Isn't It Bro-Mantic? Read online

  “You are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” I say. “But wait a second. Are other people going to see you like that?”

  She laughs and throws something at me, which I catch.

  My bathing suit? A little less skimpy than hers. Actually, they’re those jammy things. About twenty years ago, it was all Speedos. Guys’d be walking around like, “ooh, here’s all my junk” and “see how big my junk is”; now we wear stuff that says, “ah, I got no junk, and besides, I’ve been eating too many French fries lately.” The fickle world of men’s fashion. Go figure.

  “Of course they will,” she says, “but does it matter? After all, you’re my husband.”

  Husband. I’m a husband! Was there ever a greater word in the history of the world?

  “And you’re hot,” she adds, as she pulls me close and unbuckles my belt, the better to help me change into my swim trunks.

  And now I can think of a few other pretty great words.

  We hit the deck and find a couple of vacant lounge chairs by the pool. Not everyone was as prescient as us—bringing our bathing suits on board in a carryall—so there aren’t as many people around the pool as you’d think. Mostly, people are walking around in their shorts and jeans, drinking fruity drinks and hanging over the railing and waiting for the ship to set sail.

  Even though I’m more of a beer guy, I figure “When on a cruise ship…” So I flag a passing waitress and order two of the day’s specials—Papaya-Pineapple Paradise—for me and the little Mrs.

  Wow, that’s sweet.

  I look at my wife, lying on her stomach, and I wonder when thinking of her that way—my wife—will start to get old. I’m thinking never.

  “Hey,” I say, “did you pack any suntan lotion in that carryall thing?”

  She reaches in, tosses me a plastic bottle of something, which I catch backhanded. I love it when she throws stuff at me. She’s got such a good arm.

  “Are you worried about getting burned?” she says, one eye closed against the mid-afternoon sun.

  “Nah,” I say, “I spend so much time outdoors, and being half Italian, I don’t worry about it so much. I was thinking more about you. That red hair, that fair skin…”

  “Oh my gosh,” she says. “How could I have forgotten? I’ll turn into a lobster.” She pulls her hair to one side. “Could you do my back for me?”

  “I don’t know, lady,” I say, like I can’t believe she’s asking me to do something so hard, as I squirt some lotion onto my hands and rub my palms together. “I don’t remember there being anything in the vows to cover anything so difficult as this.”

  “Well, if it’s too much trouble…” She starts to lever herself up from the chair.

  “Shh,” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders and rubbing the suntan lotion into her naked skin.

  I could do this kind of trouble all day long.

  Our sunbathing is interrupted by the lifeboat test, which feels kind of like being in a sardine can what with all the people jammed close together on the deck, life preservers around our necks. But when I feel Helen’s hand take mine and give it a squeeze, and I look down at her—my own little sardine—it’s not so bad.

  I also vow to myself to never tell Sam that I just referred to Helen, even if only in the quiet of my own mind, as “my little sardine”; I’d never hear the end of it.

  About a half hour before we set sail, Helen reaches into her carryall and pulls out her cell phone.

  “I thought you can’t get reception on a cruise ship,” I say.

  “You can’t once you’re out at sea,” she says, “but you can when you’re still in port. I researched it.”

  She researched it. How cute is my wife?

  “Cool,” I say, pulling my own cell out of my pocket as she starts punching in a number. “Maybe I’ll give Sam a call, make sure she’s all set for work tomorrow.”

  Sam picks up on the second ring.

  “Hey,” she says, “aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon?”

  “I am,” I say, “but I won’t get reception again until we pull into port in the Bahamas and I want to make sure you’re all set for the jobs this week.”

  Sam’s a would-be novelist but until that takes, she paints interiors and exteriors with me.

  “Of course I’m all set,” she says. “First up tomorrow is the Ryan job. I’ll get the paint on the way: Blue Lagoon.”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” I say, perhaps a bit too vehemently. “Sheila Ryan only thinks she wants Blue Lagoon, but what she really needs is Hidden Lagoon.”

  “What if she complains it’s not the color she picked out?”

  “Trust me on this. She’ll be thanking you.”

  “OK, you’re the boss…Boss.”

  I hate it when she calls me that.

  We go over the jobs and the required paint for the rest of the week.

  “Hey, your dad called,” she says. “I figured we wouldn’t be playing poker this week, what with you being away, but he invited everyone over to his house for Friday. He said your aunt was going to make some kind of quiche.”

  The weekly poker games have always been at my place with me, Big John, Sam, Billy, Drew and, for the last year or so, Steve Miller in attendance. Normally I’d hate to miss a week, but I look over at Helen, her pretty mouth moving fast as she talks on the phone, and I don’t feel like I’m going to be missing anything. And, you know, quiche.

  “That’s great,” I say. “Have a good time. And hey, keep an eye on GH for me.”

  General Hospital has really been heating up lately. I originally started watching it as a way to be more likable to women because Alice told me all women love GH, which, as it turned out, was false—Helen didn’t love it and she still doesn’t completely love it—but now I’m hooked.

  “Do you think I’d miss it?” she says.

  “I know, right?” I say. “That soap magazine they have at the supermarket said something about Sonny revealing some kind of huge secret to Johnny Zacchara.”

  “That can’t be good.”

  “Whatever it is, Johnny Z’ll probably freak. Sonny can be such a tool sometimes. Hey, do you think something really bad is going to happen to Robin?”

  “Well, that’s what the magazine said.”

  “So, how’s the cat doing?”

  “It’s only been twenty-four hours.”

  “I know, but I’ve never left him alone for this long before.”

  “I think he misses you. He’s eating and using the litter box and everything but whenever I go in there, he zooms around the place like he’s on cocaine or something. I think he’s trying to find you.”

  That is so unlike him. Usually, Fluffy moves so little, people think he’s dead. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him “zoom” around the place.

  “Poor little guy,” I say.

  “Yeah, well. That’s what you get for getting a cat to impress a girl and then running off with the girl.”

  “Yeah, well. See you a week from Monday.”

  “OK, Boss. Travel safe.”

  I put my phone away but Helen’s still talking on hers.

  I stretch out my legs, lean back, cradle my fingers behind my neck.

  Now there’s a funny word: cradle.

  But ah, paradise.

  In the pool, there are already little kids frolicking. Kids always know the good stuff. The adults may forget to pack their own bathing suits into carryalls, they may be more worried about getting more fruity drinks than about frolicking. But any kid who’s ever been on vacation knows that the very first thing you do, as soon as possible, is you throw on your bathing suit and you jump in that pool.

  Yes, paradise.

  Yesterday was nearly perfect, easily the best day of my life. Sure, there were a few off moments, like that dance with Alice where I didn’t know what she was talking about and then she went all Alice-crazy on me and that brief interlude with that Dan Rathbone character—what was his problem?—but other than that, i
t was a perfect day. And this is shaping up to be another one and all I can see is a string of nearly perfect days stretching out for the rest of my life.

  “Sounds good, Daniel,” I hear Helen say. “I’ll check in again when I get to port.”

  She drops her phone back into her carryall.

  “Who was that?” I say.

  “Daniel,” she says. “From the office.”

  “On Sunday?”

  “We needed to go over a case that’s coming up.” She shrugs. “You called Sam, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, but…Was that Daniel Rathbone?”

  “Rathbone?” She laughs. “You say his name like you’re trying to hawk up some phlegm.”

  Yeah, well.

  “I do?” I make my ‘what are you—crazy?’ face. “I don’t do that. Why would I do that? I only met the guy for the first time yesterday. I never even heard of him before yesterday. Come to think of it, what was he doing at our wedding?”

  “He works in the office.”

  “But I never heard of him before,” I say again.

  I don’t know why I’m making an issue of this. There’s no big deal, right? But I sound like I’m making an issue of it, which I don’t want to be doing, but I can’t stop saying things and asking questions because it would just look strange if I just stopped.

  It’s kind of like the time Jon Stewart was on David Letterman’s show and for some insane reason Stewart started talking about underwear and then out of the blue said that Letterman’s such a big star he probably doesn’t even need to wear underwear anymore, he probably has staff members to reach around him and just hold up his junk. Even though everyone, including Stewart after a while, realized that Stewart had inadvertently ventured into the territory of That Which Should Never Be Mentioned (In Terms of Dave’s Staff), Stewart could no longer stop at that point. He just had to keep on making stupid awkward jokes.

  This is exactly like that.

  Almost.

  “Maybe you never heard of him because he’s new,” she says.

  “Well, if he’s so new,” I counter, “why did you invite him to our wedding?”

  See what I mean about this being like the Stewart thing? Once you start on one of these paths, it’s almost impossible to get off again.

  Poor Jon Stewart.

  “It’s a fairly small office and I’d already invited everyone else there.” She shrugs. “You know how that sort of thing is.”

  Actually, in my world it’s just me and Sam at the office, so, really, I don’t.

  “Why?” she presses when I don’t say anything else. “Did you not like him when you met him at the wedding?”

  What can I say? That in the brief time I spent with him, Daniel Rathbone made me feel like my shoulders were up somewhere around the tips of my ears? That he made me feel dissed on my own wedding day?

  I can’t say that. And anyway, I don’t want to say that. This is so stupid. Why did I even start this? And I’m probably wrong about whatever I was feeling around him anyway.

  “He was fine,” I say. “He seemed like a fine…chap.” And as I’m speaking, I manage to convince myself that this is true.

  “Seriously?” She studies me closely.

  “Absolutely,” I say. “As a matter of fact, I think we should have him over for dinner sometime so I can get to know him better—you know, once we get back to Danbury.”

  “That’d be great,” she says. “You know, I never really noticed it before, but whenever we do stuff, it’s almost always with your friends, with your family.”

  Huh. I never noticed that before either.

  “It’ll be good to do something with one of my friends for a change. And I’m sure you’ll like Daniel once you get to know him. He’s really very nice.”

  “Oh, I can already tell from the brief time I spent with him, Daniel is one prince of a guy.”

  Hey, I can afford to be magnanimous. Daniel may be the nice new guy in the office, but Helen is my wife and I’m the husband here.

  “You know, though,” I can’t help but add, “it is kind of fun to say Rathbone like you’re trying to hawk up some phlegm: Rathbone. Rathbone. Rath—”

  Honk! Honk!

  And there’s the ship’s whistle blow!

  Helen and I rush to join the other passengers at the railing as the ship reverses out of its slot. Since we didn’t plan ahead for this and others did, there are several rows of people between us and the actual railing. So as the ship swings around and we head out through the harbor, I hoist Helen onto my shoulders so that she can get a good look at Lady Liberty—the ultimate symbol of freedom—as we sail on past.

  Feeling the weight of her on my shoulders, her naked legs hanging down around my neck, holding her up and making sure she doesn’t fall:

  I am so made for this husband shit.

  We hit the mini-suite for a little R&R before dinner and it actually turns into no R or R, but rather, just a lot of acrobatic sex.

  A guy could get used to married life.

  Afterward, we change for dinner. The ship leaves daily programs in the staterooms to tell you what to expect, and the programs also say what the dress code is for that night’s dinner. Tonight says “Casual,” I guess because it’s our first night out and there’s that thing of maybe not everyone having had their suitcases delivered yet. But ours have been delivered and apparently the wife feels like dressing up.

  I know this because when she comes out of the bathroom, she has on a form-fitting red dress that ends somewhere above her mid-thigh and sky-high red heels. I’ve always known her to be a conservative dresser—you know, her being a D.A. and all that—but I guess she figured she’d take the opportunity of the cruise to bust out of her buttoned-down look a bit. A red-haired woman in all of that red? Va-va-va-voom.

  And, just so she knows what I’m thinking, “Va-va-va-voom,” I say.

  Then I change out of my jeans and T-shirt and put on chinos and a white button-down shirt instead so I don’t look completely out of place with her.

  On the ship, passengers are assigned tables in the more formal dining rooms for meals although there are other dining options. I’m fast learning that on a cruise, the one thing there’s never a shortage of is food or photographers snapping your picture, but that’s OK; I love having my picture taken with Helen—it’s like a tangible proof of our love. How corny is it that I just said that? And what’s worse? I don’t even care! Of course, I haven’t eaten at an assigned table with specified others since I was in grade school, but I figure this could be fun, a chance to really get to know some new people. Who was the last new friend I made? Steve Miller? That hardly qualifies.

  Our table is located near the back of the ship with a wide-open view of the wake we’re cutting through the sea behind us—this is cool; I like a good view—and our four tablemates are already seated, two other couples. The couple to our left, based on the lines in their faces, is a lot older—I’m guessing early seventies, at least—but they both have hair so black, it looks like it was shellacked on. The woman is wearing some kind of a housedress thing while the husband has on a cheap brown suit.

  I introduce myself and my bride and I suppose I mention that we’re on our honeymoon.

  “Boris,” the man says gruffly in a strong accent. He jerks his head at his wife. “Natasha.”

  I laugh. “That’s funny,” I say.

  “Why is that funny?” he says in the same tone of voice.

  Shit. I guess he’s never seen The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

  “No reason,” I say. “So, where you all from?”

  “Cleveland,” he says.

  “I meant before that.” I wave my butter knife before buttering a roll. “You know, the accent.”

  “Ru-SHA!” he says, and there’s a salute in his voice now.

  I’m guessing he means Russia.

  “Well, that’s cool,” I say. “On my father’s side, one of my grandparents came from Russia. I don’t remember the town, but maybe if
you say which town you’re from…”

  He leans close so he’s practically in my face.

  “Why you ask so many questions?” he says.

  Ouch.

  The woman half of the other couple comes to my rescue.

  “I’m Daisy,” she says. “That’s my husband—he’s Tom.”

  Daisy and Tom look like they’re barely rocking fifty. Daisy has on a pretty dress—not sexy like Helen’s, but pretty enough compared to what some other people have on this first night at sea—while Tom is sporting the prep-school chino look although his button-down shirt is light blue and he’s added a navy blazer to the mix. His thinning hair looks like it’s thinking about taking a permanent hike but Daisy’s is blond and incredibly expensive looking.

  “Congratulations on your wedding,” Daisy says with a look that’s a little difficult to decipher. “How lovely for you both.”

  “Thank you,” I say with perhaps more enthusiastic appreciation than the situation warrants, but I’m still getting over whatever just happened with Boris and I’m grateful for her kind words.

  “Tom and I are here because he thought we should go on a cruise to mark our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”

  “Twenty-five years! Why that’s—”

  Daisy snorts. “Like a cruise is going to fix anything after twenty-five years of pure hell.” Then she knocks back the entire contents of her glass which—sniffing the air—I’m guessing is pure Scotch.

  Wow. This is going to be a fun table.

  After surviving the rest of dinner—I think I had some kind of meat—we consult the daily cruise planner to decide what to do next. Sure, we could go back to the mini-suite for some more…you know, but we did that most of last night, again when we got up this morning and right before dinner, and, you know, you can’t spend your whole life doing you know, tempting as that might be. Plus, there’s so much to do on a ship.

  “You want to go dancing?” I offer, magnanimously, I think. “There are a lot of various dancing options on the ship.” I look. “There’s ballroom and a disco…” Sure, I know I’m either a stick figure or yahoo dancer, but my wife is all dressed up—that outfit shouts, I want to dance!—and anyway, no one knows me on this ship.