Chapter Ten

 

 

The Horizon lounge was in an uproar and, Tess suspected, so was most of the ship. Word of “man overboard” spread like the gossip of layoffs at an office cooler. The two cocktail servers came over and conferred with Eduardo. Passengers in their audience appeared reluctant to sit down, instead, they either paced with drinks or stood at the nearest windows and gazed out at the blackness. Far below, the ship’s exterior lights flashed on and spotlights could be seen, raking back and forth across the sea. There was no sign of the Kodiak inflatable rescue boat, which Tess reported back to Aaron from her spot by the large, floor-to-ceiling window. She was worried. Aaron hadn’t moved from his bar stool, just silently turned over Marello’s note in his fingers as if somewhere on the paper was the answer to all of his questions.

Another call from Eduardo to one of his pals assigned to the Empress Theater resulted in the complete disruption of the magician’s show. Every available window outside the Theater was lined with onlookers. The initial general alarm of the passengers had subsided to concern and curiosity. Small family groups took stock of their members with audible sighs of relief. People hugged each other or hung onto their loved ones. The scene mesmerized Tess.

“What should we do?” She’d gone back over to Aaron and placed a hand on his back. “Should we go on with the set?”

For a long time, he seemed almost catatonic. Then suddenly he banged his forehead with the heel of one palm. Twice.

“I should’ve said something, done something…”

“Aaron. It may not be him. The ship’s full of white-haired men. Frank’s probably asleep in his room.”

His dark blue eyes slid over to her, shocking her with their hard, angry glints. “You don’t believe that. All those clues, those hints that this was his last voyage. All those things he said to me last night…I don’t know. Maybe they were calls for help… or just his thoughts coming out.”

“Stop this, Aaron. We don’t even know if it is him.”

Eduardo had no sooner replaced the receiver when the wall phone’s light blinked again.

“More news, I bet,” he said, snatching it off its cradle. After listening intently, his dark eyes flickered over to Aaron. “Yes, he’s here. Yes, yes, sir. All right, sir.” He slowly replaced the handset and turned to them both. “Aaron. Tess. The Third Officer of the Watch is on his way here. He wants you both to come with him to the Infirmary…to identify the body…the man they just fished out of the sea.”

As if uncomprehending, Aaron stared at Eduardo and didn’t budge.

“Identify the body,” the barman added somberly. “The rescue crew’s back. They recovered a body…and one of the officers said you played cards with the man last night.”

Aaron’s back went rigid under her hand. His face drained of blood. For a second, Tess feared he might pass out, but no, he appeared to find the steel within himself. When he pivoted toward her and grasped her hand, she squeezed it in earnest. Through a watery gaze, she searched his face and found the strength there. They came together in a crush of emotion. Holding back her tears, she felt Aaron’s chest heave up and down as he, too, struggled for composure.

A minute later, Third Officer Hal Knutsen arrived and introduced himself. Exuding competence and professionalism, the older man’s salt-and-pepper goatee was his most notable feature. With an erect carriage, he wore his navy-blue uniform, and carried his white, duck-billed cap under his arm. He shook hands with Aaron and Tess, then asked them to accompany him. Nothing more was said as he led them, holding hands, into the belly of the ship.

Down on the fourth deck, all pretense at interior décor vanished. The walls were steel with riveted seams, painted an off-white color, the floors a pale gray. Fluorescent tubes lighted their way down one corridor and then another. Officer Knutsen led them past the Infirmary door, through a “Crew Only” passageway to a room with a metal door, labeled “Cold Storage”.

“Mr. Peterson, you had the most contact with Mr. Marello than any person on board. And you, too, miss, so we hope you’ll verify that this is indeed passenger Frank Marello. We do have witnesses from one of the neighboring balconies, so we know the passenger’s stateroom number. However, we need identification from someone who spent some time with the man. From all accounts, Mr. Peterson, you spent the most time with this particular passenger over the past five days.” Knutsen paused as if he just now noticed the pallor of Aaron’s and Tess’ faces. “Identification of a body is never pleasant. If, at any time, either of you feel indisposed, there are two chairs available. And a trash can. Doctor Bernstein will be present, also.”

By now, Tess’ head was spinning and her vision, contracting into pinpoints. Her stomach sank to her knees. “What? Why?”

The man’s dark eyes met hers and Aaron’s unflinchingly. “Well, there’s no other way to explain this…nicely. Falling from Deck Twelve, the man in question hit the water at approximately one-hundred miles per hour…like jumping from a twelve-story building and hitting concrete pavement. The force of the impact and the waves…he lost most of his clothes, his wallet, part of his scalp. Sorry, but his face is a bloody, pulpy mess. We’re hoping that you, especially, Mr. Peterson, will have noticed a feature or something distinctive that stands out…that will help us verify the man’s identification.”

Aaron spun around to her and laid a hand on her arm. “Stay here, Tess.”

Feeling nauseated, she gulped down hot, burning bile and stared at the wall, her eyes unfocused. She nodded dumbly. The prospect of coming face to face with death made her sick to her stomach. Aaron knew this. At seventeen and twenty, respectively, she and Mac had made a trip to the coroner’s in Riverside, accompanied by Aaron and the Petersons, in order to identify the body of her and Mac’s father. He’d overdosed on a combination of drugs. Strangely, he’d looked at peace, the first time she’d ever seen her father totally at peace. Four years later, she and her brother located their mother, lost in a haze of heroin addiction, whoring herself to support her habit. Thin and HIV-positive, Lisa MacIntosh was barely alive. Ever since, Tess and Mac paid for their mother’s rehab and medical care.

The metal wall felt clammy to her hands as she leaned against it and waited, her eyes squeezed shut as the memory lingered of her father’s dead body on that stainless steel slab. She shivered from the cold and the fear that swamped her consciousness. If Aaron and his parents hadn’t shown her and her brother kindness and love, it might be her or Mac on a coroner’s slab. Something caved inside her and a sob rolled up. Giving into it, Tess let the tears finally flow forth. The more she wept, the less nauseated she felt. She didn’t want to get sick in front of Aaron and make this horrible experience even harder on him.

Minutes passed and she calmed down. Her immediate environment intruded. The shimmery gold tunic and leggings she wore felt silly and flimsy on this level of the ship, surrounded by sober, hard metal. Yet, this was the life of most of the crew. The dichotomy stirred her. Like a homeless camp town in the middle of Beverly Hills, the deck was stark and plain by contrast to the opulence eight decks above them. In vain, she tried to block from her mind the imagined, horrible remains of the quiet, sad man that was once Frank Marello. What Aaron must be feeling, she could not imagine, except that he seemed to take the man’s suicide personally, as though he could’ve, should’ve saved him.

Tess knew better. People made their own choices, driven by their own angels or demons. A depressed man, desperate to join his deceased loved ones, could never be stopped. Coldness settled in her mind, drying up her tears. Just like the slow suicide her father had chosen, he didn’t let a sick wife and two little kids stop him.

But so like Aaron, to believe that hope and love could triumph over despair.

When Aaron emerged, his face was devoid of color, his eyes puffy and red-rimmed. Knutsen, his hand clamped on Aaron’s shoulder, leaned close to the younger man and murmured something under his breath. Aaron blinked a few times as he struggled to compose himself before shaking the officer’s hand. He approached Tess wordlessly and they fell in step together.

She could see the truth on Aaron’s face.

Another crew man led them back to the staircase that took them to the lowest bank of passenger elevators. There was no possibility of their continuing the show that night. Almost blindly, Tess walked at Aaron’s side until she found herself at their cabin. With trembling hands, he swiped his card key and led her inside. Only then did she notice the velvet box still clutched tightly in her hand.

Automatically, she started for the room safe but Aaron stopped her. He took Frank Marello’s note out of his tuxedo pocket and handed it to her. Possibly the last thing he ever wrote. She understood and opened the velvet lid, wedged the note inside, exactly as she’d found it. Then placed it inside the safe. She had no idea what she was going to do with those earrings. Why would a man about to commit suicide give her such a beautiful, expensive gift and expect nothing in return? Why would any man do such a thing? That certainly wasn’t her experience with men. If they gave you something of value, they always wanted something in return—usually sex. One thing was certain about those earrings, she doubted she could ever wear them. They would always remind her of tonight.

Woodenly, in tense silence, they took off their formal clothes and hung them up. Minutes later, she was dressed in t-shirt and sweatpants and Aaron wore a t-shirt tucked into low-slung jeans. From the room bar, he poured a highball glass half full of Jim Beam. Tess slid to the floor next to her bed and watched him down half of it in one long gulp. Then he joined her on the carpet, facing her, his back against his bed, his legs splayed like a little boy’s. Eyeing him, watching his morose mood, she rested her chin on her palms, her elbows braced on bent knees. Quickly, he finished off his whiskey, then flopped his head back on the coverlet.

“Feel better?” she asked guardedly.

He grimaced and gazed at her. “Don’t you feel anything?”

His words—an implied accusation—pierced her. “Of course, I do. I just…” She cocked both shoulders, wondering how she could ever explain to him her own brand of fatalism that he sometimes mistook for cold-heartedness. “…you can’t change the world, Aaron. Frank Marello was tired…of the pain. Can’t you see? Nothing anyone said or did was going to change anything. Your kindness and attention couldn’t undo all that tragedy, couldn’t replace his sons or his wife. Maybe our music made his last few days a little more bearable, but he’d already made up his mind.”

A low growl, between a cry and a whimper, emitted from Aaron’s throat, startling her. Next thing she knew, he flung the highball glass across the room, in the direction of their cabin door. It hit the wall but didn’t break. Surprised at his show of temper, Tess raised her head. Her mouth fell open.

Aaron’s expression frightened her—but only for a moment. In a flash, Aaron swallowed up the three feet of space between them. The rest was a blur of motion as he covered her body with his, his weight forcing her flat on the floor. She felt no fear now, only surprise, as his hungry mouth smothered all sound from hers and his strong arms encircled her waist in a viselike hold.

Anger and lust, she understood.

Instantly, his lust sparked hers, simmering for days under every touch of his hand or brush of his arm. Her mind shut off as her senses reeled and dazed her. She became all hands and mouth, ripping away his clothes, clutching and clinging, sucking and biting. Somehow, between the rough kisses and embraces, their clothes disappeared.

Their groans mingled and roared over the renewed rumblings of the ship’s engines. The world shrank to a cocoon of frantic pleasure. When she closed her eyes, little white stars exploded in her mind.

She felt his bare flesh pressing on hers, hot and demanding. When he plunged into her, she could only arch her back and squeeze her legs around him, encouraging him to buck as violently as he could. She pumped in rhythm, rode him as hard as he rode her.

After a shattering climax, they lay still and quiet, their panting breaths the only sound in the room. But they were only half spent. Years of pent-up lust and denial still filled them up, waiting for another eruption. Not yet sated, she wanted him again…and again. For now, she held him inside her tightly while she waited hungrily for more.

His hair, face and shoulders slick with sweat, Aaron continued to pin her down with his naked body. As though afraid if he got up, she’d vanish. With tenderness, she stroked his cheek. A hint of a blond stubble abraded her fingertips. Something inside him had settled down, had found a way to cope with Marello’s suicide. His anguish had dissipated, maybe had oozed from his skin just like the sweat.

“Well, finally,” she teased.

“God, yes!”

“Tomorrow, I’ll have the steward put the beds together.”

“No, tonight, Tess…”

With her tongue, she licked the sweat on his neck until his head burrowed between her breasts. He teased her nipples with his teeth, then came up to nibble her earlobes, her neck, her lower lip. A moment later, his cock filled her again. This time, they rode the waves of pleasure all the way in and crashed together on the shore.

An hour later, while she showered, Aaron called room service and got the two twin beds fastened together and their bed remade. That night, they cuddled and whispered together, spooning their bodies, until flesh on flesh warmth sparked more blasts of desire. In the afterglow of another climactic release, Aaron buried his face in the crook of her neck.

“Are you really mine? Tess, you won’t—”

“No, I won’t.” Go back to Porter, he meant. “I couldn’t.”

“Good.”

No, she couldn’t go back to Porter. Never again. And she meant every word. She marveled at the tricks her stubborn, fearful mind had conjured, the cool conniving role she’d convinced herself to play. The shrink she used to see years before had called it her “inadequate coping mechanism.” Inadequate, hell! That mechanism had served her all these years, keeping her from admitting that she was in love with Aaron Peterson, had convinced her that she’d gotten over her teenage crush, that he’d never be happy with her, that she was too hard and damaged and he was too trusting and kind… All the garbage she’d talked herself into believing.

The truth was she could no more play Porter’s adoring, obedient, faithful wife even for one month than she could hit an operatic high-F note for one second.

Aaron had won. And so had she. Yet, as she clung to him and rubbed her cheek across his bare chest, she knew she’d pay dearly for this bit of truth and for all the happiness that now consumed her.

Of that, she had no doubt.

Maybe others didn’t pay, but she would.

 

Over the next two days, there weren’t any shore excursions. Their love nest substituted for Colombia and Aruba. In the evening, they emerged shakily, like newly born butterflies, to eat dinner, rehearse a few hours and then entertain the good folks in the Horizon Lounge. If Eduardo noticed a change in their demeanor, he said nothing. If the two pesky PIs followed them and snapped surreptitious photos, neither Tess nor Aaron noticed or showed a smidgen of concern. Tess buried her cell phone in the depths of her satchel, incommunicado with Porter and all of L.A. For the last four days of their cruise, in Tess’ view, the world out there did not exist.