Page 6 of Total Dreamboat

Felix

It would be an understatement to say I don’t care for musical theater. Inviting me to a show at the West End is the fastest way to get a “no” out of my mouth. So, of course, when Prue grabs my hand after supper and announces we’re on our way to a Broadway revue, I pry my fingers away.

Pear comes at me from the other side with a death grip on my bicep.

“You are coming, dear brother,” she says. “You are coming to everything .”

“Yes,” Prue says. “You are going to have fun on this trip, or we’ll make you walk the plank.”

“You wouldn’t like maritime jail, I’m sure,” I say. “Let me go.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t get caught. There are many unexplained deaths at sea. It’s the dark underbelly of the cruise ship world,” says Pear. “I read about it in The Guardian .”

“How tragic,” Prue singsongs. “Darling Felix drowned at sea, just like that. Who will take over his pubs?”

“We’ll sell them to Pizza Express,” Pear says decisively.

“Even you would not turn my life’s work into a chain restaurant,” I say.

“Oh, I would. Very good ROI.”

My sisters are experts in complicated investment-oriented things I read about with minimal comprehension in the Financial Times .

They’re famous in the City of London for their genius aptitude for investing, not to mention their matching blond beauty.

They are Dad’s pride and joy, while I’m his black sheep who eschewed university in order to “faff about in the pub.”

My two gastropubs are both raved about and profitable, but he’ll never forgive me for not wanting to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to “reinvigorate failing legacy brands,” or whatever it is that he and my sisters are so good at.

It doesn’t help that I agonized my family with my drinking, and the fallout, for two decades.

“Fine,” I say to my sisters. “I’ll withstand a few minutes of show tunes if it means I can end this abuse.”

“The show is an hour,” Prue trills. “You’re going to love it.”

We go into a large, dark theater with deep velvet couches arranged around cocktail tables. A waiter comes to take our order. The girls get Manhattans and I order a double espresso and pop a nicotine gum. I’ll need fortification to get through this.

The girl who threw crab in my hair at lunch—Hope—sits down with her friend on the sofa in front of us. Prue jabs me in the rib with her elbow.

“Look,” she whispers. “It’s the pretty crab girl.”

I edge away. “I’m going to be bruised tomorrow from all of your manhandling.”

“Go cry in the infirmary. Maybe there will be a fit nurse to bandage you up. A little shag would be good for you.”

“Please don’t talk to me about shagging.”

Pear is reading the program for the show and distracts Prue with some babble about Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I hear the American girls chatting in front of us. I lean in slightly. Eavesdropping is rude but I’m curious what two young, beautiful women are doing on a cruise for sixty-year-olds.

“Guess what?” the blond one says. “That handsome Swedish guy, Lucas, asked me to meet him for a drink in the Largo Lounge at eleven while you were in the bathroom.”

“Well done,” says Hope.

“Ooh, look,” the friend says, gesturing at the program. “They’re doing a medley from Chicago . Don’t you just die for Bob Fosse?”

“As discussed, at length, I do not love any musical theater and am here against my will.”

“Same,” I want to say. But that would reveal that I’m spying on them.

The theater darkens and a man in a crisp white uniform with ostentatious gold epaulets walks onstage in the glow of a spotlight and welcomes us to the show, which he assures us features the finest performers fresh off the stages of Broadway.

He’s not lying, as far as I can tell. The singers are spectacular, if you like that kind of thing, and the dancers so lithe and acrobatic that for a minute I forget that I hate this.

I would have thought that the cast of a floating theater troupe would be made up of the desperate and talentless, but even I can tell these people are good .

Not to mention attractive. I work out religiously, but their musculature makes me question the skill of my trainer.

I’m intrigued enough by the mechanics of the performance to make it through excerpts from Cabaret and Phantom of the Opera , but I draw the line at The Lion King .

“See you in the morning,” I whisper to Pear. Luckily, even she would not interrupt “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” so I slip out without protest.

As I reach the doors, I sense someone behind me.

I look over my shoulder.

It’s Hope.

We both step out of the theater and into the bright lights of the corridor.

She gives me a little wave, wincing against the glare.

As my eyes adjust I see what she’s wearing—a retro turquoise cocktail dress that is not obviously clingy but shows off her figure remarkably well. It’s prim and alluring at once—something like Joan from Mad Men would wear. (I harbor filthy thoughts about Joan from Mad Men .)

“Slipping out?” I ask.

“Couldn’t take it,” she says. Then she seems to feel bad about the bluntness of this statement because she adds, “Sorry. They’re very good, but I’m not a musical theater person.”

“None taken.” I lower my voice. “Can’t stand the stuff.”

“Sorry again about throwing crab in your hair,” she says. “I’ve never done that before.”

“It would be far more impressive if you had.”

“Oh, well I can try again tomorrow, if you want.”

“I do, actually. The shampoo on this boat is tip-top. Smells like the ocean, you know.”

I don’t know why I’m suddenly speaking like an Edwardian countess. Am I nervous?

She doesn’t seem to notice.

“I love that fake ocean smell,” she agrees. “So refreshing.”

I like her—she’s very dry for an American, and dry is my type. I’m almost about to ask if she’d like to take a stroll on the deck—get some air to shake off the show tunes—when her friend comes bounding out of the theater.

“Hopie!” she exclaims. “You escaped!”

“Headache,” Hope says. “I’m gonna call it an early night.”

Her friend looks at me. “She’s lying. Tell her to go back in.”

I raise my hands innocently. “I’d never force show tunes on anyone.”

Hope grins at me. “Have a good evening, Felix. If you go back in now, you can probably still catch the medley from Cats .”

As they disappear, I’m suddenly grateful to be on a cruise ship. Because in the absence of anywhere else for either of us to go, I know I’ll see Hope again.

And I want that quite badly.