Chapter 106: Back Ashore

Saturday, June 15, 1985

Angie and Paige were indeed up for breakfast and said they had only stayed up until one. By this point, the gambling budget was shrinking (since it was based on the number of days remaining on the cruise), meaning they’d passed paying for the trip (even if they lost everything budgeted for each remaining day) and were starting to bank away money for Europe. Even the two of them were surprised by how well this was going. They were still well ahead of projections.

Our next stop was Sint Maarten, the Dutch half of the divided island of Saint Martin. The other half of the island, Saint-Martin, was French. It had been divided since 1648, with both sides pretty much always getting along (aside from the occasional minor border dispute, the last of which happened in the early 19th century).

I’d been here ‘before’ and enjoyed it, albeit in a pretty much ‘eh, it’s fine’ sort of way. It hadn’t left a big impression on me the first time. I doubted it would this time, either.

Jas, unsurprisingly, felt as if we should visit the French side of the island. Angie correctly pointed out that Jas hadn’t even brought her French passport, so she couldn’t take advantage of being a citizen. In any case, we had neither the time nor the opportunity to set foot on the French side, though we did see a fair bit of it.

Our excursion here consisted of a ride on a ‘party boat’ which slowly circled the island. Food was served on both levels, while alcohol was served only on the lower level. The upper level was mostly for sightseers.

We stuck to the upper level and enjoyed the view, pretty much. They had a steel drum band playing on the lower level, which made it hard to talk down there but did make it more of a party spot.

The whole thing was fun and relaxing. We probably wouldn’t do it again, but it was great once.

We’d still never had dinner at the buffet, but the dining room food was so good that we didn’t care. First-life me might have. He might not have, too, since you could order as much as you wanted here.

Tonight’s show was a Broadway pastiche with songs from ten different musicals. We’d performed in two of them: ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Bye Bye Birdie’. It was amusing watching them perform ‘our’ songs on stage, especially since we were all pretty much convinced we’d performed them better.

Cruise ships hire who they can, and the average highly talented high school drama star probably pursues other paths first. There is an advantage in satisfying one’s wanderlust while being paid for it, but there’s also a disadvantage of having a tiny living space (and probably sharing that), having a strange schedule, and being away from friends and family for months at a time.

It would be an interesting job. It certainly wasn’t one I’d ever want, though.

After dinner, Angie and Paige went off to play blackjack again. Jas and I decided playing with each other in our cabin was much more fun.

Sunday, June 16, 1985

We returned to the United States (well, including its territories) with a stop in St. John. It was a tiny little island, but it had beautiful beaches, one of which we spent much of the day visiting. More snorkeling, more sunning, and more just hanging out, with everyone happy we’d taken the beach excursion.

There was a brief discussion of sneaking off around some rocks and breaking a few rules (and/or laws), but I reminded Jas that sand gets into the strangest places if you let it. Neither of us thought it was worth risking that, much less the consequences of getting caught.

Still, I was quite distracted. Jas, Ang, and Paige in bikinis did that, even now. They weren’t the only cute girls on the outing, either.

Fortunately, we could discuss the other cute girls amongst ourselves with no one getting whapped.

They’d served a ‘Caribbean Beach Party’ lunch, which I think was just an excuse to set up a tent and cater in Caribbean-themed foods. It was good, though.

This was the United States, so we called home, and Jess, from payphones at the port. The parents were all thrilled to hear from us and happy we were having a great time. It also gave us a chance to say ‘Happy Father’s Day’ to Dad (and the same for Jas and Paige for their fathers). This was certainly a year for celebrating those holidays from afar.

Jess was happy, too, and eagerly looking forward to my arrival in LA. Michael J. Fox had just assured her he’d heard her scene was ‘safe’ during the edits. In my (admittedly limited) experience, actors are told things like that quite often, and sometimes it doesn’t pan out. Still, they’d reshot specifically to get that scene, and he would’ve been in any new replacement, so she probably was safe.

There was no update on ‘Saturday School Special’. In this case, no news was good news. The longer it dragged out without finding funding the less likely it would be to happen at all.

We could all feel the trip winding down by now. Tomorrow was another day at sea, and Tuesday we’d have to be awake much too early to get off the ship.

Still, we had tonight and tomorrow. Tonight was our first, and also last, dinner at the buffet. We planned to double down on that by hitting the midnight buffet before bed. Tomorrow we could sleep as late as we wanted, after all.

The buffet was, honestly, really good. Not ‘amazing,’ but both the variety and quality were pretty impressive. I’d had better, but I’d also had much worse.

We skipped the shows for a while and wound up at the dance club for a few hours. Ang and Paige were clearly dancing with each other the whole time. They got some odd looks, along with a few glares and two rude comments, but took it all in good grace. One middle-aged guy kept glaring at Jas and me, too. We both pretended not to notice.

Not everything can be perfect, even in the best of all possible worlds. Honestly, that would probably suck. If it really was perfect, how could one strive to improve things, after all?

Ang and Paige played a couple hours of blackjack while Jas and I read in the ship’s library. We met just before midnight outside the buffet. A line had already formed, and we wound up getting in about fifteen minutes past the hour.

It was, in a word, ‘decadent.’ Who eats lobster (all you care to eat lobster!) at midnight? Apparently, people not that different from us. Shrimp, too, was out in enormous quantities, as were all manner of other offerings. The dessert area had about thirty different chocolate delicacies, plus plenty of things for those who didn’t like chocolate.

The four of us ate sparingly. We’d been out plenty of times after midnight and had learned that eating too much often led to poor sleep and regrets the next morning.

Still, we each had a bit of lobster. ‘When in Rome... ‘

While we were at the buffet, Paige and Jas went off to browse the desserts. A couple of people going off to the buffet wasn’t unusual, but I was picking up on this probably being planned.

I looked at Ang right after they left and said, “You want something.”

She giggled, then nodded.

“Maybe,” she said. “It’s more ... do we want something?”

Two and two added up quickly. I said, “We haven’t shared a bed on a cruise ship.”

“Indeed, we haven’t!”

“I’m for it.”

“Yay!”

Ang just gave the others a grin when they got back. Message received, I was pretty sure.

When we got back, Jas quickly got ready for bed. Then she and Angie traded places. Before settling in, we placed a room service breakfast order for the four of us, set at their latest drop-off time.

Once that was done, we turned out the lights and settled into bed.

“This has been great!” Angie said, grinning. “I’m really glad I thought of it!”

“Me, too!” I said, chuckling. “It really has been a lot of fun. I can see doing this again before too long.”

“Maybe not for a while if we have little ones.”

“Nah,” I said. “That’s going to change in a big way. Give it a few years, and that little ‘Children’s Playroom’ they have on this ship will become essentially a day-care center, with programs ranging for every age between babies and teens.”

“That’s cool,” she said.

“Plus, you missed Disney starting a cruise line by only a year or two.”

“Disney ran a cruise line?”

“It was a pretty big deal from the start, and they were one of the major players before long.”

She shook her head, smiling.

“Well, okay, then! Little ones won’t be a problem!”

“We took the kids on their first cruise when they were around five. It went really well. My daughter loved ordering people around, and the staff loved having an adorable little five-year-old bossing them around, too.”

She giggled a bit.

“Oh, my! Well, good, because our kids will be good at that!”

“Don’t get me wrong. She was well-mannered and polite. It’s just ... she was a quick study. She figured out that the staff were there to get things for other people, so she just waved her hand and said, ‘Person! Person! Can I have...?’ whatever it was. They’d grin and get it for her.”

Angie giggled still more. “‘Person! Person!’ That’s too funny!”

Then her grin turned down a little and she hugged me.

“You miss her,” she said.

I wasn’t sure how I’d shown it, but I clearly had, so I nodded.

“I do, but not how you think. She wasn’t five anymore. She was in her twenties. I miss the young woman she became, but right now I’m missing the kick-ass kindergartner she was then. If I could get back to them...”

I thought about where that sentence was going, then sighed.

“What?” Angie said.

“I was going to say I’d move heaven and earth to do so, but that’s a lie. I would never abandon you or Jas. Nor Paige, Cammie, or Mel. Not even Jess, I don’t think. Even if it was to see them again, I couldn’t, not at that cost.”

She hugged me tightly.

“I get that,” she said. “I only had Carrie, really, since Mom and Dad — more or less, you know — are here. Carrie was...”

She shrugged.

“Pretty sure I’ve said this before, but ... I still love her, in a way, and ... it’s like you. I hope she’s out there, doing great. She was a wonderful person. Paige is the one for me, though. No doubt about it. That, and I wouldn’t abandon you, or the others, either.”

“Not a choice I expect to ever have to make...” I said, trailing off.

“But who ever expected to be in a position where we’d even consider such a choice to be a possibility?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much that.”

“Anyway,” she said, “Let’s get back to where we were, which is: this has been amazing, and I want to do more of it!”

“Me, too, like I said. Not, like, next year, I wouldn’t think, but soon. I knew people who went on cruises every year, but I don’t think that’s me.”

“Nor me,” she said, nodding. “I don’t think. Maybe that’ll change with time.”

“Heck,” I said, “By the 2020s, some people were retiring to live on cruise ships.”

She giggled.

“Now that might be fun!” she said.

“For a while. I think I’d get tired of it.”

“Me, too. It’s like, sure, the restaurants are great, and the shows are fun, but when you eat at them day in and day out, and see the same shows again and again, and visit the same ports for a few hours every day, it would get old.”

“Yeah,” I said. “If it was a retirement ship, they could vary the itinerary and keep updating things to stave that off. And, of course, maybe it’s different in retirement. Grandmother and Professor Berman eat maybe 90% of their meals in the same restaurant, day-in and day-out, after all.”

She sighed and nodded.

“That sounds boring, but it’s probably not. The restaurant is the same, but most of your friends eat there, too, so there are always people to talk to.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s why it works.”

She hugged me again.

“A long time for that, anyway!” she said.

“A very long time. Heck, it might never come. Some people never retire. Warren Buffett was still living in the same house and going into work every day in 2021. He loved it, and it worked for him, so why not?”

“Why not, indeed?”

“In any case, that’s all ahead of us,” I said.

“Again!” she said, grinning.

“Again, indeed.”

She leaned in and rubbed noses.

“I love you,” she said. “And I love that we get to do things like this.”

“I love you, too,” I said. “And I love that, too. It’s special.”

We kissed softly.

“Sleep,” she said. “It’s late and I’m tired.”

“You’ve been working!” I said.

“I have!” she said, giggling.

We snuggled up and went to sleep.

Monday, June 17, 1985

Angie and I slept a bit late, being awakened by a knock at the door announcing breakfast was here. Jas and Paige came over and joined us, and we had a great time just hanging out.

Once we’d finished, Angie and Paige went over to their room while Jas and I got ready for the day. It turned out to be a gorgeous day, so the two of us spent quite a bit of it just watching the ocean and talking.