Chapter 11
Anna was up from her hangover but not too happy. She was inclined to look at the salad as if it still had garden bugs in it, and the entree got only peckish attention. Elsie, with her usual exuberance, ate her way down to the bone china and eyed Anna's wasted salad wistfully.
"It isn't really fattening, you know," Elsie pointed out. "It's the dressing."
Anna sighed, pushing her plate over. "It's dripping with dressing. That's what makes it so revolting. Oh, hello!" This was addressed, without any vigor, to Jennifer as she slid into her chair. "You're late." It was a comment, not a criticism. Anna didn't have the energy for criticism. "And you look revoltingly radiant. I hate people who get up and tramp around decks and breathe deep, just so they'll be healthy enough to get up and tramp around the deck and breathe deep. It's demoralizing!" But she managed a weak grin for Jennifer. "Only you didn't get even your nose sunburned."
Elsie waved a forkful of salad at Jennifer. "So we were betting on which man. There are only two things that make a girl look as healthy and happy as you-and you don't tramp decks." Elsie sighed. "I know. Or I'd have run into you. My friend is a fresh-air nut. As if you couldn't get good enough air through the air conditioner down in any stateroom. Even ours. Especially when the air upstairs has such a good start on being fresh." The rest of Elsie's comment was lost in the crunching of lettuce and celery and spurting of mayonnaise-or was it Roquefort?
Roquefort, Jennifer decided, studying the mangled remains before she could formulate an answer. And the obsequious waiter saved her from that. She ordered luncheon with such a liberal hand that even Elsie paused in her chomping to listen.
"You've got a man and you tramp decks. Nobody should be that healthy." Elsie lay down her knife and fork, a sure sign she was vitally interested. "How do you do it? Get a man, I mean. We go on cruises and ski runs and camp-outs and all we come back with is good health and sore muscles. If it wasn't for a boyfriend I keep hidden back home, I'd be frustrated." She aimed an empty fork at Anna. "And Anna would be an alcoholic, except she can't drink anything stronger than diet cola without getting sick. Only her boyfriend is a scuba diver. And what can you do under thirty feet of water?"
Anna regarded her entree with distaste. "But he does surface. Once in a while. Of course, I think he'd be happier if I were a carp." She pushed her plate an infinitesimal distance away. "He says carp have some very interesting mating habits."
Elsie regarded her empty fork with dismay, and then Anna's plate. "Well, if you're not going to..." She swapped plates. "I think he's really sneaky, watching carp make love. How'd you like a couple of carp standing at the foot of your bed? By the way, what are carp?"
That Jennifer felt she could cope with, stifling the laughter that the two friends had created-purposely, she was sure, to divert her. "The carp is the symbol of life, of fertility, to the Chinese."
Elsie looked as horrified as a round-cheeked youngster with her mouth full could manage. "So even the Chinese spy on 'em!" She waved her fork at Anna. "You should get a new boyfriend. Like maybe a truck driver. They're out-doorsy enough and generally are too tired to do anything but go to bed. And they don't peep in on carp."
Jennifer tackled her salad as soon as it was brought, eyeing Elsie and Anna with genuine amusement. They were a delightfully uninhibited pair. "Are you two trying to tell me something? Like a couple of carp have been standing at the foot of my bed?"
Elsie glanced at her friend, Anna, and shrugged. "There are rumors. But, of course, on a swingin' singles cruise there are always rumors. Unfortunately, not about us. Anna and me. We're immune. To rumors and any excuse for same."
"I would think just going on one of these swinging singles cruises would be enough to start rumors." Jennifer spoke from the memory of her own attitude toward the cruise.
Elsie grinned. "Oh, it does. It does. Among landlubbers. Among those who'd go if they could-but their wives won't let 'em." Elsie beamed over Jennifer's shoulder. "And we have a visitor. A Miss Carp, I believe. Are you condescending to mingle with us hoipolloi after dining with the ship's officers?"
Jennifer turned her head briefly, enough to identify Carol. And she caught Elsie's broad hint about the rumor-starter. So this was "Miss Carp." Jennifer returned to her meal, watching with amusement as Elsie and Anna hurriedly finished and rose.
"You don't mind if I sit here, do you?" Carol was being particularly sweet in a very bitchy voice. "After all, it used to be my place..." She watched Elsie and Anna retreat, smiling in wicked amusement before she swept herself into her formerly assigned chair.
Jennifer prepared herself for barbed shafts and hitting and biting in the clinches. The idea helped to clear her brain. She had had many such skirmishes with Mother Dear-usually ending in defeat because Mother Dear could have a tizzy and need "medical attention" if an argument was going badly.
Of course, the skirmishes with Mother Dear were always trivial-and Jennifer rarely won one. But they had sharpened her wits. Particularly those that occurred as replays later in her room, alone.
Carol's glance swept over her and brought a smile to the tight, hard face. "You had such possibilities. It really is a pity I got that call so inopportunely. I hadn't known you had a lover aboard. You did the betrayed innocent act so well, too."
Carol helped herself to some crackers from Anna's plate. "I was almost taken in. Of course, you know he's married. Three children. Or is it four now?" Carol pretended to count on her fingers. "It should be four, just about now."
Jennifer speared a piece of chicken, studied it and smiled. "You're way out of date, darling. Four was the previous count. And the last was twins. Or hadn't you heard?"
Carol looked momentarily avid and then sensed she was being kidded. "My count was three." It was said stiffly.
"Oh! Of course. They so seldom mention the older one. Mentally retarded, you know."
It sounded so natural, so authentic, that Carol leaned avidly forward. "Mentally retarded? No, I hadn't heard that. What are they planning for the child?"
Jennifer shrugged. "A hopeless case, the doctors say. She'll never get above the moron level." She smiled sweetly at Carol. "So they're thinking of training her for a dyke."
Carol gasped, raising one hand as if she would strike Jennifer, and then subsided in her chair, white-faced, furious. "That was about as bitchy as you could get!"
Jennifer shook her head. "Oh, no, dear, Not nearly as bitchy as you were about to be, I just did it first." Jennifer attacked her chicken again, her hands steady though she wanted to shake with anger, with hatred-and a lot of it directed at herself for being, as Carol said, bitchy. "With provocation, of course. An idle rumor has to get to work-and sometimes it works the wrong way. I'm sure the second mate must resent your starting rumors about us. Just because he's been a little courteous to me."
Carol whispered softly to herself, "The second mate? So it was the second mate...." She slid out of her chair, a malicious smile twisting her near-perfect mouth. "And I had thought it was..."
"The first mate? Oh, him, too. But not the captain. He's quite a bit too old and rather stodgy, don't you think? Oh, I don't suppose you'd know about men. But he is. Quite. However, the others..."
Carol, the dyke, was stalking away from Jennifer's table, her head high, her neck rigid with anger, her hands clenched at her side.
And I feel sick. I don't like scenes like that - and I hate fighting dirty. That's what it was, fighting dirty. Because she really had no defenses. Only a system of attack. And if that failed... Well, I couldn't let her realize how much I was hurt by those rumors she started. Or even that I regarded them as rumors.
Jennifer forced herself to sit through the rest of the luncheon, eating as if she enjoyed the now tasteless food, smiling at people she had seen or spoken to. Including that amiable towhead, Jerry, and his strawberry blonde, who now seemed quite recovered and even eager. Jennifer even dawdled over dessert until she saw that the waiter was getting restless. He probably had other duties, doubling as a room steward, more than likely, where the tips were probably better. She sighed, sat back, and indicated she was through with the mousse, though she would have liked another bite or two.
Really, sex had given her an appetite. Or she could blame it on the sea air and the superb food.
She mentally checked herself. Yes, except for a mild pain right down where things had happened, she did feel good. Surprisingly so. She was obscurely angry because it was true. Jennifer felt that it shouldn't be true. I have been wicked. By all standards, very wicked. And my body feels wonderful, revitalized, renewed. While I feel utterly miserable. She tried to analyze just how miserable she did feel-and discovered she didn't. She felt fine.
Even Carol's contrived bitchiness no longer really bothered her. She had answered the snide remarks with some that were equally barbed and perhaps even cruder than Carol's. She wasn't even angry about the rumors Carol had apparently started, though she knew she should have been. No one should like to have rumors like that circulated, even-or maybe especially -if they were true.
So she walked out of the dining salon with a long, easy stride that brought several pairs of masculine eyes around to follow her. And several pairs of feminine eyes that looked with envy.
She was determined now to get into one of her more scandalous bikinis-though the very idea temporarily froze her-and manage to be seen soaking up tropical sunshine by the pool. Even if she didn't have the courage to test out the bikini by an actual swim.
Not that poolside tanning would in any way refute what rumors Carol had started, but it would at least demonstrate that Jennifer couldn't care less about rumors. Even if it only demonstrated it to Carol.
She heard his footsteps behind her as she crossed the main foyer. How she was so sure they were Bruce's footsteps she couldn't have told, but she knew. So she wasn't startled when his voice spoke close beside her.
She stopped and turned. Now was the time to tell him that there would be no viewing of the Southern Cross, no scene such as earlier in her cabin-which he obviously anticipated. She turned and saw his half serious, half laughing face bent toward her, his eyes skipping quickly over her, as if her making sure that she was there, in all her parts, and intact.
She felt herself melting under the candle-power of his grin-and hated herself for it. She was an independent person, someone in her own right. He had no options on her, no right to regard her as his own.
"Will you be with us tonight? To view the Southern Cross?" Bruce took her arm and turned her, strolling along with her until they were well past the apparently somnolent bar steward.
She managed a nod, almost brusque. There, that ought to show him a thing or two! "Oh, I expect I'll see the Southern Cross-unless they change the course of the ship-or some of the heavenly bodies."
Bruce blinked at her brusqueness and some of the candlepower faded from his grin, but he nodded. "You have a heavenly body. Don't change it." He suddenly laughed aloud. "To judge from Carol's face as she left the salon after that brief encounter with you, I'd say our kitten has claws." He released her arm and just barely resisted an impulse to swat her behind. "Go on, kitten. Rest up. Watching the Southern Cross can be strenuous."