“Ivan! What are you doing here?” I asked, feeling around in my pocket again for my mace sprayer.
“I was worried you may have trouble,” he said.
“Well, I’m not in any trouble. Please leave.”
“Very well,” he said and faded before my eyes.
I ran over to the sliding glass door to open it and realized the sky was now clear and the sun was bright. “What the heck just happened here?” I asked myself. “Ivan was here, wasn’t he?”
Without thinking for a second, I ran out my cabin and began knocking on my friend’s door.
“Larry, Trisha, open up.”
Trisha opened the door and I squeezed past her.
“What’s wrong? Did that man come back?” Larry asked.
“No, but Ivan was in my room, the sky was dark, he disappeared,” I garbled together.
“Calm down, Susan. Sit over here and tell us what happened,” Trisha said.
I sat on the edge of one of their single beds and Larry brought me a glass of water. I took a couple of sips and tried to think how I can make sense of what had happened. My nerves were shaking through my body.
“First there was this man outside my door who wanted a package. I told him I didn’t have anything and I shut the door in his face,” I said and looked up at Larry. “That’s when I called you. Well, after I hung up, I turned around, and there was Ivan standing in front of the balcony door.”
“You mean the steward you saw this morning was in your cabin?” Trisha asked.
“He was. That steward showed up on Deck Five before I came back to my cabin. I asked him to leave and he did. He vanished. The balcony door was open, so I thought he left that way. But I didn’t see him. You’d have to be an acrobat to climb across or down those balconies.”
“Did he say why he was there?” Larry asked.
“Uh, yes, he said he thought I was in trouble. Trisha, pull up that article you copied from the newspaper in the library. Does it say where this Ivan worked or what cabin number the other man stayed in?”
She scrolled through her photos and stopped to read the copy. “No, it doesn’t say here. Larry, go see security and let them know Susan was harassed. Maybe you can find out more details about this man from Chicago and Ivan.”
“Will do,” he said and left their cabin.
“But what if they think I was seeing things,” I moaned.
“Susan, are you sure he was physically in the room?”
“He was, and the weather outside looked horrid.”
Trisha drew the drapes away from their balcony glass door. The sun streamed across the floor causing my eyes to squint.
“Has it ever been cloudy today?”
“No, clear all day.”
I just slumped forward as I sat on the edge of the bed folding my shoulders in defeat.
“And this was supposed to be a relaxing vacation,” I muttered.
Trisha sat down next to me and put her arms around my shoulders.
“Now, you’ve just had a scare with that first man. Ivan might have been on your mind. If you want, you can stay with me here tonight and Larry can sleep in your room.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t do that. Let’s see what Larry has to report and maybe the ship can move me to another room,” I said.
A half an hour later, Larry returned.
“I have a security officer looking over your room right now. He said one of the missing men, Peter Hanfield, did stay in your room two weeks ago.”
“Great,” I muttered.
—-
The Sergeant of Arms came by my cabin twenty minutes later to talk to me about my encounter. I could tell when I was explaining to him about Ivan he didn’t believe me but he did make a few scrawls on his notepad.
“Ma’am, could you describe this Ivan person for me?”
“I think so. He’s thin, wears a white jacket like the attendants wear in the restaurants, and his hair is straight black.”
“His complexion was it dark, light, brown...”
“Dark but not black, I’m not sure as I’ve only seen him in the shade,” I said.
“Ma’am, do you know about the two men that went missing a couple of weeks ago from this ship?”
“I just found out yesterday,” I said.
“Well, I’ll have someone look into this. Be careful who you talk about this to anyone. You could hinder our investigation on this matter.”
His rhetoric sounded like a scripted speech.
“Fine by me. What about the possibility of a person climbing the balconies?” I asked him.
“Highly unlikely, but I’ll have that checked as well. Good day, Mrs. Edwards.”
I saw him to my door and as soon as I couldn’t see him down the hall, I hurried over to the Paige’s room.
“Well, what did he say?” Trisha asked once I was inside their cabin.
“Not much. I don’t think he believed me,” I said.
“Hey,” Larry said, “There’s a comedy playing in the theater tonight. Let’s go eat some dinner and go to the act afterward. It should take your mind off this. Just for tonight why don’t you bunk with Trisha and I’ll sleep in your room.”
“Larry, I don’t want you to do that.”
“That’s all right. I’ve made up my mind,” he replied.
“Fine, let’s go eat. I am a little hungry,” I muttered.
The food buffet as usual had overload food selections. The people were crowding in front of the servers. You’d think they were starving by the amounts they placed on their plates. Baked salmon and fried chicken, chow mein over rice, and slices of mango arranged with honeydew. The deserts were either rich chocolate cakes or pudding with a cream topping. The chocolate chip cookies caught my eye. My hand reached out and grabbed one. I had no control. Trisha went ahead and found an empty table that the waiters had just cleared near one of the windows. From our viewpoint, there wasn’t any land to look at through the window,
