“They’re newlyweds,” I heard a lady whisper.
“Aren’t they cute? They’re always cuddling together like that.”
“That’s how it is when you’re just married,” a second lady replied. “You can’t bear to be separated."
“If you’ll come up on the stage, Madam, I’ll check your card and you can accept your mystery prize,” the emcee announced.
The bride was distraught. “I can’t come up on the stage!”
“They can’t bear to be parted even for a minute,” the first lady agreed.
Chief Purser Yenta moved quickly to smooth over the situation. He went to the couple, picked up the bride’s Bingo card, and brought it up to the stage. The emcee checked it and handed Yenta the fancily wrapped package. The japanese deck oflicer delivered it to the bride.
“What is it?” people around the winning couple were asking. “Open it,” they prodded the bride.
She reddened under all the attention. She tore the wrapping from the package. She opened the box.
“What’s inside?” the neighboring players wanted to know.
“Another box.” The bride giggled and withdrew it.
“Open it, honey,” her husband urged.
She opened it.
“What is it?” he asked, trying to crane his head to see, but failing.
“Another box.”
Curiosity spread. By now everybody in the hall was watching the couple. Embarrassed, the bride hurried to open the smaller box. She withdrew the contents and emitted a loud wail of anguish!
The mystery prize was Queen Nimmfetah’s ermine-lined diaphragm!
“What is it?” The groom was alarmed at her reaction.
She flipped it back over her shoulder so he could see it.
“Too late!” Tears sprang to the groom’s eyes as well.
“That’s mine!” Queen Nimmfetah was yelling.
“Disgraceful!” Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot protested.
“‘A luxury item to tickle your fancy’!” someone jeered at the emcee.
The bride wailed louder.
“It was supposed to be a gift package of the Lascivia’s own specially prepared red caviar,” the emcee tried to explain. “I don’t understand what happened.”
“Someone poked a hole in it!” Queen Nimmfetah grabbed the diaphragm from the bride and held it aloft.
The anti-sex fiend had struck again!
“This desecration must be punished!” the teen-age ex-monarch howled. “It’s a priceless antique! It’s as if some barbarian had bayoneted the Mona Lisa, chopped the nose off a Rodin sculpture, or hammered spikes into a Stradivarius!” She waved the hallowed contraceptive device over her head as if it was a banner for her army to rally around. “The infidel who did this must be punished!” she screamed.
Yenta tried to calm her in vain. The Captain had to be summoned. Maldemerde assured the ex-Queen that the vandal would be apprehended and strung up to a yardarm by his thumbs. She obviously felt the punishment was too mild, but she was nevertheless at least somewhat mollified.
Meanwhile, Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot had left in an outraged huff. Dr. Quotabusta administered a sedative to both bride and groom and arranged to have them transported back to their cabin. Yenta darted around calming sundry people.
Finally things settled down enough for the Bingo game to resume. The emcee was obviously shaken as he began calling the numbers for the next round. I didn’t stay for it. The day had been a long, active and exhausting one. I was very tired. I left the recreation hall and started for my cabin.
On the way, I passed the open porthole to Cabin B-47. I glanced inside. The wrinkled old face of Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot stared back out at me, first startled, then filled with revulsion.
“Peeping Tom!” She closed the porthole, locked it securely from the inside, and drew the curtains. I continued on to my quarters. Entering my room, I turned on the floor-lamp and discovered a hand-printed note pinned neatly to the lampshade. I read it.
“STEVE VICTOR--YOU HAVE SINNED! YOUR BUSINESS IS SIN! YOUR PLEASURE IS IN SINNING! THE DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING! HE WHO LIVES BY THE SWORD WILL DIE BY THE SWORD! MEN WHO POKE HOLES LIE ASLEEP IN THE DEEP!”
It seemed the anti-sex fiend was a compulsive metaphor mixer. That’s what I thought to myself as I undressed and stretched out on the bed. I was even more tired than I realized. I zonked right out.
I was awakened the next morning by the deafening roar of a cannon shot. The cannonball cleared the bow of the ship by less than three feet. A second shot exploded off the stern.
By the time the third was on its way, I was in my pants and running!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Another cannonball raised a geyser off the port side as I emerged on deck. By now the Lascivia was well on its way to our first port-of-call, Trinidad, and the weather was balmy. The overnight change in the climate had brought the passengers out on deck to sun themselves in the sixty to seventy-five degree temperatures. Such was the lassitude induced by leaving winter behind that they seemed not to comprehend that the ship was under attack.
One exception was Ogden Stanford, stretched out beside his wife Binny in a deck chair. “Hey!” he sat up straight. “That ship over there is shooting at us!”
Binny, blonde and voluptuous as ever in her repaired bikini, was contemptuous. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she told him. “They’re merely saluting us. That’s what ships do at sea. It’s tradition. If you’d ever taken the trouble to read a book, you might have learned that.” She calmly rubbed suntan lotion over the exposed upper halves of her brazen breasts. They jiggled and gleamed with the treatment. “You dumbhead!” she added gratuitously.
Another shot hit the water and the two of them were drenched.
“If that’s a salute, the gunner must have stuck his thumb in his eye!” Ogden exclaimed.
“Your naiveté is bad enough. Your paranoia is too much. That’s why I want the divorce.”
“Aw, Binny. . . .”
I continued up the deck to where I could get a clear view of the ship shelling us. It was a large luxury liner, very similar in design to the Lascivia. One difference was the small cannon mounted on the forward deck. Squinting, I could just make out the letters spelling “QUEEN WILLIAM” on the prow.
Another shell whistled over my head. They were coming at about one-minute intervals now. Still, the people on deck were unalarmed. They accepted the onslaught as if it were some minor spectacle arranged for their enjoyment. Some of them were bored by it and expressed the sentiment that Chief Purser Yenta could have saved himself the trouble of presenting this little diversion.
Buddy Fluker, seated at a table on the promenade deck and working out countermoves to the Sicilian Defense on his little chess board, merely scowled with annoyance when the roar of the cannon interfered with his concentration. In a nearby deck chair, Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot was crocheting. “Vulgar display!” I heard her muttering to herself as I passed. Queen Nimmfetah, Zwing Toy’s nose buried in her lap, didn’t even bother opening her eyes when her chaise longue was rocked by the impact of a shell hitting the water.
In the wheelhouse, the feeling was quite different. Captain Maldemerde, frozen with fear, was crouched down behind the helmsman. “They’re going to sink us!” he was moaning. Click-click.
“No, sir.” Mister Jewish calmly disagreed. “If they wanted to do that, they’d have done it already. At this range they couldn’t miss. Captain Grabass is just trying to throw a scare into us.”
“Suppose the gunner miscalculates,” Maldemerde whimpered.