Authors: Michelle Woodward
“It could have though, you need to grow up and start being responsible.”
“Don’t you feel alive?”
“Get me home.”
Dillon sensed that Sophie was still seething. “Are you angry?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.” Dillon leaned forward and stroked Sophie’s pale trembling cheek. “Come on, let’s get you free from your gear.”
-
Cynthia sat watching television while she cracked off a square of chocolate and placed it into her mouth. She noticed Sophie’s bedroom door open. Dressed in a towel with her skin soaked, Sophie asked. “Mrs. Levy?”
“Yes, Sophie?”
“Have you seen my cell? Can’t find it anywhere.”
“No. You seem quite flustered... when was the last time you saw it?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“When David comes from Zach’s room I’ll ask him, I know Zach has a thing for phones.”
“He does. If not I’ll hopefully come across it when I clean my room.”
“I’ll let you know if I see it.” Once Sophie closed the door, Cynthia glanced back at the television and began to reacquaint herself with the movie. Suddenly a strong vibration erupted from deep within the couch. Slipping her hand down the back of the cushion Cynthia pulled out Sophie’s pone. “Sop...”She then fell silent as she read the text message.
“Please stop ignoring me. I’m really sorry about today. I really like you and want to meet you again. Dillon. X”
David stepped in from Zach’s bedroom. “The little guy’s fast asleep.” He then sat at his wife’s side. “You’re going to have to explain this movie to me, Cynth.”
“David... I think Sophie has a boyfriend?”
“What?”
“Careful David. You seem a little jealous.”
“I’m not... Honest, just... she kept that quiet.”
Cynthia felt unconvinced by his straight face. “You’re married to me.” She poked David on his arm while continuing to glare at him. “Remember.”
“Stop being like that.”
“You know I have a point.”
“We’ve just come back from a two day stay at a luxury spa.” David did his best to speak with authority. “Do you think that I like spas? No. But I went for you, to show you how much you mean to me.”
“David...”Cynthia felt herself choke. “I just get jealous, because since I had Zach, I don’t look like the young woman I was. I’m turning into my mother.”” She felt powerless to quell the raw emotion which sat just below the surface. “Things just don’t feel or look the same.”
“But I always thought your mother was sexy.”
“Shut up, David.” Cynthia threw her head backwards on the backrest “I’m sorry. I just don’t like the way you look at Sophie... Because it’s the way you used to look at me.”
“Cynth... come on.”
“The way you acted shocked when I said she had a date... it confirmed my doubts.”
“I’ve never touched her. OK. I can’t lie. She is attractive, but I’ve built a life with you... not her.”
Cynthia caught a tear in the tissue she held below her eye. “I don’t think I can believe you anymore.”
“Look. Let’s go out. Me and you.”
“No. I want to go to bed. Alone.”
“Please, come with me.” David placed a hand on Cynthia’s lap. “Just to talk. It scares me when you say such things, hurts me.”
“Hurt you? Your lack of interest in me doesn’t just hurt me, it kills me. Every single day.”
“I’ll take you to the piano bar.” David took Cynthia’s hand and squeezed her hand. “I’ll ask the pianist to play your favourite songs, while me and you talk about what’s gone wrong. Is that fair?” He stared deeply into her eyes, reminding himself of the first time they kissed. “Give me an hour to save our relationship.”
“You have an hour to prove me wrong.”
--
The pianist played an Elton John ballad while David stared across a candle lit table at Cynthia. He felt his heart wilt at seeing the sadness in her tired eyes. “How can I make you feel better? Name it, I’ll do it.”
“It’s quite simple.”
“Good. What is it?”
Cynthia glanced away, deciding to stare at the paved floor of the terrace instead. “I’m just not comfortable with Sophie.”
“I’ve told you.”
“I found money.”
“Money?”
Cynthia finally met David’s eyes. “$200.”
“Two... where?”
“In Zach’s room.”
“Oh.”
Despite only being lit by little more than the candle light, Cynthia could see David’s ashen face. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you know nothing about it.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re not paying the slut to sleep with her... are you?”
David choked on his beer, then spat it back into his glass. “Cynthia, please.”
“Just send her on her way.”
“OK. If I must. But it’s a delicate time for her, with her exam and all.”
Cynthia let out a sigh. She had long grown tired of David’s excuses for Sophie. “Here we go.”
“It’s true. You know that.”
“Listen. In return for Sophie leaving, I’m willing to pay her a severance fee. Enough to get her over the exams... see, I’m not a total bitch, am I?”
“I never said you were. Did I?” David took a swing from his glass of beer. “OK. Am I the one...”
“Yes David.”
“Oh. So when...”
“When you next see her.”
“Cynthia.” David felt afraid by Cynthia’s cold stare. “OK”
-
Dressed in a flowery summer dress Sophie gracefully descended the staircase that landed in the centre of to the sushi restaurant. David stood at the foot of the stairs. “Nice to see you, David.”
“As always, Sophie... it’s a pleasure. You look great by the way.”
“Thanks. I was surprised to receive your text... and the fact it was just me and you. What’s the occasion?”
“Sophie. I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
David pulled back Sophie’s chair to let her sit. He felt unable to hide the truth. “I have to let you go.”
“What? You could let me sit first.”
“I have to end your contract?”
Despite her sadness Sophie felt too shocked to cry. “What have I done?”
“Nothing. Nothing. You’re great with Zach... and looking after the house. I promise, if you ever need a reference I’ll write you an amazing one.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s...” David placed his hands on his chest. “It’s me.”
“Did Cynthia...?”
“Sophie, Cynth is mighty jealous of you.”
“Your wife’s jealousy is losing me my job, putting me back on the streets.”
David ordered a bottle of wine with the waiter. He then placed a hand on the back of his own neck. “Because I got you into this mess, I want to make this parting was amicable as possible.”
“But, I thought you liked me.”
“Fricken hell, Sophie. Of course I do. That’s the problem!”
Sophie finally felt emotions creeping to the surface as her leg became restless and her lip began to quake. “Are you going to stop seeing me then?”
“Yes. I have to. I’m a married man, not just that, but I’m a father too.”
“But, I love you.”
“No, you don’t.” David covered his mouth with his fist after speaking louder than he had wished “You need to love someone better.” He sipped heavily from his glass. “That tall blond guy is a looker. I thought he was your boyfriend, anyway.”
“But what about Zach you can’t take him away from me... he’s my brother.”
“I’m sorry.”
“David. Why?”
David placed a hand on his forehead. “I fucked it up, not you. I’m sorry for that. I always will be. But it had to come to an end, someday.”
“But your family is all I have. I can’t go back to being alone.”
“It might seem cold, in fact it is. But this would have always been the outcome. I’m sorry.”
“David.” Sophie grew desperate as David ignored her and stared at the white linen table cloth. “David. Look at me.” His refusal to meet her eyes caused her heart to bleed. “David, tell me that you don’t love me and I’ll leave.”
“I love my family more.”
“I can’t go back to the suite... where do I go?”
David pulled out a white envelope from the inside of his jacket. “Here is a cheque. It’s more than enough to see you over the next six months. Go and start your new life, I’m sorry for ruining this one.”
“That’s all you do isn’t it, pay off your mistakes. Well it’s a good job you’re so damn rich.”
-
Dillon spotted Sophie marching through the reception tugging her luggage behind. “What’s wrong? You’re not leaving until tomorrow.”
“I’m going home.”
“Why? ”
“I’m just going.”
Dillon pulled Sophie back by her arm. “Please talk to me.”
“I’m out of my job. OK.”
“Where does that leave you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have anyone to go to?”
“No.”
“Then stay with me.”
“No... I can’t.”
“Yes you can.” The enthusiasm in Dillon’s voice was audible as he rubbed Sophie’s upper arm. “This place is crying out of staff, Hitler keeps sacking everyone.”
“You have a point.”
“Of course I do. I have my own little pad above a Greek restaurant... It’s tiny but I get 20% off. You like moussaka?”
“Love it. So... are you asking me to move in?”
“Well, I have asked you twice... but I’ll ask you a third time if you want.”
“But, we just met... I can’t move in with a man I don’t know.”
“What do you mean... I’ll sleep in the TV room on the couch. I don’t care.”
“Well that’s mighty nice of you, Dillon.”
“I just don’t like seeing good people in tough situations.”
THE END
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Spring had just melded into the first intoxicating drink of balmy summer when the letter arrived.
Dear Ms. Aldryn,
(it read)
After reviewing your application, King Royal Cruises is proud to offer you a spot amongst our cast of performers for this summer season! We hope you are excited as we are about this opportunity—we feature star-quality entertainment for our guests nightly, and our rotating cast includes Broadway stars, jugglers, musicians, etc.—anything you can name, King Royal Cruises offers!
We hope you’ll enjoy your time with us. Take advantage of your days off by visiting our exotic destinations—you’ll truly feel like you’re on a working vacation!
Listed below this was the scheduled arrival time at the docks in exactly two weeks, along with instructions on how to obtain an identity badge. Identity badge. It wasn’t until she read that particular part of the letter that it finally hit Mackie that the thing she had been both dreaming about and dreading for the past month and a half had finally come into fruition.
The urge to push past her strongly disciplined boundaries had suddenly assailed her right after the American Ballet Company had accepted her to join their highly esteemed and coveted ranks. For the past two-odd decades of her life, ballet had taken center stage, if she could excuse herself that particular pun. Being a ballerina might have been every little girl’s dream, but few could imagine the physical exertion, iron will, and extreme degree of correctness it took to achieve that goal.
And Mackenzie was nothing if not disciplined.
After receiving the news of her secured position at the company, however, there was one small problem. Dance season began in late August, and until then, Mackie had about five months of time to fill. After dawdling at one odd job or another for a couple of months, Mackie saw an online ad calling for new acts on King Royal Cruiselines. And without asking herself too much why she did it, she applied.
Now, holding their response in her hands, it occurred to her that maybe the reason she hadn’t wanted to think about why she had applied was because she did not want to admit the reasons out loud. And the reason was, she thought, years of diets, bruised feet, and nights locked up in the dance studio practicing flashing through her mind, was that she wanted one final break before dedicating the rest of her dancing years to the grueling life of ballet.
So what was the big deal?
The ballet company had several “strong recommendations” when it came to their new employees filling the months before they joined their ranks. Get plenty of rest, practice ballet, and—behave “professionally.” Which meant that jobs doing dancing at small-stage shows and other places got you a bit of a reputation, which the company frowned upon. Working as a dancer on a cruise ship, locked away with cast and crew who saw nobody but each other for half-year sequences at a time might just be one of those places. Looking back on her all-too-correct life, Mackenzie wondered if it would truly be such a terrible thing if she entered the company with a little edge to her name. After all, recommendations were recommendations, not rules set in stone. As if ballet could afford itself one more rule, she thought sarcastically.
Fingering the letter from King Royal, Mackie felt a small fission of excitement seep through her body. All of a sudden, it was all she could do to keep from jumping up and down on the wood of her family home’s front porch. There were so many things to plan! What to wear, which leotards to pack, what exactly the guys in the fantasies she would have until the cruise itself would look like. They’d all wear captain’s uniforms, of course. Or was that silly? Maybe people didn’t wear those anymore. And how would people react to her? Had there ever even been a ballerina on a cruise ship? It sounded almost farcical in her head, but the fact was was that if there hadn’t been, there was one now. Image and reputation be damned, she owed herself this bit of fun. It was the perfect opportunity, despite how ludicrous it might sound—this way she could practice ballet, rest, and even indulge her naughty a little bit.
Mackenzie Aldryn, cruise ship performer.
Yes
, she thought, rising gracefully to her feet and pushing open the white screen door with her free hand -unsc
that sounds just right.
* * *
“The backstage entrance is located on another floor altogether to give performers privacy and time to prepare, of course,” Rick, the cruise director, informed her as they stood in front of the King Majesty’s grand showroom stage exactly two weeks later. “How does that sound?”
To Mackie, it all sounded extravagantly wonderful. From the moment she had arrived at the docks and seen the ship that would be her home for the next few months, she had had to pinch herself about every three minutes to convince herself this was actually happening. Under a bright and cloudless sky, the King Majesty rose to reach the almost visible rays of the sun, the kind that Mackie used to draw as a child. The ship was so large that it was difficult to imagine it sailing through the water without sinking to the very bottom, and the only indication of movement at all were the waves breaking against its hull as it stood anchored to seven posts at the dock.
Shielding her face against the sunlight with a broad-brimmed hat, Mackie had met Rick on the main deck. He had an hour to familiarize her with her schedule and the ship itself, and warned her it could be a bit overwhelming for a newcomer. “But don’t worry,” he told her, kindly grabbing one of her suitcases and hoisting it onto a little trolley. “We take care of our own. I’ve no doubt you’ll have a great time—everyone does!”
She would have chuckled at his incredibly cheery disposition if she hadn’t been so bowled over by the interior design of the cruise ship itself. It was as if someone had taken the very best of fancy hotels around the world, mixed it together and thrown it out onto the ocean. Gilded gold elevator doors, great crystal chandeliers intermingling with finely potted plants in foyers, dozens of tiny lounges, each complete with its own miniscule stage, where, as Rick informed her, a different musician would play each night.
They were all on a rotating schedule. Few people were ever on a cruise ship for more than two weeks, Rick told her, and so each performer only needed a few alternating acts in their repertoire for the time they were on the ship. She would be performing four nights a week, twice on the main stage, interspersed with a few shorter numbers on some of the smaller stages. It sounded like a dream, although Mackenzie knew it would be grueling—there was an early dinner crowd, and a late one, which totaled to two shows a night for every night she was performing. Luckily, she had her days completely free, and she intended to take full advantage of that. Nothing was going to hold her back from enjoying herself.
Not even her cabin, it seemed. She had been expecting something small and cramped, prepared for the worst, but her cozy room featured a darling round window, two gray silk curtains partitioning off her room into a living and sleeping area. Best of all was the array of floor-to-ceiling mirrors around the vanity. For her purposes, it was perfect. She was lost in admiring it when she suddenly became acutely aware of Rick standing politely at her side, waiting for her to come to so he could leave.
She blushed, grabbed her bags and thanked him, pushing all her things into the room. Still, he didn’t leave; instead, he walked into the room with her, opened her window, turned around and smiled at her. “You know, we’ve never had a ballerina act here before,” he said, walking back to the door. “I think that this will be an educational experience for us all.” And with that, he left the room and shut the door.
Mackie caught sight of herself in one of the mirrors. She turned her body this way and that, catching the long, lean lines of her form, honed by years of intense dance practice, and then pouted at herself in the mirror. Her body was all wrong for ballet, her first teacher told her. She inherited her broad thighs directly from her mother’s side of the family, a line of strong, beautiful South African women. She did not have the right form, the teacher had said, but Mackie had proved him wrong.
She turned from the mirror to take in the rest of the room.
Time to change and explore
, she thought, and lost herself in a flurry of unpacking.
Thirty minutes later, she was grasping the silver lean bar and observing the gargantuan crystal chandelier in the main entrance again. The air sparkled with an almost visible representation of serenity. The cool glass separating her from the open air of the entrance pressed against her dark skin, infusing her with a sense of calm and rightness. From her left, she could hear the vague clank of cutlery as the kitchen staff prepared for the early dinner crowd. Below her, people murmured as they sank their soft bodies into equally soft couches and absorbed the music tinkling around them.
There was something familiar about that tune. Mackie leaned forward, just a bit over the railing, feeling the front of her dress tug a little. Yes, there it was, the well-known strains of one of her favorite Sinatra songs.
These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray…
She couldn’t tell exactly where the music was coming from, but it filled her with a sense of peace. She was feeling strangely alienated in this world of floral prints and cargo shorts, on both men and women alike, uniform blobs of humanity that were about as diverse as the threads in the fabric of Mackenzie’s sea-green silk dress. So far, she was the only black woman on the entire cruise, as far as she could tell, and she was fairly certain she was getting some stares, the nature of which she could not decipher.
The feeling of being watched intensified as Mackie headed down the grand staircase, trailing the handrail with her fingertips. She stepped into one of the many tiny alcoves of the cruise to discover a nearly deserted bar, dark and lovely, oak-paneled with a real, honest-to-goodness white shirt wearing bartender toweling off glasses.
“A drink?” he tossed her way, casually, but to Mackie, it was the least casual thing in the world. As a dancer, she had a strict diet and regimen to follow, and alcohol was not included in any of that. Still, she wanted the full experience of doing just exactly whatever the hell she wanted, and so she slid one of her long legs onto the seat and ordered her first ever dirty martini. The glass presented to her was as delicate as Mackie herself, the only thing lending credence to its contents was the two olives getting drunk in it.
Sandwiching her clutch between her elbow and body and holding her drink, Mackie wandered around the floor, passing by hordes of Texans, all seemingly nervous at the prospect of not having to be at work. Who knew vacation made you nervous? Mackie giggled at the thought, warm with the alcohol from her drink. She passed by a series of huge open windows and glanced out to where the sun had already set over the water. Just then, a huge BOOM sounded, and Mackie knew that the ship had left its port.
She watched the waves lap languorously over each other, and watching the smooth satin of the water lick itself filled her with a funny feeling—or was that the alcohol?—as if she was the one who was submerged in it instead of the bow of the ship, and she was the one being tongued by a million riotous waves.
Greetings, passengers!
A voice came over the sound system.
This is your captain speaking. We have set sail and are traveling at twenty-five knots per hour. Weather conditions look favorable, and the temperature is eighty-five degrees. Please enjoy the various activities we have on board and don’t miss our fantastic show tonight! Happy sailing and bon voyage!
Mackie breathed in the cool, conditioned air around her, and sipped some more of her drink. She had wandered into a narrow hallway that seemed rapidly to be filling with people—what was going on? A turn around the end of the hall revealed that she had found the main entrance to the showroom, and the early dinner crowd had finished stuffing down the last of their steaks and baked potatoes. It was five minutes to showtime, and Mackie wanted to make sure that she got a good seat. Smiling slyly to herself, she snuck around the crowd and dipped inside, flashing her ID at the showroom manager. She ignored the loud protests behind her and navigated the sloping floor carefully, making sure she didn’t spill her drink. She found an unobtrusive seat off to the side of the front row, and slowly sucked her drink down to the olives, waiting for the show to begin.
She was not disappointed. The glitz and glamour of the opening act rivaled Broadway, indeed, and she knew she would feel proud in the coming months of being part of such a talented team. After the musical acts were done, Ricky took his designated post as host of the evening at the mic.
“Ladies and gentlemen, King Royal is very pleased to have the next gentleman as part of our act. You’ve seen him on Letterman, you’ve seen him around the globe—he is the number one champion juggler in the world, Adaaaaaam Santiiiiino!”