When the kids fell asleep that night, Benjamin and Liv arranged presents from Santa under the potted palm in their cabin: new swimsuits, small toys, a few books, green and gold flip-flops. In the morning, Penny and Sebastian ran next door to show their haul to their cousins, who had comparable loot, by previous agreement.
Hector, the Argentinian fifteen-year-old, had been given a guitar and he played a few American pop songs in a deck chair, singing softly, sending Penny into a swoon. She liked saying his name as the Argentinians did, “ECK-tor,” rolling the r a little. She and Sebastian had a Guatemalan babysitter when they were younger, and a few weeks of Learn-in-Your-Car Spanish before the trip had uncovered a surprising facility, all these years later. She was a natural mimic.
Hector’s sister, Isabel, had a new bottle of green nail polish, and she painted Penny’s and June’s toes. Then Sebastian wanted his done, too. The Argentinian girl was irresistible, with her long sun-streaked hair. She and her brother had a South American sophistication, jaded and worldly. Marcus hung back and watched as Isabel leaned over the small toes, wiping away extra polish where she’d messed up. Benjamin guessed that Marcus wanted her attention far too much to seek it. The teens didn’t exactly court the adoration of the younger kids, but they seemed to enjoy it. There was no one their age on the ship.
Two unchanging sea days later, Benjamin lay on the made-up bed, enjoying the silence and reading the condensed New York Times on three sheets of printer paper. There was no cell service out here, and the expensive Wi-Fi was iffy. That was good for Liv—to be offline and away from the studio. Even when a movie got made, the path it took always sounded to him like a drug deal gone wrong. Lies, threats, incrimination, betrayal, last-minute bargaining, total lunacy. She needed a break. But Benjamin felt lost without his work. He turned on the cabin’s TV, looking for news.
Flipping channels, he saw a young woman in a stewardess’s uniform, with a black curtain behind her. She was olive-skinned, her hair pulled tightly back.
“It is very hard,” she said. “The work is very hard. The hours are long, and you are all day on your feet. When I finish, I am tired. I go back to my cabin. It is very small, and I share it with another girl. It is okay.”
An unseen interviewer asked her a question.
“My dream?” she asked. She looked startled and then thoughtful. “My dream is to find a job on land.”
The next subject was a slim Indian man with salt-and-pepper hair. He sat in a booth beneath a big still life painting.
“I used to want to be Picasso,” he said with a shy smile. “Or Matisse, you know? The struggle. When I was in art school, I wanted to be a great artist. And now—well.” He looked at the painting of a bowl of fruit behind him. “I do the still life paintings that hang in the extra-tariff restaurants. But I make a living as an artist, which is not easy to do. I remind myself of that.”
The door to the cabin opened and Liv walked in.
“Look at this,” Benjamin said. “It’s supposed to be a tour of the ship, and what everyone does, but they hate their jobs.”
She sat at the end of the bed to watch. A pink New Zealander on the screen was talking with ambivalence about the Kids’ Club.
“Why would they put this on the TV?” Liv asked.
“I don’t know!” he said. “Couldn’t they find one cheerful kid who wants to see the world? Or that Ukrainian girl who’s just happy not to be in Crimea?”
Liv watched the screen, and Benjamin knew she was thinking about their stewardess, Perla, who had three kids in Manila. “Perla’s on a nine-month contract,” she said.
“I know.”
“Imagine what she’s missing, not seeing them grow up,” Liv said. “Maybe the cruise line wants us to know that we should be hit by a bus, to even the score.”
“The bus?” he said. “The bus that goes around hitting people?”
She looked over her shoulder at him and her face went from serious to laughing. He loved watching it change. He had made his own tribe with her, a tribe of two, and then of four. He had not known, in his unmoored youth, if it would happen.
“Yeah,” she said. “The karmic bus.”
He put on an interviewer’s voice, and held the TV remote as a microphone. “We’re talking to a passenger next,” he said. “Tell me, madam, how does it feel to be the most desirable woman on the ship?”
“It’s a low bar,” she said. “Everyone else is eighty.”
“So you admit that it’s true.”
“No,” she said. “There’s Nora.”
He put down the remote. “Nora is a lovely person who doesn’t do it for me.”
“Also the dancers.”
“There’s a reason they don’t have jobs on land.”
“And the Argentinian girl.”
“Let’s reopen that discussion in ten years.”
Liv laughed again. “Oh, I’ve seen the old dudes look at her.”
“Hey, are Penny and Sebastian in the Kids’ Club?”
“They are.”
He turned off the TV. “How much time do you think we have?”
“An hour maybe? I’ll need to check on Sebastian.”
“Come up here.”
“I have to shower.”
“Don’t.”
She made a face, but she scooted up the bed. He lifted her shirt and kissed her stomach. Then she put her hand on top of his and said, “Did those interviews make you feel like your dreams are thwarted?”
“No,” he said. “All my dreams have come true.”
She crossed her legs. “Seriously?”
He sighed at the barrier of her thighs and lay back on the bed, and hoped they weren’t going to have to talk about studio politics. “Yes.”
“And that doesn’t make you think we don’t deserve our luck, that it’ll all be taken away?”
“No.”
She stared at the ceiling. “It does me.”
“Do you think worrying helps?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because the disaster will be the thing you don’t expect. So you just have to expect everything.”
He could feel the child-free time ticking away. “You know, at some point the kids will come back here.”
“I know.”
He reached for her. “So—can we table the disaster thoughts for now?”
3.
PENNY WAS ABOUT to win a game of Crazy Eights on the bright patterned carpet of the Kids’ Club. Part of the game was luck, but Penny knew how to strategize. Her father had taught her to play the suit if she had more of it. If she didn’t have more, she played the number. Marcus was better at geography and directions, but she was better at cards. She put down a two of diamonds.
Marcus drew a card and put down a seven.
Penny played the queen. “Last card.”
Marcus drew and drew, and finally came up with an eight and laid it down, triumphant. “Clubs!”
Penny played the four of clubs and won. Marcus groaned.
“We can play again,” Penny offered.
“No. You always win.”
“Not always.”
Marcus sat back and looked around. “Where’s June?”
He was protective of his sister, who was only six. Penny’s mother said Sebastian was sensitive and they had to be careful with him, too, but she didn’t see it, really. Sebastian had almost died when he was little, and now he had an insulin pump in his back pocket with a line into a port in his skin. Her parents had to stick a new port in every couple of days, and it hurt. And he had to make his finger bleed all the time to check his blood. Penny thought it made him tougher than other kids, not more sensitive.
Marcus got up and checked the playhouse, which was empty. He asked Deb, the counselor from New Zealand, if she had seen his sister and Penny’s brother. Deb said those two hadn’t checked in after lunch.
“They were with us,” Penny said.
“I don’t think so,” Deb said, and she got out her clipboard. “Look.”
Penny saw check marks next to her name and Marcus’s, but not next to Sebastian’s and June’s. “Can we be excused to go look for them?” she asked.
“I’d better call your parents.”
“No!” Penny said. “I know where they are. It’s okay.”
Deb hesitated.
“We’ll be right back, I promise.”
Adults usually let Penny do what she wanted, because they thought she was responsible. They also expected more of her, but it was worth it.