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  Carolyn was squeezed between the black mortician and a bald guy named Greg Marshand, the VP of a cereal company in Iowa. He’d retired to Florida to play golf and wanted to tell her in excruciating detail about every hole he’d played at the Boca Raton Club in the last five years. That was until he found out that she was a food critic. Then he told her more than she ever wanted to know about what kind of corn made the best dry cereal. Jesus Christ! If I’d had to sit next to him, I’d probably have slumped headfirst into my soup, which was pretty good. Pumpkin with flowers floating on it. Carolyn said they were edible, so I ate mine, but they didn’t taste like much.

  The mother-in-law sat next to Mr. Cereal and wouldn’t even talk to him beyond giving him a lecture on some famous golf club that wouldn’t let women join. Between her and me was a short, stocky guy named Commander Bernard Levinson, ex-jefe on a nuclear submarine and Mr. Cereal’s golf partner. They were both Florida widowers, and Barney was seriously pissed off that after all those long tours underwater, with his wife at home raising the kids and taking care of everything else, she died on him when he finally retired so they could take cruises above water together. He seemed like a pretty good guy.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of the doctor. Beaufort E. Lee? What kind of name was that? He said he was from Atlanta, Georgia, and went cruising for a month each year, free of charge because he took over as ship’s doctor. This was his first time on the Bountiful Feast, and he liked it—fewer people and a newer ship meant less chance of stomach viruses flattening all the passengers and ruining his vacation. If that was his bedside manner, I planned to stay well on my own.

  Vera asked him if he knew what to do for someone who’d had a heart attack, which she’d had before Christmas. He told her she didn’t have to worry because he’d seen hundreds of dead heart attack victims. “Young man,” she said, “if I have a heart attack on this ship, I expect you to keep me alive, not add me to your list of dead heart patients.” Then she waved a Caesar salad crouton at him and demanded to know what he’d do if she had a second heart attack.

  “Why, ma’am,” he said, “Ah’d try to keep you alive until the helicopter showed up to take you to the nearest hospital.”

  That’s when he asked me to dance. Evidently he was expected to dance with all the ladies at the table. He’d asked Harriet Barber first, before the soup. They didn’t seem to do too well until she started leading. I got asked during the salad and tried to get out of it, but he wasn’t having any of that. So I let him step on my bare toes once, but when he gave me a twirl and knocked his knee into mine, that was it. “Doctor, you’re one hell of a bad dancer, and I’ve got rheumatoid arthritis. You’re doing me some serious damage here.”

  He stopped dancing and looked me over. “Sorry about that, ma’am. At least you are a very good lookin’ cripple. What prescriptions are you on?”

  So we sort of swayed in place to the music and talked about my meds. Turns out he was a pathologist, and he said I wouldn’t be wanting him to give me any shots unless I was desperate. Medical examiner for the city of Atlanta. When I told him I’d been a cop, we got on just fine. I did warn him it might be a bad idea to mention his specialty to other people. After all, Vera hadn’t taken it very well when he’d brought up all the heart attack corpses he’d seen.

  Carolyn

  My first dinner aboard the Bountiful Feast, and it was very good. An excellent pumpkin soup to start, flavored with ginger, if I was not mistaken. Then a Caesar salad that was a little heavy on the anchovy paste in my opinion, but Mr. Barber, who sat next to me, liked it a lot. He told me that he’d kept jars of anchovies in his room when he was a literature student at Howard University and had loved to snack on the anchovies while reading Milton. He sounded rather sad about the whole thing, although he had met his future wife there. I asked how he happened to get into the mortuary business after he’d majored in English.

  It was a sad story. He’d received a Rhodes scholarship and gone on to Oxford while his future wife attended graduate school at Radcliffe. Then while he was enjoying his second year in England, his father and brother were killed in a collision with an eighteen-wheeler on the beltway around Washington, D.C. With no one left alive to take over the business his father had founded, he’d been forced to leave England and run the chain himself.

  “Randolph had a duty to our people,” his wife Harriet informed me. “We provide affordable, dignified, Christian funerals for African-Americans in ten of the major metropolitan areas, and we are expanding our services every year.”

  Naturally I expressed my admiration for their good works and then studied my entrée, a lovely piece of medium-rare New York strip steak edged by garlic mashed potatoes decorated with thin fried onion straws, broiled tomatoes, and crispy green beans.

  “We do not do Muslim funerals,” said Mrs. Barber decisively. “I feel that compassionate conservatism should not extend to Muslims, and I’m sure the president and the Party would agree with me.”

  Mr. Barber sighed and said, “I rather imagine, Harriet, that we bury the odd atheist from time to time.”

  My steak had been seared with spicy herbs and was absolutely mouth-watering. I’d have to visit the chef tomorrow to talk food and recipes for my column, “Have Fork, Will Travel.” I’d only managed two or three bites when the doctor, a rather peculiar man with a pronounced Southern drawl, a distant relationship to Robert E. Lee, and waves of dark and silver hair falling over his forehead, asked me to dance. I really did want to finish my entrée, but dancing with the ship’s representative seemed to be obligatory, so I accepted. He was a dreadful dancer, and after having my toes stepped on three times, I became very worried, not only about the safety of my own feet, but also that of my barefooted friend, Luz.

  The doctor told me to watch my purse in Tangier, where purse-snatchers thronged the crowded streets, and also in Gibraltar, where the so-called Barbary apes were prone to snatching handbags, hats, jewelry, food, souvenir bags, and anything they could run off with. I did not find our conversation particularly reassuring. I had been looking forward to North Africa and Gibraltar. Thank goodness Dr. Lee had no warnings about the Canary Islands or the Spanish ports we’d visit on the return to Barcelona. Or perhaps he was saving those for another dance. If so, I might be forced to take over any future conversations.

  Also, he was very tall, perfect for Luz, except for the damage he might do her feet; my nose was below his shoulder, and I don’t consider myself a short woman. Goodness, I’m just about Jason’s height. We dance very well together.

  When the doctor and I returned to the table, my mother-in-law was demanding to know whether the Navy had female sailors on their submarines. Commander Levinson said not when he was captaining nuclear submarines, but he thought women would be less likely to come back to port pregnant from submarine duty than, say, aircraft-carrier duty, since it would be very hard to have sex on a submarine without an audience. Much to my astonishment, Vera laughed. They both laughed.

  While I was finishing my entrée and making notes on the spicy surface of the meat, I could hear a woman behind me at another table complaining loudly to the waiter that her wine glass had dishwasher spots on it, which had ruined the flavor of the wine. She demanded not only a new glass, but also a different bottle of wine, although the waiter pointed out that she’d already drunk most of her first bottle. I managed to turn enough to catch a glance at her. It was Mrs. Gross from the Lisbon airport, the lady who had insisted that Luz give up her luggage to the cruise representative. She was wearing a strange brown evening gown that sort of glittered, and I wondered if sequins came in brown. I couldn’t really get a good look at her dress without turning completely around. And why did she want a new bottle of wine? Ours was excellent, a bold cabernet, dry with a fine fruity finish.

  Luz heard Mrs. Gross, too, and Luz did turn completely around to tell the lady that her advice had led to the loss of Luz’s suitcase. “Excellent,” said Mrs. Gross. “You should be able to get a free cr
uise if you play your cards right.”

  As dessert was being served, my mother-in-law refused to dance with Dr. Lee, and Mrs. Barber leaned across her husband to tell me that Vera had sound judgment. “Our poor doctor is as bad a dancer as I’ve ever come across. A woman as frail as your mother-in-law could end up with broken bones if she danced with him. Thin white women are prone to osteoporosis, you know. They die of broken hips every day.”

  I glanced over quickly to see if Vera had heard this grim outlook on her lifespan, but she and the commander were having a rousing argument about whether or not women were up to the rigors of work in shipyards.

  “I’m a very good dancer myself,” said Mrs. Barber. “I’ll have to take the poor man in hand. That is, unless, being a Southerner, he thinks he’s too white to learn anything from an African-American woman.”

  “Now Harriet,” said Mr. Barber, putting down his video camera, with which he’d been zooming in on an elaborate piece of strawberry pie with whipped cream and nuts. “You don’t know that the man is a bigot. After all, you were the first woman he asked to dance.”

  “Humph,” said Mrs. Barber.

  What a wonderful pie! I thought. It had definitely been made with fresh strawberries, very sweet, very flavorful. And the crust was superb! I’d never have thought of adding nuts to strawberry pie, but it worked. And the cream had a slight fruity flavor. Even if I had to glue my purse to my hand in the various ports we visited, the prospect of dinner when we got back to the ship would be worth the stress.

  “Of course I’m taking the bottle back to my room,” said a sharp voice behind me. “It’s my bottle, and I haven’t finished it.” Then I caught sight of a skeletal figure in sparkling brown passing behind me, her wrinkled hand clutching a bottle of red wine. She wore an emerald necklace with matching earrings and bracelet, more emeralds than I’d ever seen on one person, even in one room. Although she wasn’t pleasant, she certainly must be rich.

  I do love strawberries. Not only do they smell wonderful— in fact, the aroma accounts for their historic reputation as an aphrodisiac—but the flavor is heavenly. For centuries, only wild strawberries were available, growing at the edge of forests. But then, of course, people who could afford to, like the kings of France, cultivated them.

  Strawberries were served at a sumptuous banquet in Ferrara to honor the recent marriage of Ercole d’Este, eldest son of the famous (infamous?) Lucrezia Borgia, to Renée, daughter of Louis XII of France, in 1528. Since the feast took place in January, one wonders where they got the strawberries (indoor strawberry beds?), which may well have passed unnoticed, what with the peacocks in plumage and other amazingly exotic dishes.

  Louis XIV was forbidden strawberries by his physician because of a serious digestive problem, but he paid no attention and continued to eat them with wine (the masculine recipe; ladies had to eat theirs with cream). However, my cruise took place in May, when strawberries are abundant and were served in a pie with pecans one night at our table. Pecans were discovered in America by Cabeza de Vaca (whose name means head of the cow—poor man). I ordered champagne to go with my strawberry pie, as a salute to the freedom from stupid sex discrimination in our time. Take that Louis XIV!

  Strawberry-Pecan Pie with

  Whipped Cream

  Mix in a bowl 1½ cups sugar, ⅛ cup all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg, and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon.

  Add 2 cups fresh chopped strawberries and 1¼ cups chopped pecans and toss lightly.

  Line a 9-inch pie plate with the bottom crust of a pie (make your own or buy at the market). Fill with strawberry-pecan mixture. Top with lattice crust and bake on middle oven shelf at 375°F for 50 minutes or until browned.

  Allow to cool, and top with whipped cream and 3 strawberries, quartered and dipped in powdered sugar, at edges of the cream and more chopped pecans in the middle. (Quartered strawberries and added chopped pecans are optional.)

  Carolyn Blue, “Have Fork, Will Travel,” Boston Bay Bugle

  9

  In Crew Quarters

  The five of them sprawled on couches and chairs in the officer’s lounge, which was otherwise deserted because of the late hour. “You get the pills on board without any problems?” Hartwig asked Hanna Fredriksen.

  “Of course.” She nodded. “They’re perfect. They look just like the standard seasick pills we hand out, and I’ve got enough to knock out all the passengers and as many of the crew as we need to put under.”

  Patrick O’Brien grinned playfully and asked, “Did I see a wee bit of fanny patting at the cocktail party, me darlin’ Hanna?”

  Hanna’s mouth tightened, and her perfectly tanned Scandinavian brow furrowed with anger. “I am not your darling, Patrick,” she snapped, “and as for Marbella, I’m going to handcuff his balls to the bars in the brig once we’ve taken over. I’ll make him sorry he ever thought he could get away with groping me!”

  “Ja,” said Martin Froder. “Fräulein Sechrest knows better how to handle our captain than you, Hanna. A little squeak, a gasp, a wild look around with blushes, und der captain is embarrassed at being exposed und keeps his wandering Italian paws to himself.”

  “What do we do when the passengers start complaining to Sechrest?” Patrick asked.

  Hanna shrugged. “I’ll take care of Sandy. You just make sure no one gets a message to the outside.”

  “We’ll have their cell phones and computers, and I’ll have the computer room and the communications room locked up. No one will be talking to the owners or the press. Just us.” Patrick’s elfin face wrinkled into a delighted smile that raised his orange eyebrows and his pale forehead right up to the carrot curls atop his head.

  “These are the small problems,” said Umar Patek. “What about the helicopter?” His black eyes turned coldly toward Hartwig.

  “It’s covered,” said Hartwig brusquely. “It will lift off south of Casablanca and pick us up whenever we’re ready. I’ll be reconnecting with my people to make the final arrangements once we put into port. After that, I give the owners two days to cave to our demands. Then we’re out of here.”

  “So you think you can trust Muslims in Morocco? They do what you say?” Patek asked.

  “You know something about my contacts I don’t know?” Hartwig demanded. “Didn’t you say you were a Hindu from Malaysia? Do I need to run another check on you, Umar? Just to be sure I can trust you?”

  Patek shrugged. “You got the guns on board? More important than pills.”

  “We’ll be well armed,” snapped Hartwig.

  “Too late to be not trusting each other,” warned Froder, the engineering officer. “Hanna has pills, Hartwig has guns, we have der plan, I sail der ship, und you get us off, Bruce. Then the money makes us all happy in Zurich, und we never see each other again. Ja?”

  “Aye, the money,” said Patrick softly. “That’s the thing.”

  10

  A Visit from the Ombudslady

  Carolyn

  My mother-in-law and I were having a cup of coffee on our balcony the next morning, I listening enviously to her description of her bath in the tub with waterspouts, when the first problem of the day erupted.

  “For God’s sake! First they lose my luggage. Now my jeans and shirt are gone. Even my underwear’s disappeared,” shouted Luz, who had just stormed out of our bedroom, clad in a Bountiful Feast bathrobe, with its embroidered cornucopia on the lapel.

  “Calm down,” said Vera. “Have some coffee. That weird little Albanian came by last night after you finished flirting with the doctor and took your clothes away for washing. He’ll get them back.”

  “Me flirting? What do you call your huddle with the submarine guy?” Luz demanded.

  “Short,” said my mother-in-law. “Carolyn was fast asleep before you ever came back to the suite. If you did. Maybe you spent the night with Robert E. Lee.”

  “Beaufort E. Lee,” Luz corrected. “Beau for short. And how could I be sleeping with Beau if my clothes were here for H
erkule to pick up? Anyway, you were on the sofa reading when I got in.”

  “I have to warn you, Luz,” Vera continued, paying no attention to the interruption. “Southern men want to put a woman on a pedestal and pour corn syrup all over her. You won’t like it.”

  “What I don’t like is losing my last outfit to this damned cruise line. So fine. I’ll go to breakfast in the bathrobe.”

  “Now Luz, I’m sure—” Before I could remind her that the captain had promised her a new wardrobe, she cut me off by sitting down and pouring herself a cup of coffee. I could see that she was about to begin another tirade about her clothes, so I said, “Did you know that coffee came from Ethiopia, or maybe it was Abyssinia. It’s said that it got to Yemen because the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon and had a son by him, Menelik, who brought the coffee bush from his mother’s homeland and planted it in Yemen.”

  “Look, Carolyn, I couldn’t care less where the coffee came from,” Luz began.

  “You haven’t let me finish my story. Centuries later a goatherd from an isolated monastery in Yemen complained to a learned monk that the goats were frisking around at night when they were supposed to be asleep. The monk was fascinated and investigated what the goats had been eating, which was these little beans from some scraggly bushes, so he picked the beans and experimented with them, but without much success. Finally he threw them in the fire, where they released a delicious aroma. Because of the odor, he retrieved the roasted beans, ground them, and made a drink from them, but it was too bitter, so he added honey and drank some. As a result he, too, stayed wide awake and felt amazingly alert and intelligent.”