‘A window,’ she said. ‘I need a window. Don’t forget.’
‘Check,’ I said, and pressed End.
Fifteen minutes later, down in our basement office with Paul kibbitzing over my shoulder, I logged onto the Phoenix website, selected adjoining cabins on deck four and entered my credit card number, expiration date, and CCV code. My mouse hovered over the Buy Now button. ‘Here goes!’
When the screen refreshed, a special offer gave us two hundred dollars in on-board credits as a thank you for the last-minute booking. I’d be able to buy my own tropical drink with an umbrella in it when we hit the hot tub.
I hit Print and as the receipt rolled out of the printer, I relaxed into my chair. The Alexander girls were a sister act again, and that act was going cruisin’.
THREE
‘240,676 people sailed on 100 cruises from the Port of Baltimore in 2012. “Since beginning a year-round cruising schedule in 2009, the Port of Baltimore has continued to make waves as one of the hottest cruise ports in the U.S.,” Governor O’Malley said. [It] handled the fifth-largest amount of cruise passengers among East Coast cruise ports, 11th largest in the U.S., and 20th most in the world. In 2011 the Port began using a state-of-the-art, climate- controlled enclosed passenger boarding bridge. The bridge is mobile and flexible to accommodate various sized cruise ships. Baltimore is within a six-hour drive of 40 million people.’
Maryland Port Administration, January 30, 2013
‘I thought this cruise was sisters only,’ Ruth grumped when I telephoned her the next morning. ‘I’m not sure I want responsibility for a teenager running loose aboard.’
‘Julie’s not your responsibility,’ I said reasonably. ‘Nor mine. She’s Georgina’s.’
‘Shit, Hannah. Have you looked at Julie lately, really looked? She’s developed – and I do mean developed – into a beautiful young woman. No telling what kind of trouble she’ll get into.’
‘Don’t be silly! What possible trouble could Julie get into on a cruise ship?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Ruth said, using her firm, older sister, voice-of-experience tone.
‘Other than getting hammered and falling overboard,’ I added, just to show I wasn’t completely out of touch with current events.
‘I watched a CNN special on cruise ship safety a couple of months ago,’ Ruth continued. ‘Did you know that a person falls overboard approximately every two weeks?’
‘I do. I saw the same show,’ I replied. ‘But most of those accidents are alcohol-related, or suicides, not foul play.’
‘With some exceptions,’ Ruth said.
‘There are always exceptions,’ I said, ‘but if the Phoenix Islander is anything like the Queen Mary Two, there’ll be a zillion activities for teens, and they’re pretty closely supervised. Julie’s not going to be standing on the bow like a hood ornament with her arms outstretched singing, “My Heart Will Go On.”’
‘Well, I’m not going to babysit,’ Ruth said flatly.
‘Me, neither. There’s a hot tub on board – several, actually – and one of them has my name on it.’
‘And I’ll be right beside you, sister, holding a pink drink with an umbrella in it. But…’ she added after a beat, ‘a cruise ship is like a small city. I’m worried that some creep will try to take advantage of Julie. You have to admit she’s a bit naive.’
‘Julie may be naive, but criminals certainly aren’t. It seems to me that a cruise ship is the worst possible place to commit a crime. First of all, where would the perpetrator go? Aside from overboard, there’s no place to run, no place to hide.’ I paused to take a breath. ‘Besides, the ship has a database that includes photographs of everyone, both passengers and crew. If some perv were stupid enough to try something, he’d be a cinch to identify. And, good Lord, there are security cameras everywhere!’
‘I hear what you’re saying.’ Ruth hesitated a bit before continuing. ‘OK, you’re right, it’s Georgina’s problem. I, for one, am planning to engage in adult pastimes. Lectures, shows…’
‘Ballroom dancing?’ I interrupted.
Ruth snorted.
‘On second thought, you could probably teach ballroom dancing.’ My sister and her husband were semi-professionals. A few years back, when Ruth was sidelined by an injury, Hutch and his partner, Melanie, had even made it all the way to the finals of Shall We Dance, a television talent show. Ruth and Hutch still danced regularly in local and regional competitions.
‘No dancing, thanks,’ Ruth said. ‘That would be like going to work early!’
‘If you taught, they’d let you sail for free,’ I pointed out. ‘File that away for future reference.’
‘Nuh uh. I’d rather attend lectures on the history of Bermuda, or crop circles, or how to avoid back pain. The rest of the time I plan to lie around like a slug while somebody else cooks my meals and picks up after me.’
‘You need a wife.’
Ruth grunted. ‘Back into your cage, Hannah.’
I laughed and hung up on her.
Our boarding pass instructed us to arrive at the port of Baltimore no later than one, so on the day we were to set sail I picked Ruth up at the home she shared with Hutch on lower Conduit Street. Parking at the Port of Baltimore cost fifteen dollars a day, so to save her some bucks we’d offered to pick Georgina and Julie up too, but Georgina had telephoned in a panic just as I was heading out the door. Julie was running late, so they’d have to drive to the port themselves.
As we made our way up I-97, Ruth kept in touch with our sister by cell phone. By some miracle, we covered the twenty-eight miles to Baltimore in less than forty minutes and managed to arrive at the port at approximately the same time as Georgina. Uniformed parking attendants using orange batons directed us to parking spaces that turned out to be only a row apart.
‘Wow!’ Ruth leaned over the dashboard and peered at the Islander through the windshield, eyes wide as a toddler’s at Christmas. ‘I had no idea the ship would be so enormous!’
‘Twenty-five hundred passengers and eight hundred and forty crew,’ I said, quoting statistics I remembered from the ‘Welcome Aboard: Your Adventure is About to Begin’ brochure I’d received in the mail. ‘Bigger than Paul’s home town, actually.’ I climbed out of the driver’s seat and paused for a moment to admire the enormous vessel, its bow towering over us, high as a fifteen-story apartment building.
Ruth and I had packed light – one medium-sized wheelie bag each – but I was astonished to see what came out of Georgina’s trunk. While we watched, she slung a large, steel-gray suitcase to the ground, followed by a matching carry-on. ‘Your bags, Julie. You handle them.’ Georgina reached inside the trunk for the more modest-sized suitcase she had packed for herself. ‘You’d think we were going away for a month, rather than just a week,’ Georgina complained as she slammed the lid of the trunk shut, aimed her remote at the car and locked the doors.
‘I’ve never been on a cruise before, Mother, so how am I supposed to know what to wear? I had to pack for every situation, didn’t I?’ she said with a sideways glance at me, as if pleading for my support.
Judging from what Julie was wearing that day – strappy, medium-heeled sandals, a blue jean miniskirt, lime-green camisole with spaghetti straps and a sheer, flowered shirt – it would have been easy to fit her entire wardrobe into a single backpack.
I smiled. ‘The hardest thing for me was what to wear for the formal evenings. Since I quit working in Washington, D.C. I don’t dress up much. I was forced, actually forced, to go shopping at Lord and Taylor.’ Paul had been a professor of mathematics at the Naval Academy for more than twenty years, and in the old days there had been frequent formal events at the college, but recently – except for the Ring Dance in May – not so much.