ocean; the cry of birds; her breathing and the wet smell of her hair; and moonlight through the tiny cabin window-she realized then that she was in a place alien to her Kansas ways.

It was because of the moonlight that she finally saw how awkwardly he was positioned on the floor. She just started sobbing softly to herself because it was so ridiculous, just so ridiculous.

And it ruined utterly-utterly-any sort of decent letter at all to Aberdeen.

Any sort of decent letter at all.

Tobin, thanks to the largess of the game show "Celebrity Circle," was spending the cruise in a Mode 5 cabin, which meant he enjoyed the perks of a double bed, a bureau in which to put his underwear with the ragged elastic and the socks that never seemed quite to match, and a somewhat large mirror above the bureau, in which he could assess what forty-two years, red hair, alcohol, any number of fistfights, and the curse of being only five had done to him.

From the Parade deck he heard the sounds of a band that was made up of lounge lizard rejects from New York-he knew this for sure because they'd bored him in any number of night spots-four guys who all wanted to be Bert Convy when they grew up.

Or was he being unfair, as he was so often unfair? He decided probably, and he decided to hell with it, and went back to staring at the TV screen.

Thus far he'd not had the idyllic cruise the brochure promised-all that deck tennis, all those voluptuous girls in string bikinis, all those stout chefs pointing to banquet tables filled with colorful decadent food of every kind-no, he'd not had the kind of vacation the brochure wanted you to have, and it was nobody's fault but his own.