Again.
About an hour out of Fort Lauderdale, the rough seas started. Helen kept running through the secret passage and up and down the steps, cleaning, scrubbing, folding toilet paper into points. The guests used so many towels she’d had to replenish the supply in the cabinet. She could feel the yacht bouncing a bit, but she wasn’t sick.
I’m an old sea dog, she thought.
In a weird way, she was grateful for the ceaseless work. She didn’t have time to worry about Kathy.
At eleven o’clock, the men retreated to the sky lounge for scotch and poker. Now Helen had two guest heads to clean and another flight of stairs to climb.
“I’m not feeling so good,” Helen heard Pepper tell Beth and Rosette in the main salon. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
“You do that, dear,” Beth said. “We’ll stay here and talk.”
The salon’s sofas and end tables were securely bolted to the floor. Beth and Rosette, the society woman, seemed unfazed by the rough seas. Beth held Mitzi in her arms while the poodle whimpered. The two women sipped champagne, nibbled on snacks and delicately knifed reputations. Helen rested for a moment at the top of the crew mess stairs and listened.
Rosette waited until Pepper’s footsteps faded down the main staircase, then said, “Really, I don’t know why Scotty bothered marrying her.”
“You don’t?” Beth said, archly. “Her attractions are obvious.”
“We can all see them,” Rosette said. That “all” was etched in acid.
“I think she’s rather sweet,” Beth said. “She’s better than that horror he had before Pepper. What was her name? Belinda? Blanche?”
“Blossom,” Rosette said.
Helen nearly dropped her cleaning caddy. She leaned forward to hear more.
“I think Scotty paid that one by the hour,” Rosette said. “What street corner did he find her on?”
“She was from somewhere in California,” Beth said. “He flew her back on his plane and bragged she’d made him a member of the Mile High Club. Scotty has always had a taste for the demimonde.”
“You don’t have to be so delicate, darling,” Rosette said. “He likes hookers. He told my husband he doesn’t have to romance them—they’re paid to worry about how he feels. He was feeling a bit battered after his last divorce. I don’t care who he sleeps with, but he dragged that one to dinner with us. That was the limit. I pleaded a sick headache.”
“If you’d seen the sleazy rag she wore, you really would have been sick,” Beth said. “I couldn’t escape. You stuck me with her. That was very naughty of you.”
Did Scotty date Arthur’s future wife? Helen wondered. Blossom was her trick name. Maybe lots of hookers used it. She did have outrageous outfits in her closet and an arrest for prostitution. Her clothes and behavior around Helen were impeccable, but Fran the housekeeper insisted Blossom had dressed to meet a man.
“Thank gawd Scotty came to his senses,” Rosette said. “She mentioned getting married on the beach once too often and he finally put her on a plane back to whatever whorehouse she came from.”
“Not before she stole his watch and who knows how much cash,” Beth said. “Scotty was too embarrassed to report it.”
“I think he got off cheap,” Rosette said.
Helen jumped when she heard Mira clattering through the crew mess. “Helen!” the head stew said. “Why are you lounging on the stairs? Go see if Mrs. Crowne needs anything.”
Helen shot through the secret passage to the Paradise stateroom, where she heard Pepper being violently sick. Then the bed creaked and there were alarming moans.
Helen tapped on the Paradise door. “Mrs. Crowne?”
“What?” Pepper gasped.
“Do you need anything, Mrs. Crowne?” Helen asked. “May I bring you some hot tea? Ginger ale? Dramamine?”
“Nothing works,” Pepper said. “I’ve tried it all.”
“Would you like your bathroom cleaned?”
“No, let me die in peace,” Pepper said, and groaned like something from a newly opened grave. “Wait! Come in. You can get me something.”
Pepper was shivering under the duvet, curled into the fetal position. Her creamy skin had a green tinge and her golden hair was plastered to her damp forehead. “I want a bucket,” she said.
“Like a plastic scrub bucket. I don’t want to keep getting up to barf. I wish I’d never seen that salmon mousse. Oh, God, not again.” Pepper jumped up and streaked toward the stateroom’s head.
Helen gently closed the door, then radioed Mira. “Give her one of the small plastic buckets in the passage,” the head stewardess said. “You’re lucky. Some guests use the wastebaskets.”
By eleven thirty, the wind was stronger. On her trips upstairs, Helen saw whitecaps on the black water. The boat was rocking like the devil’s cradle. Occasionally, she heard a crash as something slid off a shelf. The chef, Suzanne, had packed the galley cabinets with Bubble Wrap and was taping the doors and drawers shut. Mira and Louise were securing dishes and ornaments. The deckhand and second engineer had zipped the canvas covers on the deck furniture. Now they were lashing it to the rails.
Helen felt queasy. She couldn’t walk through the shifting secret passage without barking her shins or hitting her elbow. Slowly, her body got used to the yacht’s movement. First the ship would plunge down—taking her stomach with it—then rock back and forth until the next big wave hit it hard and the process started over.
The wooden blinds swung and banged against the windows, and the waves slapped the boat so loud Helen heard them when she cleaned the sky lounge head on the third deck. The stink of Scotty’s cigar hung in the sky lounge. Her queasy stomach did a backflip and Helen raced downstairs to her cabin. If she was going to get sick, she’d use her cabin head. It didn’t have to be cleaned every time.
Yeah, I’m a real old salt, Helen thought as she worshipped the porcelain. She sat briefly on her bucking bunk. The room spun.
Her radio crackled into life. “Helen, where are you?” Mira asked.
“Sick,” Helen said.
“You’re not allowed to be sick,” Mira said.
“Nobody told my stomach,” Helen said.
“I mean it,” Mira said. “You have to take hot tea, a soft-boiled egg and saltines to Mrs. Crowne. Louise is taking care of Mrs. Randolph. I’m delivering an egg and toast to the missus. Come up to the galley now.”
Helen ran into Louise in the secret passage, almost literally. She plastered herself against the wall while Louise tried to ease by with a tray loaded with gold-rimmed china and Baccarat crystal.
“A soft-boiled egg and ginger ale for Mrs. R.,” the stew said. She was so tiny, she barely came to Helen’s shoulder.
Carrying that tray must be a chore for her, Helen thought.
The ship made a sudden lurch and Helen reached out and caught the Baccarat glass before it tumbled over the side of the tray.
“Thanks,” Louise said. “I can’t afford to lose one hundred fifty bucks if that breaks. I wish I was off this damn yacht. I’m sick of waiting on rich idiots. Oops!” The yacht leaped again and Louise staggered down the passage and through the looking glass.
Later, Helen would remember that conversation.
It was the last time she ever spoke to Louise.
CHAPTER 21
