At adjacent tables, heads turned.
"That's why he isn't sitting around during the day. He is too busy breaking into cabins while the occupants are busily basting on the pool deck. Don't you see? That's why we never encounter him during daylight hours."
"Highly unlikely," Floyd said. "Anything worth stealin is in the Purser's safe. At any rate, I think if he were entering cabins he would be using a stolen master key. The ordinary keys are coded for sections so that room stewards do not have access to cabins that are not under their charge."
"You've been indulging in too much Agatha Christie," said Deborah whose tastes ran to more violent scenarios. I had noticed a dog-eared Robert Ludlum beside her deckchair on more than one occasion.
As soon as Joe had granted us our nightly ration of dessert and departed, we would make rapid revisions to his bio. Joe had been in turn, a writer, the world's greatest pasta chef, an international jewel thief, a Cassanova who slept his days away and an aging gigolo. After considerable debate, we reluctantly decided that none of our scenarios stood up to the light of day. We settled on the essence of a gentleman. Joe's Debbie faux pas was relegated to the realm of the unspoken.
All of Joe's many lives received due consideration. Writer had been chewed over a smidgen of chocolate mousse. It was soundly rejected the following evening when Joe happened to say that he hardly ever read more that the newspaper headlines preferring to his news from the six o'clock telly. Over cr me caramel we had argued the pasta chef proposal and rejected it when we reached a consensu that Joe simply spoke with the avidness of a dedicated amateur rather than with the finesse of a practiced professional. Floyd successfully torpedoed the jewel thief idea when he explained how our locks would have been retumble and new keys issued should a thief have been lifting valuables from the cabins.
Several months have passed since our cruise. We have all returned to our little private niches. A nostalgic urge to see one another, conditioned it would seem from storming ashore onto a Grenada beach for a frolic and accelerated by having shared an encounter with a St. Lucian boa constrictor high on a rain forest ridge especially as it had turned Debbie Dreadful into Jello. I for one was pleased to notice that the nostalgia had faded. Joe would likely agree but we would never know it for he was too much of a gentleman to comment. Memories included nightcaps, wine at dinner and most compelling of all Auld Lang Syne on New Year's Eve. All of this seems to have faded to ennui and about time too.
On our last night at sea it was thought highly unlikely that any member of our nonagon would be in the least danger of forgetting Joe if only to hang in there until we had solved his mysterious persona. In addition, we had.made a solemn pact to invite the captain to share our table for at least one memorable dinner just in case Joe had the temerity to be a no show.
If Joe does not show up for our next cruise, I for one, will be disappointed but not to the point of despair. I now possess sufficient confidence to order pasta on my own. "I'll have mine al burro," I may say, my tone conveying to the galley slaves that I would not sully my sophisticated palate with the chef's ill-considered sauce.
I wonder if Debbie ever thinks about Joe when she is in the midst of planning one of her not-to-be-missed intimate dinner parties. She should send him an invitation. Perhaps she already has. Should pasta be on the menu, it would be almost guaranteed that he would show up, if even just to determine how much she has learned if anything.