Dawn woke up early on the second day of the cruise feeling totally refreshed and well-rested, and that was remarkable. She usually found it hard to sleep in a new environment, but that was not the case on the Ecstasy. Dawn wondered how long her friends continued their partying without her last night. Mona said she wanted to get laid, and Dawn couldn’t wait to hear if she accomplished that X-rated goal.
Dawn dressed quickly in a new pair of denim shorts with a bright yellow tee shirt. It was still before 7 a.m. when she got done with her hair and makeup, so Dawn took a solo trip to the upper deck so she could get a few pictures of the sunrise. When she got there, she saw that a handful of other vacationers had the same idea. Dawn leaned on the railing with them and snapped a dozen shots that were beautiful enough to make into a postcard.
It was a pleasant 63 degrees that morning. The soft saltwater breeze was absolutely delightful. One of the guests pointed out a school of flying fish skimming across the ocean’s surface, and Dawn watched them until they were completely out of sight. She knew she was blessed to lay eyes upon such wonders.
Back inside the ship, Dawn stopped by Mona’s room first because it was closest to the entrance she used. After a couple of knocks, Mona answered the door, and Dawn was surprised to see she was already out of bed and bathed. Mona wore one of the fluffy, white bath robes provided by the cruise line.
“Morning,” Dawn said. “I didn’t think you’d be awake.”
“I always wake up early,” Mona said. “No matter what goes on the night before, I’ll have my butt up by seven—at the latest. You can’t be the best if your ass is in bed all day.”
Mona held the door open for Dawn, but she didn’t want to intrude.
“I can come back when you get dressed,” she offered. “I’m going to check on Rene anyway.”
“Did you eat breakfast yet?” Mona asked.
Dawn shook her head. “No. I was waiting for y’all.”
“All right, well give me about fifteen minutes,” Mona said. “I’ll meet you in the atrium or in the cafeteria.”
“Cool.” Dawn continued merrily on her way.
Rene’s cabin was on the U Deck. Dawn made the mistake of taking the stairs up rather than wait on the elevators. By the time she got to Rene’s hallway, Dawn was out of breath, and she reminded herself to start a workout regimen pretty soon before things got totally out of hand.
To make matters worse, no one answered Rene’s door after several knocks. Dawn left to check the atrium and two of the ship’s cafeterias. Rene was nowhere in sight. Dawn went back to Mona’s room after ten minutes of searching.
Mona was dressed by then in a grapefruit-colored sundress with floral prints and was on her way out of the door.
“Oh, you came back for me?”
“I didn’t have nothing else to do,” Dawn said. “I can’t find Rene.”
“She wasn’t in her room?”
“Um, yeah, that’s like the first place I looked,” Dawn said sarcastically.
“Don’t get smart,” Mona replied. She pulled her door closed and headed back in the direction Dawn had just come. “Well, let’s go look again.”
“I went to both cafeterias, too,” Dawn said. “This boat is so big, I’ll probably lose twenty pounds before Friday, just looking for y’all every day.”
“Don’t worry about your weight while you’re on vacation,” Mona advised. “They’re going to be throwing so much good food in your face, you’ll go crazy trying to count calories.”
Her comment was flippant, but it made Dawn feel good just the same. Other people in Dawn’s life, a certain grumpy grouch in particular, would’ve jumped at an opportunity to criticize her portliness.
“So, how’d it go with your quest last night?” Dawn asked. “Did you catch a man in your black widow’s web?”
Mona laughed at that. “Yeah, but I’m only telling that story once, so let’s find Rene first…”
***
Mona insisted they start their search at Rene’s cabin, and Dawn followed her up there even though she knew no one would answer. Not surprisingly, Rene was still not in her room. Next Mona and Dawn searched the atrium and both of the cafeterias that were serving breakfast. Still no sign of Rene.
They were headed to the upper deck to see if Rene was catching some early morning rays when they happened upon the Internet Café. This was the only place on the ship where you could gain access to the World Wide Web (for a fee), so you could check your emails, your work emails, or whatever else people felt they couldn’t live without for five full days.
Dawn was surprised to see Rene sitting at one of the computer desks, but Mona was downright offended.
“Girl, what the hell are you doing over here? We’ been looking all over for you!”
“Oh, sorry,” Rene said and quickly exited out of her program.
“Don’t tell me you’re doing work on your vacation,” Dawn said.
“No,” Rene said, but she didn’t offer a better explanation.
“You’d better not be doing work,” Mona threatened. “All of that shit can wait. If I can forget about my office, you can, too.”
“No, it’s not work,” Rene said and stepped away from the computer. “Are y’all ready to get breakfast?”
“You still haven’t said what you were doing,” Mona said.
“I just wanted to get in touch with Blake,” Rene said. “I wanted to ask him if I left my camcorder in his car.”
That sounded reasonable to Dawn, but Mona was like a private eye.
“It took you thirty minutes to send an email? Dawn said she went to your room at seven o’clock, and you weren’t there. Plus I saw you was on Facebook when we walked up.”
“Damn,” Rene said. “Why you all up in mines?” She chuckled. “All right. I did want to ask Blake about my camera, but I also wanted to check on some other stuff. I’m trying not to think about it, but I know he’s cheating on me. I can’t get it out of my head.”
“What are you gonna find on Facebook?” Mona wondered.
“I don’t know,” Rene said. “I wanted to see what people posted on his wall. Maybe one of them is his other girlfriend.”
The women were walking now, which was good because Dawn’s stomach was starting to growl.
“If he’s cheating on you,” Mona said, “he’s not going to be stupid enough to leave her posts out in the open. You’re not going to find anything on Facebook.”
“I know,” Rene said with a sigh. “But I don’t know what else to do. I’m stuck on this boat, and I can’t call him or nothing. He could be–”
“Hold up,” Mona said. “You’re not stuck on this boat. You’re supposed to be relaxing. You won’t have a good time if you’re too busy worrying about that dumb boy. You need to tell us what’s going on and then forget about him completely. You gotta get him out of your system—at least ’til we get back to Galveston.”
“All right,” Rene said. She was glad her friends were willing to listen, because she was eager to purge.
***
For breakfast the ship offered a buffet that included sausage, bacon, oatmeal, grits, fruit, dry cereal, and hash browns. They also had a plethora of sweets from raspberry Danishes to cinnamon rolls. The Finley Sisters packed their plates with a little bit of everything, but they didn’t eat much while listening to Rene’s worries, which included more than just a suspicious telephone call two days ago.
Rene said she had doubts about Blake going back as far as a year. Blake was always a busy man, and Rene was never one to question the many hours he spent working late or the large amounts of time he devoted to his career on the weekends. Rene said there were two of Blake’s coworkers who seemed to give her the evil eye whenever she accompanied him to one of his company functions, but she never thought much of them, either.
Rene assumed these women were haters, or maybe they had a crush on Blake. But now she wondered if it was something more sinister. Like when Blake left her in Overbrook Meadows so he could “get back to work.” Maybe there was something more to that, too.
Come to think of it, Rene realized that every time Blake had to leave her unexpectedly, his job was the excuse he’d use. Once Blake left her in the middle of a movie so he could take a call from “work.” He stayed in the theatre’s lobby for so long, Rene eventually went looking for him. When she found him, he hung up quickly and they returned to the show. Another time, Blake got a call at 6 a.m., and he left Rene’s bed right afterwards, saying he had to be at “the office” early that day.
“I used to think that was cool,” Rene said. “That was something I liked about him, how he was doing so well with his job. But if he’s cheating on me with somebody he works with, that’s the perfect excuse. I ironed his clothes many times so he could go be with his other bitch.”
“You talking like you know for sure,” Dawn noticed. “I think you should give him the benefit of the doubt—at least until you talk to him.”
“Talking to him won’t do no good,” Mona stated. “It’s not like he’s gonna admit it. You don’t have proof of anything. It’ll be easy for him to squirm his way out of that stuff you mentioned.”
“I know,” Rene said. “I’m not going to ask him. I feel like I need to bug his phone or something.”
Dawn chuckled. “That’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not,” Rene said. “There’s this company that will set up a link between my cellphone and Blake’s phone. All I have to do is get the number off his SIM card and give it to them. I can set it up so that every time he gets a call, my phone will beep, and I can listen in on his conversation. Plus, if I get within five hundred feet of him, I can punch a code into my cell that will let me listen to any conversation going on around his phone. He doesn’t even have to be using it; it just has to be turned on.”
Mona’s eyes widened, and Dawn’s mouth fell open.
“Damn,” Dawn said. “They got a company like that?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Rene nodded. “I looked them up a few months ago.”
“A few months ago?” Mona frowned. “You’re really thinking about doing something like that?”
“I know it’s wrong,” Rene said. “I don’t want to invade his privacy. But I don’t think there’s any other way to find out the truth.”
“It’s not wrong because of his funky-ass privacy,” Mona said. “It’s wrong because you feel like you need to go through that. You shouldn’t let no man stress you out that bad. The moment you felt like you needed to do some surveillance should’ve been the same moment you told his ass to get to packing. Ain’t no man worth all that.”
“Maybe not to you,” Rene said, “because you already have it in your mind that men are objects. Whatever they can do to please Mona is great, but when they’re no longer useful, you drop them without a care in the world.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Mona wondered.
“It’s bad because you don’t ever fall in love,” Rene said. “You probably can’t remember the last time you actually loved one of them.”
“I guess now you’re talking about that dumb oath,” Mona said with a roll of her eyes.
“It’s not even about the oath,” Rene said. “But now that you mentioned it, yeah, I did make a promise, and I think it’s a good promise. There’s nothing wrong with falling in love with the man of your dreams. That’s like, that’s the best feeling in the world.”
“Are you in love with Blake?” Dawn asked.
Rene looked away, and Dawn saw that her eyes were misty.
“I know I said I wasn’t,” Rene said, “but I’ve been with Blake for two years. I didn’t want to fall in love with anyone else after what happened with Terrence, but I can’t stop my heart from feeling what it wants to. I can convince my brain, but my heart has a mind of its own.”
“I can fix my brain and my heart,” Mona said.
“So what happened with that guy you left with last night?” Rene asked, mostly to change the subject.
“Hmph!” Mona chuckled. “I don’t know what to say about that boy. He’s nice and all, but I won’t be hitting that again—that’s for sure.”
“You, you slept with him?” Dawn asked. She didn’t know why that surprised her. It was the very thing Mona foretold.
“I gave him a little something-something,” Mona confided. “But he wasn’t working with nothing. I had to do all the work. Plus he was too quiet, like a little boy.”
“Yeah, he was quiet,” Rene agreed.
“You met him?” Dawn asked.
“He bought us some shots,” Rene said. “I knew he wasn’t Mona’s type as soon as she got to talking to him.”
“What did he look like?” Dawn asked.
“He looked good,” Rene said.
“He was all right,” Mona corrected.
“He bought y’all drinks?” Dawn asked.
“He was good for that,” Mona said. “We could’ve got more shots out of him, but I was sick of talking to his silly ass.”
“Why’d you let him buy you drinks if you didn’t like him?” Dawn wondered.
“Thank you,” Rene said.
“Please,” Mona said. “Don’t y’all start getting all preachy on me. You don’t have to like a man to let him buy you drinks. I know y’all been to the club and some fool with a Jheri curl wanted to buy you something. You can take his drink and go on about your business.”
Dawn shook her head because she’d never done that, but Rene shrugged like maybe she had.
“Plus I went to that fool’s room afterwards,” Mona continued, “and he got way more than his money’s worth. I mean, just to see me naked; that’s worth over a thousand dollars. And me and Dwayne went all the way—for six stanky tequila shots. If you want to know the truth, he owes me way more than I could ever owe him.”
Dawn laughed at that. “Dwayne,” she said. “I want to see what he looks like. Y’all point him out if you see him again.”
“Be careful what you wish for…” Rene said and lowered her gaze.
“Aw, ain’t this a bitch,” Mona said and she lowered her eyes, too.
“What?” Dawn asked.
“Here he comes now,” Rene said.
“Don’t look!” Mona instructed, but that didn’t help. If Dwayne lived to be one hundred, he would never forget Mona, and he had his sights set firmly on their table. He approached with a lot more confidence than he had the night before.
“Good morning! How are you ladies doing?”
“Fine,” Dawn and Rene said. Mona just sat there and sulked.
“And how are you today?” Dwayne asked Mona directly. He wore baggy canvas shorts with a white tee shirt and brown sandals. Dawn thought he had nice legs and a fit upper body. Overall he was nice-looking. She didn’t understand why Mona looked so embarrassed.
“I’m fine,” Mona snapped. “What do you want? What are you doing over here?”
“Damn,” Rene said under her breath.
Dwayne’s eyes flashed wide for a second, and he lost half of his confidence right before the girls’ eyes. It was one of the strangest things Dawn had ever seen. His shoulders began to droop and his chest caved in like he got punched.
“I was, I just wanted to say ‘hi,’ ” he stammered.
“Don’t you have some other people you could say ‘hi’ to?” Mona wondered. “I thought you said you were here with your family.” Her lips were curled back, exposing fierce fangs, and her venom was clearly poisonous. Dawn thought Dwayne would take that as his cue to skedaddle, but this was one confused, determined, and thick-headed chap.
“My family’s over, over there,” Dwayne said. He shot a thumb back to a group of men sitting at a table together. All of them were watching Mona with much interest, and she wondered what kind of sick stories Dwayne had been telling them. Rather than find fault in her own behavior, Mona focused her anger on Dwayne.
“Man, I’m trying to have breakfast with my friends,” she growled. “You need to get back over there with your peeps. Leave me alone. Damn. Why you sweating me?”
“Wow,” Rene said.
“Oh,” Dwayne said. “I was, I was just…” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and scratched the back of his head. He looked like he might cry. Dawn’s heart went out to him. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the pool after breakfast,” Dwayne asked.
Rene shook her head and lowered her eyes again.
Mona cocked her head slowly, until it became a stiff 45-degree angle. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to go swimming.”
“You, you wanna play volleyball later?” Dwayne asked.
“Wow,” Rene said with a chuckle.
“No. I don’t want to play no damned volleyball,” Mona said.
“You wanna–”
“I’ll tell you what I want.” Mona looked him dead in the eyes. “I want you to go back over there with your family and leave me over here with my friends. If I want something from you, I will find you. Do you understand?”
Dwayne nodded slowly.
“Don’t come talking to me again,” Mona went on. “This is a big-ass boat. I know you can find somebody else to mess with.”
“Oh, okay,” Dwayne said. He gave Mona the saddest puppy dog eyes ever, and then he turned and commenced the death march back to his kinfolks.
“Oh my God,” Rene said when he was gone. “I can’t believe you talked to him like that.”
“It’s his own fault,” Mona said and took a mean bite out of her toast. “Didn’t nobody tell him to come over here messing with me. I don’t know what he was thinking.”
“Maybe he’s thinking that since you slept with him, you must like him,” Dawn offered.
“Well, now he knows better,” Mona said. “You gotta be firm with these niggas, or they’ll turn into bugaboos.”
Rene laughed, and after a few seconds Dawn chuckled, too.
“You wrong,” Dawn said.
“And I hope you learned your lesson,” Rene said.
“What lesson?” Mona asked.
“That you can’t be sleeping with strange men on a cruise ship,” Rene said, a little exasperated. “There’s a lot of people here, but this boat’s not that damned big. You’re bound to run into them again sooner or later.”
“What? I’m not gonna change my life for that fool,” Mona said. “I’m at my sexual peak, and–”
“No, you’re not,” Rene said.
“Not what?”
“You’re not at your sexual peak. You’re only twenty-eight.”
“Who said I can’t be at my sexual peak at twenty-eight?”
“It’s not supposed to happen until you’re in your thirties,” Dawn said.
“Well, my sexual peak is gonna last a couple of decades then,” Mona said. “I love men, and that punk’s not gonna stop me from having fun on this boat.”
“So, you’re gonna sleep with someone else?” Rene dared to ask.
“I’m not a whore,” Mona said, “but yes, I may get romantically involved if I see some… Mmmm.” Her eyes lit up, and she smiled devilishly. “Check that out.”
Dawn and Rene followed her gaze to a frozen yogurt machine. Standing next to it were two exceptionally handsome men. They were both young, in their early twenties, and they both had athletic, well-toned bodies. The one on the right was black with a completely shaved head and no moustache or goatee. He had a strong jaw line and nice, suckable lips. The man on the left was a very dark-skinned Hispanic, possibly from Puerto Rico or maybe Spain. He had a head full of luscious, curly locks and the most beautiful gray eyes.
“Damn,” Rene said. “That is nice.”
“Which one?” Dawn asked, her smile big and curious.
“It don’t even matter,” Mona said dreamily. “I’ll lick peanut butter off either one of ’em.”
“Ooh, you nasty,” Rene said.
The two men started to walk away, and Mona quickly made it to her feet. “Come with me,” she told her friends.
“With you where?” Rene asked.
“To catch them,” Mona said, “find out who they’re here with.”
“Uh-uhn,” Dawn said. “I can’t go up to no strangers like that.”
“I’m with Dawn,” Rene said. “You don’t want to have more people following you around tomorrow, do you?”
“Whatever,” Mona said and continued by herself. “I’ll catch up with y’all later.”
Rene and Dawn watched her go, and they couldn’t do anything but shake their heads and laugh.
“I don’t know what you’re laughing at,” Rene said. “That’s your friend.”
“You spend more time with her,” Dawn countered.
“That’s only because you went to bed early,” Rene said. “And you’d better not do that again tonight.”
“You didn’t have fun yesterday?” Dawn asked.
“I did,” Rene admitted, “to a certain extent. But Mona can be too wild sometimes. She had me in a booty contest and everything!”
“Nuh-uhn!”
“For real,” Rene said. “I won, of course…” She gathered her napkins and plate and cleaned up Mona’s side of the table as much as possible. “Are you done eating?”
“Yeah,” Dawn said and took one last bite of her apple turnover. “Where you going now?”
“I’m going to see if they found out anything about my camera,” Rene said. “After that, we can do whatever you want.”
“I want to check out the spa,” Dawn said. She rose with her tray and Rene followed close behind.
“We can do that,” Rene said, and then she frowned and stared curiously at the back of her friend’s arm. “Hey, what’s that?”
Dawn strained her neck but couldn’t see what she was talking about. “What?”
“On the back of your arm,” Rene said. “You got two purple bruises. Did you, how’d you get those?”
Dawn knew exactly what Rene was talking about, and her heart froze into a block of ice. The bruises had been there for three days now. Dawn thought they were fading away, but apparently not quickly enough. The purple spots were towards the bottom of her triceps, spaced two inches apart. One was the exact shape of Henry’s thumb. The other was a perfect match for his index finger.
Thinking about the marks took Dawn’s mind back to that fateful day when Henry roughed her up in front of her sister.
OWW! LET ME GO!
Let her go! You dumb-ass nigga! Let her go!
You shut yo ugly ass up! This ain’t got shit to do with you.
“I bumped my arm when I was unpacking,” Dawn told Rene.
“You bumped it twice?” Rene asked. “That hard? In the same spot?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Dawn said, and she didn’t turn to see if her friend believed her or not. Dawn knew she wasn’t the best liar. Her eyes would surely betray her if Rene stared deeply enough.