Page 76 of Without a Clue

Then, out of nowhere, a blast of music plays from somebody’s phone. I turn and to my shock see a woman has squeezed herself as tightly as she can into the corner of the elevator, her arms tucked to her sides as she clearly tries to make herself invisible.

“Oh, so sorry,” she says in a hush to no one—a.k.a. us—as she swiftly turns the ringer off. And with a little squeak of her shoes against the porcelain tile, she pulls herself another inch toward the wall as if trying to melt into it.

I take a wide step back from Nash and the rest of the ride passes in silence.

When the elevator doors slide open, a whole new world emerges.

The carpet on the lower level is much more vibrant than upstairs, with playful swirls of gold dancing over red and blue and green. The walls are covered in a textured wallpaper of horses and their stables, and in the distance I can hear music coming from multiple different restaurants and bars. People teem in the halls, carrying drinks and shopping bags as they go out from one door and into the next.

So this is where everyone’s been. Dining and shopping and who knows what else.

Nash’s arm has gently come behind me and quietly urges me out of the elevator.

I hesitate.

Feel one foot step onto the plush carpet as the doors close behind us.

Sinking in.

I look around in vain for any windows.

We’re just . . . down here.

Encapsulated.

“Take your pick,” Nash says. “We can stow away in any of these.”

There’s a tiny pinch in my chest that I steadily ignore. I look to the place closest to the elevator. “The piano bar,” I say, and he nods, gently stepping us around a woman holding an actual coconut in her hand with a green-and-white-striped straw popping out of a little hole inside.

Together we go in.

“Two, please. Is there a wait?” Nash says to the hostess.

My eyes scan the bar. There are two pianos back-to-back on a stage in the center of the room, a little pink glow lighting up the ebony keys and empty black seats. Thirty or so black tables surround the pianos, each holding a single white rose in a small vase. Crystal twinkles in the dark space beneath the dim light of one enormous chandelier above. The room smells of red wine and meat.

No windows in sight.

Her eyes flick to a poster with Nash’s face on it announcing the activities for The Book Cruise. She looks at the laminated room overview below her and wipes a dry-erase marked note off a two-top table with her thumb.

“You’re in luck, a two-top just left,” she says, gathering the menus in hand. And in her cheeriest tone, “If you’ll follow me.”

She leads us to a table directly by one of the pianos, swiftly picks up a little golden Reserved placard, and sets the menus down.

I shake my head as she leaves.

“What?” Nash says.

“Nothing. It’s just, you’d think after five years I’d get used to this.”

“What?”

“You authors, casually getting away with anything.”

Nash lifts a brow. “It’s not because we’re authors, Pip. It’s because we’re the cruise entertainment. If the highlight of the cruise was a magician, she’d have done the same thing for the guy and his rabbit.”

I smile a little. “Do you think they’d give the rabbit his own seat?”

“On a ship like this? They’d give the rabbit its own menu.”