Tapas on the Ramblas (7 page)

I grinned at her and stole a quick peek at Rob and Scott. "They're very cute though."

"Which means absolutely nothing to me," she said dryly.

"What are you two buzzing about?" Phyllis plowed her head of curls into our personal space like a Pekinese looking for some kibble. "If it's about me, I'll kill you. If it's about someone else, I want to hear it."

Right then Captain Bagnato appeared at our table. Although gracious and courteous to all and sincerely wanting to know if our evening was progressing well, most of her interest seemed focused on one thing: Errall.

And so the meal progressed in a pleasant manner aided by some nice Italian wines selected by our table's host; first a tangy San Orsola Parallelo Primitivo del Salento from Puglia and then an oaky Frescobaldi Lucente from Tuscany which, according to Richard, was stylish and polished but lacked a bit of concentration. I thought it was dandy. Afterwards Richard suggested we all repair to Munchkin Land for entertainment and after-dinner drinks. En route, Errall pulled up alongside me and murmured into my ear, "You know he's going to be too busy dealing with his clients to spend any time with you."

A smile flitted onto my lips before I could stop it. To offset it, I said harshly, "Don't be an idiot. Come on, let's hurry and get good
seats."

And a good seat I got - right next to Richard. The seating in the Munchkin Land Auditorium was booth-style on a theatre-like incline. Errall, Phyllis, Richard and I squeezed into one banquette; the other two couples found another a level down from us.

I made as good a survey of the room as its dim lighting would allow, hoping for another sighting of the Wisers. I found them sitting together in a grouping of booths down and to my right, but too far away for me to gather any useful information other than their presence. Even though I knew Charity wanted to hold off on a meeting until the next day, I was feeling a bit antsy to get started on my case. As pleasant as all of this was, especially meeting Richard, I was here to work. And yet, sitting next to the man, I couldn't help but enjoy the deep, rich smell of his cologne. One of the Creed scents, he told me when he noticed me sniffing around. I, on the other hand, was wearing something light, airy and inexpensive from Calvin Klein. Anthony would shoot me if he knew.

"You seem to be having a good time," Richard said to me, once Errall and Phyllis were entrenched in an argument over the quality of the MTM spinoff series named for the wacky downstairs neighbour.

"Why do you think that?" I asked with what I hoped was a beguiling look.

"You're smiling a lot. Or maybe you always smile this much?"

I shrugged. "Well,” I said, "This is my first cruise. I'm really enjoying it."

His warm eyes hugged mine. "I'm so glad you chose this trip as your maiden voyage."

Yup. Flirting. He was definitely flirting. I was thinking up an appropriate response, something with the words "maiden" and "virgin" in it, when the lights dimmed and Judy Smythwicke appeared on stage. She had changed into a dazzlingly red sequined cocktail dress and high heels.

Miss Judy began with a quippy little intro, talking about how great The Dorothy is and how great all of us looked upon her, then smoothly got on with the show. "You are in for a royal treat tonight, ladies and gentlemen!" she called out in contagious excitement. "On this first glorious night of sailing, a truly mystical night, we are thrilled to present to you a most delightful performer! Please welcome La Psychic!"

I laughed off the corny name and exuberantly joined in with the crowd's hearty applause as La Psychic swept onto the stage. But the laughing stopped and my hands froze in mid-clap when I saw the woman's face.

The short, heavyset, dark-haired woman who walked across the stage to the introduction of La Psychic was none other than Alberta Lougheed. She runs her.. .what would you call it? Her psychic business?...out of the office next to mine on the second floor of the PWC building owned by Errall. It seemed the only PWC tenant not on this boat was Beverly Chaney. I wondered if a gay cruise would have need of a ship psychiatrist. Probably not a bad idea. Errall and I exchanged dumbfounded glances but said nothing as we sat back to watch Alberta begin her show, in all her eccentric, bright-faced glory, looking a little bit like Jann Arden as a gypsy.

I'd never witnessed Alberta at work before and I have never come to a conclusion about whether she truly has some special talent or if she's just another nut bar. Psychic powers are something I don't know or think too much about. After a bit of humorous preamble, Alberta headed into the audience, holding her microphone close to her lips to emphasize the breathy tone of her voice. "Would anyone like to give me a personal item... any thing... a watch, a necklace...no underwear this time though, okay guys? Unless you're in 'em, I don't want 'em." Laugh laugh laugh. "Just anything you have that belongs to you...no stolen merchandise please." Laugh laugh laugh. "Something I can use to get a sense of you and your life."

She came upon a young woman who handed over a nose ring. Alberta palmed it and bent over in gales of laughter. Once she recovered she asked, "Honey, did you just take this outta your nose?"

The girl nodded, obviously grooving on the attention.

"Oh my, oh my, well don't take anything else outta any other body parts." More laughing. "Ooo weeee, now that I see all you lesbians up close, I can tell this is the wrong crowd to ask for a necklace...no, wait, sir..." She pointed to a nearby man. "What's that around your neck?" He gave her a petrified stare. "Is that a pearly necklace!" she hooted. "Okay, maybe not. Okay, okay, enough of this joshing around. Darlin', what's your name?" she asked the nose ring giver as she headed back to the stage with the piece of jewellery.

"Jamie," the woman answered, brushing back the bristles of her mohawk with one hand and wiping her lips with the other, good naturedly accepting the backslaps and ribbing of her friends.

Alberta stood on the stage where everyone would have a better view of her as she buried the nose ring in her meaty palm, turned her face heavenward and closed her eyes. After a long moment during which the audience was admirably quiet, she said, "There's someone at home who didn't want you to come on this trip."

Everyone turned to look at Jamie, to assess whether the first psychic volley of the evening had met its mark. I realized how important this initial move by Alberta was. If she failed to connect, half the audience might immediately brand her a charlatan and head off to the bar or casino. But if she got it right...

Jamie's face turned a little whiter and she swiped away a friend's hand that was trying to tickle her.

"My mom," Jamie croaked.

The crowd gasped. Really. It was an honest-to-goodness gasp.

"She thought it was costing me too much money, especially since I just started a new job. She thought I should wait a year and save up."

Alberta's head plopped over to one side; her eyes bored into the other woman's. "That's not
really
why.

Is it?"

Jamie gulped. She looked at the woman next to her; a willowy beauty with long, shiny brown hair and a matching nose ring. "She didn't want me to travel with Veronica," Jamie admitted.

"She's going to come around, Jamie," Alberta said. "Not right away, but I see in...well, maybe six months...could be as much as a year...but I see you and Veronica having dinner at your mom's house."

Jamie beamed. Veronica hugged her. The crowd went wild.

Alberta was a hit. People loved her, and they loved her easy, self-deprecating sense of humour that kept them laughing in between her fortune-tellings or whatever they were. For me, seeing her perform like that, without her knowing I was in the audience, was an unexpected joy. It was like seeing someone you've known all your life on stage flawlessly singing a song or playing an instrument when you had no idea they were musically inclined. I enjoyed it immensely...until the end.

After an hour of doing the personal item reading, she moved on to the part of her show that she called

"To Catch a Thought." To do this she stood stock-still on stage, closed her eyes and, according to her, let her mind roam the audience until she caught a thought. Then she'd share it with the group and see if anyone owned up to it.

"Someone is thinking about their mother," she began. "She lives... some where hot...you're worried about her...her name is Etta or Emma...?" And then she opened her eyes and regarded the audience. "You there, sir?" She pointed at a man sitting near the back of the room, holding up his many-ringed hand.

"Could it be my mother?" he asked, hesitant at first. "Her name is Emily and she lives in Miami."

"That's right. What's your name, sir?"

"Bruce." Bruce was maybe fifty or fifty-five. The man sitting next to him, probably his partner, was sixtyish and had a protective arm around Bruce's shoulders.

"You're mother hasn't been too well recently?"

"She's eighty-nine and had surgery last month to remove a cyst," the partner volunteered, patting Bruce's shoulders for comfort.

"I didn't know if I should come on this trip or stay with her," Bruce said, holding back a tear.

"She's okay Bruce," Alberta told him, her eyes communicating kindness and empathy. "She's eighty-nine and she's no dummy. She knows a thing or two about life and how to enjoy it, and she is very happy you're here with Allan."

"Oh my God! How did you know my name?" the partner yelped.

The audience sat in stunned silence. I was pretty amazed myself.

Alberta shrugged it off by joking, "It was either Aladdin or Allan.. .I took a shot."

The audience laughed with her and loved her more.

She did her bit a few more times, with varying levels of success, but by that point it didn't matter anymore. She had them. She could have sung a few songs and released a CD and they'd have bought it.

But then something went wrong. Errall noticed it too. It was near the end of the show. Alberta had closed her eyes to the audience as usual and began with, "Okay I'm getting a very strong thought, oh yes, I can almost hear it, can't you?" The audience laughed. "Yes, this voice, it's coming in very clear and you're thinking.. .you're thinking.. .you're thinking I'm goin..."

And she stopped. Her face froze. Slowly she opened her dark-lidded eyes and gazed out at the room in stony silence.

"What was that all about?" Errall said to me as we filed out of the auditorium with the rest of the crowd. "Did you see the look on her face? She looked shocked. Or frightened."

"I know," I said. "She covered it well though. I don't think many other people caught it."

"And what the hell is she doing on this boat?"

"I don't know."

Richard caught up with us once the crowd had somewhat thinned outside the doors of the auditorium.

"Care to join me for a nightcap?" he asked, graciously including Errall in the invitation. "There's a cozy cigar lounge on the next deck up."

I winced because I really wanted to get to know Richard Gray a little better, but I also wanted to find out what was up with Alberta. The curious cat inside me won over the horny toad. "I'm sorry, Richard, I can't tonight. Rain check?"

He smiled and nodded and looked at Errall questioningly. I thought that was very charming of him. She can be such a lumpy pillow sometimes. That's why I was surprised when she took his arm and off they went. I was very glad she's a lesbian.

A few metres away I saw Judy, our cruise director, greeting guests with her pasted-on smile, and headed over. Once I had her attention, I told her my story of knowing La Psychic and asked if she could direct me to where the performers' dressing rooms were.

"Oh, we don't have anything like that, I'm afraid. We don't go for anything too fancy around here."

Uh-huh, what about that dress you're wearing. "But if you wait right where you are, I'm sure she'll be coming out this very exit in the next few moments."

Sure enough, Alberta showed up soon afterwards, a coat-of-many-colours shawl draped over her stage outfit, heavy stage make-up still intact.

"Russell, goodness me, what a surprise to see you!" she enthused with a big hug. A surprised psychic?

Isn't that an oxymoron?

"What are you doing on The Dorothy?" I asked.

She looked at some passing passengers, distracted, almost as if she didn't hear what I'd said.

"Alberta, is everything all right? What's going on?"

Her face lost some of its roundness as it settled into wariness. She glanced about, her collection of earrings making a jangling sound. "This isn't a good time," she told me.

"Something happened at the end of your show tonight..."

"Not now," she said, suddenly seeming to want to get away from me. "Tomorrow...are you getting off the ship in Mahon?"

"Uh, yeah, I think so."

"Meet me at Ixo, it's a little cafe, right on the harbourfront. Noon?"

She was gone before I got out an answer. I guess she knew it would be yes.

Hoping to catch up to Richard and Errall.. .well, mostly Richard.. .I dashed up the staircase to Deck Five and found the cigar bar...empty. Except for a lone customer sitting on a low couch under a lamp, with a snifter of brandy, a fat cigar and her knitting.

Dottie Blocka looked up and smiled at me. "Care to join me for a nightcap, Mr. Quant?"

I smiled back. "I'd be delighted." I asked the woman behind the bar for a port and joined Dottie on the couch.

"I assume you don't mind the smoke?" Dottie asked, her eyes mostly on whatever it was she was knitting. Something pink. "This is a cigar bar after all."

I'd given up smoking several years ago but still loved the smell of tobacco. "Not at all. What kind of cigar is it?"

She studied the stogie as if she'd never really looked at it before and said, "I don't really know. Charity gets them for me. It's the only naughtiness left me."

"Oh, I'm sure you could think up one or two more," I suggested with a wink.

"I can think of them," she agreed, her hands busily clicking away, "But with my poor heart, I just can't do them any longer."

There was a bit of silence, and somehow, it was comfortable. With Dottie Blocka, just sitting together was company enough. I enjoyed my drink and she enjoyed her knitting.

"I was an athlete once," she announced without preamble. "When I was a girl."

"Oh. What type of sports did you enjoy?" I asked the expected question.

"Baseball was my thing. I thought about playing on a professional team. I was that good."

"Why didn't you?"

She raised her bright little eyes to mine. "It was a different world back then, Mr. Quant. I got married, right after I finished school."

"I'm sorry you didn't get to pursue your dream."

"What makes you think I didn't?"

I sipped at my drink and used the time to reconsider Dottie Blocka. She was a woman shaped like a beanbag chair, and content with it. Hanging from a delicate gold chain around her thick neck was a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses I'd yet to see her wear. Her thinning head of hair looked like the top of a half-eaten vanilla ice cream cone and she wore plain clothing, mostly pastel-coloured dresses under matching sweaters and always with a Kleenex stuck up one sleeve, just in case she got the sniffles. But it was her eyes, almost lost in the pillows of skin around them, that showed who she really was. Bright, quick, wise. Her current physical state belied sharp mental prowess. In her mind she still was a mighty athlete.

"My husband and my family became my new dream."

"I didn't know you had been married," I said.

"Lawrence died in our twentieth year together. But in that time we lived a full and wonderful life. We had no children of our own, so we took in foster children. Seven in all. Some were with us many years, some for just a few months, but they were each so precious to us."

I nodded, sensing that Dottie Blocka was not one to talk a lot, so when she did, it was best to simply sit back and listen.

"I was almost penniless after Lawrence died. So I began doing laundry and housework to keep the money coming in. One day Charity hired me. That was forty years ago, Mr. Quant. I've lived with her every day since. I know her. You may be having some doubts about your decision to take on this job, wondering whether Charity is some crazy old woman making things up."

I did my best to keep my head motionless, no nodding, no shaking, but she could see in my eyes that she was right.

"Well Mr. Quant, if my word counts for anything, I'm here to tell you she isn't."

And with that she went back to her knitting, never once having touched her brandy or cigar. I got the feeling she just liked having them there.

"Thank you for the talk. I think I'll turn in now," I said. "May I escort you to your cabin?"

"Thank you dear boy, but Charity will be quite through at the casino in a few minutes. I'll wait for her."

I was about to get up and head for my room when I thought better of it. "Perhaps I'll wait with you.

Charity promised me a look at her will. Maybe I could get a copy tonight?"