Читать книгу Killer Cruise - Laura Levine - Страница 11

My neck was stiff as a board the next morning from sleeping without a pillow. Prozac, the spoiled brat, had hogged it all night and had only reluctantly abandoned it to perch on my chest and claw me awake for her breakfast.

I plucked her off and rolled over, only to see Samoa’s manuscript looming on my night table, waiting to be edited. All nine hundred pages.

Oh, groan.

But I had to look on the bright side. Now that Samoa knew about Prozac, I’d be getting maid service. I could even ask him for another pillow.

See? There’s always a silver lining.

Working on the Silver Lining principle, I got dressed and scooted over to the buffet, where I scored a divine breakfast of bacon, eggs, and cheese Danish for me and baked ham for Prozac. Countless calories later, I made my way up to the Sports Deck, where I ran a few brisk laps on the ship’s jogging track. (Okay, so technically I didn’t run any laps, but I did watch other people run laps. Does that count?)

Having burned off approximately three and a half calories, I headed over to the ship’s computer room to check in with my parents and make sure they’d arrived safely. I’d recently bought a fancy new cell phone that did everything except brew coffee. One thing it did not do, however, was work on board ship. So I’d arranged with my parents to communicate with them via e-mail.

I found the computer room sandwiched between the ship’s chapel and the Photo Studio. Several Webaholics were seated at a bank of computers getting their daily Internet fix.

One of them was Kyle Pritchard. Clad in a designer polo and Bermuda shorts, he was tapping away at his computer. At his feet was an attaché case, no doubt made of some endangered species. And spread out next to him were what looked like a bunch of financial statements.

“Hi, Kyle,” I chirped.

“Hmmph,” was his cheery reply.

Careful to put plenty of space between us, I settled down at a computer and tried to get an Internet connection. For some idiotic reason, I thought it would be free, as part of my “free, all-expenses-paid” cruise. But, alas, the helpful Holiday staffer on duty informed me that I wasn’t about to be comped on e-mails.

“How much is it?” I asked.

“A buck fifty.”

Gee, that wasn’t so bad.

“A minute,” he added.

Holy Moses. I made a mental note to keep my communications with my parents to a bare minimum. But after reading my e-mails I’m afraid I wasted valuable Internet minutes staring into space, agog at the thought of the cops charging into my apartment on a “catnapping” call.

It was so typical of Daddy, creating an uproar over nothing. I love him to pieces, but the man is a born crazymaker. I swear, he’s caused more ulcers than pepperoni pizza and jalapeno chiles combined. How Mom has put up with him all these years, I’ll never know.

Of course, Mom is not without a few quirks of her own. Not only is she constitutionally incapable of remembering my cat’s name, she’s probably the only person on the planet to move to Florida to be near the Home Shopping Channel, not for the weather or the oranges. Somehow she’s convinced she gets her packages faster that way.

But I couldn’t waste any more time dawdling over my e-mails. It was almost ten o’clock. Time for my first class of the cruise.

I have to confess I was a tad nervous.

When I’d first asked Paige how many people I could expect at my class, she’d replied:

“Oh, the big-name celebrities can attract hundreds. But someone of your caliber”—and there was no doubt she ranked me somewhere in the Three Stooges caliber of lecturer—“the most you can expect is fifty, maybe seventy-five.”

Seventy-five people?? Gaack! To me that was a cast of thousands. The only other writing class I’d ever taught was at the Shalom Retirement Home, where I could count my students on the fingers of one and a half hands.

So it was with butterflies frolicking in my stomach that I raced back to my cabin to gather the seventy-five handouts I’d xeroxed for the class. Just my luck, the elevator took forever to show up, and when it finally did, it stopped at every floor.

Which meant that I was five minutes late when I finally came puffing up to the Galley Grill Restaurant, where the class was scheduled to take place. By now, those butterflies in my stomach were doing the conga.

My fear quickly turned to flop sweat when I walked into the restaurant.

There, seated at the tables that had been set up for the class, was a grand total of five students!

Five measly people? What happened to all the others?

I walked over to them, a sickly smile pasted on my face.

“Hello, there!” I said, my voice echoing in the cavernous restaurant. “Welcome to Writing Your Life Story.”

I prayed some latecomers would straggle in. Maybe some of them got held up in the elevator, like I did. Yes, I had to think positive thoughts. A whole bunch of them would probably come streaming in any minute now.

I introduced myself, and after explaining that I was no relation to the Pride and Prejudice Jane, I started passing out my handouts: a series of memory-stimulating questions about my students’ childhoods, their jobs, their marriages, their children—in short, their lives.

If completed, I told them, the questionnaire would serve as a memoir to pass on to future generations. Or it could serve as a springboard to a longer, more ambitious project. All the while I chatted, I kept looking at the door hoping for somebody else to wander in. But alas, it looked like it was just me and my gang of five.

“So,” I said, my smile now frozen in place, “why don’t you all take turns and state your name and tell everybody why you decided to take this course.

“You, sir?” I asked a bushy-bearded guy with an opulent unibrow.

“I’m Max,” he said. “Actually, I wanted to take Professor Heinmann’s lecture series on his Arctic explorations, but, unfortunately, he had to cancel his cruise, so the class was called off.”

So that’s why Paige had offered me the job. I was a last-minute replacement.

“And bingo was too crowded,” he added, “so I wandered in here.”

Great. Nothing like an enthusiastic student to get the ball rolling.

“I’m Rita,” piped up the woman sitting next to him, a wiry-haired dame with small, squinchy eyes. “I’m president of the West Secaucus Women’s Reading Club, and I never miss an opportunity to hear an author speak.”

Okay, at least this one had a vague interest in writing.

“On my last cruise,” she announced proudly, “I saw Mary Higgins Clark.”

“Really?” I said. “That must’ve been fun.”

“Yes, she was fabulous. Just fabulous. Utterly spellbinding.”

“Looks like I’ve got a tough act to follow. Haha.”

“Humpph,” she sniffed, clamping her arms over her chest, having clearly reached the conclusion that it would be a cold day in hell before I came close to filling Mary H. Clark’s shoes.

“And what about you?” I asked a long-haired teenage boy, sitting at a table some distance away from the others. He couldn’t hear my question, though, thanks to a pair of earbuds stuffed in his ears. Totally oblivious, he nodded his head in time to music from his iPod.

“Young man!” I screeched.

“Who? Me?” he asked, popping out an earbud and peering at me through his fringe of bangs.

“Yes. What’s your name?”

“Kenny.”

I couldn’t help wondering what a kid his age was doing in a class like this.

“Well, Kenny. Tell everybody why you’re taking this class.”

“My parents made me. They want you to help me with my book report on The Scarlet Letter.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. First Samoa, and now this. It seemed like everyone on board had something for me to edit.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. This is a memoir-writing class. Feel free to drop out if you want.”

I hated to lose him, but I was not about to play High School English Teacher.

“Nah,” he said, “that’s okay. There’s nothing else to do on this dumb ship. Everybody here is like a hundred years old. Besides, my parents are paying me fifty bucks if I stay out of their hair for an hour.”

I nodded wearily to my last two students, a sixty-something couple, dressed in identical jogging suits—his blue, hers pink.

“We’re David and Nancy Shaw from Seattle,” the man said.

“And after forty years of marriage we’re taking this cruise to renew our wedding vows,” his wife chimed in.

Eyeing their matching jogging suits, wide, toothy grins, and Early Beatle bobs, I wondered if they’d always looked like each other, or if they were one of those couples who grew alike as the years went by.

“Anyhow,” David said, “we thought it would be a wonderful idea to write down our memories to pass down to our children.”

Alert the media! At last I had some people who actually wanted to write their memoirs.

“That’s wonderful,” I said, fighting the impulse to race over and kiss them.

I spent the next few minutes giving my students a mini-lecture on the principles of writing, trotting out the old “Show, Don’t Tell” adage, urging them to go for specific memories rather than sweeping generalities.

“Just remember,” I said, winding up my little chat, “what you write doesn’t have to be perfect. Just keep writing. If you have difficulty, pretend you’re writing a letter to a friend. Now let’s get started. Everybody take out your pads.”

“I don’t have a pad,” Kenny, my teen angel, sulked.

“I don’t either,” Max chimed in.

“I do,” Rita said, with a virtuous sniff. “I always come prepared.”

“You can write on the back of these,” I said, tossing Max and Kenny some of my extra handouts.

Then, just as I was about to give them their first writing exercise, a tiny, white-haired woman drifted into the room. In her hands she carried a tote bag almost as big as she was.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said in a whispery voice.

“That’s perfectly all right,” I said, grateful for another mate on my motley crew. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Amanda.”

“Take a seat, Amanda. Here’s a handout. We’re just about to get started.”

She sat down next to Max and smiled up at me. Thank heavens this one seemed pleasant.

“Now I want each of you to write about a first in your life. Your first date. Your first job. Your first day at school—”

“Can I write about my first colonoscopy?” Max asked. “It’s where I met my second wife.”

Talk about your love connections.

“That’s fine,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” Rita piped up, poking a finger through her wiry curls to scratch her scalp. “Aren’t you going to talk about your books?”

I refrained from telling her that, aside from You and Your Garbage Disposal, I had no books to talk about.

“No, Rita, I’m afraid not.”

“But Mary Higgins Clark told us all about her books,” she pouted.

“She sold her first book,” she said, turning to the others to spread the news, “when she was widowed with five children!”

“How interesting.” I forced myself to keep smiling. “But as I’ve already explained, this is a writing course.”

“But I thought we’d be hearing stories,” Rita whined.

“The only stories in this class will be yours,” I said firmly. “Now, let’s start writing, shall we?”

Rita’s hand shot up.

“Are we going to be graded on penmanship?”

“There are no grades. Just write.”

By now, I was thisclose to giving her a wedgie.

Nancy and David, the married couple, picked up their pens and started writing with gusto. The others were a tad less enthused. A lot of ceiling-staring and what I suspect was doodling ensued. But at last I saw pens crawling across paper. The writing process had begun.

The only one who wasn’t writing was the old lady who’d come in after the class began. Instead, she’d taken a pair of knitting needles from her tote bag and was clacking away at what looked like an argyle sweater.

“Aren’t you going to write anything, Amanda?” I asked. “It’s fun once you get started. Just pretend you’re writing a letter to a friend.”

“Oh, no thank you, dear.” Another sweet smile. “I’ve already written postcards to my friends back home.”

“Don’t you want to write about your life?”

“Oh, no, dear. Living it was enough for me.”

Clearly the woman was not operating with a full deck, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to see a smiling face.

For the next hour I continued to swim upstream with this bunch. Rita kept punctuating every assignment with tidbits from the Mary Higgins Clark files. In a stage whisper that could be heard all the way to Cabo San Lucas, she kept up a running commentary on how much more famous and entertaining Mary Higgins Clark was than yours truly.

At first I was gratified to see Kenny, the teenager, writing industriously, but when I peeked over his shoulder I realized he’d been busy perfecting his pornographic cartoon skills.

Max nodded off somewhere during the second writing assignment, his jackhammer snores echoing in the empty restaurant.

But on the plus side, you’ll be happy to know that Amanda got a lot of work done on her argyle sweater.

My only shining lights were the married couple, who attacked their assignments with gusto.

At last, sixty painful minutes had come to an end. Not a nanosecond too soon.

“That’s all the time we have for today,” I said, hoping they couldn’t hear the relief in my voice.

Kenny’s hand shot up from the back.

“If there’s homework, I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

“There’s no homework, Kenny. Just bring in what you wrote today, and we’ll take turns reading aloud.

“See you all tomorrow!” I said, smiling my most appealing smile. As motley a crew as they were, I couldn’t afford to lose a single one of them. “Any questions before we go?”

My sweet, white-haired lady raised her hand.

“Just one, Professor Heinmann,” she said. “When are you going to tell us about your Arctic explorations?”