Travel Journal, Day Eight:
Some set-up here is appropriate. The Wife and I are quite possibly the youngest passengers on our ship, probably thirty-plus years below the mean. It intimidates the crap out of us — probably unfairly, as most people we've encountered are affable enough. The program of interaction is by now predictable: we tell the other guests what we do for a living, and they tell us what their children do for a living. Then we talk about the food.
Nonetheless, seven days into our cruise we're still a bit leery about dining with other people. It is the custom of the ship's
maitre d' to ask on arrival whether we would prefer to eat alone or with other passengers. It was a big step two nights ago when we finally relented to the latter course and passed a pleasant Chinese dinner with a couple who have retired to Hawaii to take up vanilla bean farming (sometimes I don't make this stuff up).
Tonight, however, was a different story. Buoyed by Saturday night's success, the Wife and I took charge with the
maitre d' and demanded to sit with another couple. I believe the Wife's exact words were "Um — er — whatever you want. Put us wherever you want." Through this I kept quiet and shifted awkwardly in my dress shoes.
We were seated at an empty table for four in the center of the dining room, positioned prominently to receive our table-match for the evening. From that location we gaped in horror and humiliation as a husband and wife were led toward our table, froze in their tracks, and after an eternity of whispered negotiations between the
old man and the
maitre d', were settled at a table for two in front of us. I told the Wife (who looked smashing) that the
old lady was intimidated by her good looks and wanted her husband sequestered. She smiled and looked twice as smashing. Then I resolved out loud to find out where these people were staying so I could knock over their mailbox.
The mailboxes aren't mailboxes
per se. They are elegant clips set by the doors to the state rooms where the Travel Desk leaves tickets for shore excursions. Nothing you can take out with a Louisville Slugger or back into with your Dodge Ram (sponsors, note the product placements) — but you can bet your wounded and vindictive Phutatorius will be unscrewing that mail clip sometime in the dead of night. My on-again/off-again relationship with the French authorities is well-documented in other posts; if necessary, I will not shrink from a confrontation with the Ship Steward.
An interesting (well, you be the judge) post-script: the
maitre d' approached us midway through dinner, apparently to explain why none of the other guests ever did sit down at our table with us. He's a nice guy; he's Italian: he's my people. "I don't understand," Mario said. "There were twenty more people signed up to eat at this sitting, but they don't come. I had to turn away other guests, and now these people don't come. It upsets me. I must make changes." The Wife and I expressed our sympathies, and I offered to eat the orphaned entrees. He smiled and walked away, shaking his head, and the two of us lapsed into a thoughtful silence. We were both thinking the same thing: word got out that the next guests seated upstairs for the Indian dinner would get stuck with the "Young Couple." Starvation appeared to be a better alternative.
That should be all, as I write from a public Internet facility on board the ship, there are people standing in line to use the terminals, quite possibly reading over my shoulder, and I am beginning to feel a bit like Harriet the Spy. Expect more substantive posts soon about my postcolonial tourist angst. Actually, just imagine that I wrote them: I tend to lose the bulk of my days in the lunch buffet at the "Terrace Cafe."
