Page 127 of Ten Years and Then…
Considering what she was going to do to him in a couple of days, he deserved all the silliness and fun and scurvy dogs she could give him today.
Daniel, shortly after lunch
They’d been in a dozen shops already, or at least Daniel’s body had, and he was carrying the bags to prove it. His mind, however, was a couple of miles away, picturing what Nora was doing on the pirate ship adventure she and her boyfriend had chosen for today.
Leanne was starting to notice. “You have to have an opinion, Daniel!” She didn’t manage to keep the impatience out of her voice. “Blue or red?” He blinked, tried to clear his thoughts and focus on what she was asking.
“Right, sorry.” Leanne was holding up a red blouse in one hand and a blue one in the other. Which one did she want him to pick? She looked good in both colors—not that he’d ever see her wearing whichever one she picked out.
Back when they’d been together, and he’d been in a store with Nora, he’d never hesitated. If she asked him what he liked, he told her what he actually thought.
“Daniel!”
“The blue one. I think it goes better with those jeans you love to wear.” That wasn’t so difficult, was it? He had to keep focusing on her, that was all. Not Nora, and not what he’d have to tell her the last night of the cruise.
It was the right answer; she forgot her impatience and leaned in to give him a quick kiss. “Thank you. I know this is boring for you.”
“It’s not. I guess I’m still feeling a little off, that’s all.” That had been his excuse for going to sleep early last night, and shying away from her touch when she climbed into the bed with him. He’d blamed it on too much sun, and too much excitement with the dolphins and the salmon at dinner not tasting quite right.
“We’ll find someplace to sit down, get you some water and a nice, safe snack,” she said. Always the nurse, always looking out for him.
He followed Leanne out of the shop and onto the cobblestoned side street. The sun hit him full-force; it wasn’t just a convenient lie, it actually was bothering him. He’d probably been outdoors more during the five days and change of this cruise than he had in the last year.
“I thought I saw a café a little while ago,” he said. Four shops and five hundred dollars ago, but Leanne deserved it. Even if he wasn’t going to break her heart in a couple of days, she’d have deserved it anyway.
They started off in the direction Daniel thought he remembered seeing the café, but they only got a few steps. “Can you help a fella down on his luck?”
The luckless man sounded American, and Daniel guessed he was in his thirties, although he’d always been terrible with that. The man wore ratty pants, and a shirt that looked—and smelled—like it could have stood up and walked away by itself. He took an involuntary step backwards, but Leanne didn’t. Of course she didn’t; at the hospital, she saw—and smelled—worse every day.
Daniel did his best to hold his breath, and stepped in front of Leanne, handing the bags from his left hand off to her. It was an automatic response, and he’d probably have laughed about it if he’d been in a better frame of mind. She was almost certainly better equipped to defend herself than he was; she’d told him all about the self-defense class all the nurses at the hospital had to take, which had sounded very thorough. And he knew she carried pepper spray in her purse.
He stood in front of her anyway. “I don’t think we can help you,” he told the man.
“Don’t be like that. I just want to get back to Florida. Been saving up, but times are hard down here.”
No. He knew a scam when he heard one. He wasn’t a New York City boy for nothing. But before he could say anything, he felt Leanne’s hand on his back and heard her—it was almost like a growl; there was no other way to describe it.
“Back off!” It came out sharp and piercing, loud enough to hurt his ears. But it wasn’t directed at the man in front of him.
Then he heard footsteps behind him—fast, retreating—and realized what she already knew. The first guy wasn’t a beggar. He was bait. He wasn’t really asking for money, he was just a distraction so the guy behind him—the one Leanne had just scared off—could pick his pocket or grab her purse. How had he not realized that? How had he let himself get so lost in thought that he forgot basic rules of safety? How—God, he was doing it again, right now!
“We can’t help you,” Daniel said, surprising himself with the venom he heard in his voice. But it was satisfying to let out some of the horrible churning feelings he’d been holding inside. “Leave us alone or we go to the police.” That, combined with his accomplice running for the hills, got the smelly “Florida” man out of their way.
“Maybe we should forget the café and go back to the ship,” Daniel said, once they were alone again.
Leanne nodded her agreement. She didn’t seem disappointed, even though she probably would have preferred another couple of hours of shopping. “Yeah. I was having a good time, but it’s kind of ruined now.”
Not as ruined as it was going to be, unfortunately.
Nora, around the same time
It turned out that going to see The Princess Bride seven times the fall of her senior year of high school hadn’t been a huge waste of time and money, like her father and all her friends said it was.
Thanks to her memories of the movie, Nora was the best fake swordfighter of anyone on their tour group. She had just “defeated” Blackbeard, and he handed her his hat. She waved it in the air, then put it on her head. Blackbeard shouted out, “All hail Nora the Blue, Queen of the Caribbean!” Nora the Blue didn’t sound all that intimidating, but she’d had to think of something on the spur of the moment, and her blouse was blue.
A second later, everyone else—the rest of her tour group, and all the actors playing Blackbeard’s crew, echoed it, and she took the hat back off and gave them a deep bow.
She probably should have curtsied, but she’d never learned how to do that properly. Besides, a pirate Queen could do whatever she wanted, right?
