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By the time I creep down the hall to the main deck and peer out across the pool area, I’m light-headed with hunger. There’s a collection of tables and chairs near the buffet, covered with a blue-and-white striped awning and watched over by two crew members.
The Dougherty employees are scattered about. Some are in the pool, drink in hand. Others bask in the sun, including Marney from marketing, who has finally shucked her orthopedics.
No one in the vicinity of the food would recognize me straight away. No Viola. No marketing or accounting people I dealt with daily.
I don’t think most employees would recognize me at a glance, even though it was my job to know them. I always had to help Rhett, who couldn’t hold a personal detail about another human if he tried. I don’t know what makes Rhett smile, but it isn’t anyone or anything at Dougherty Inc. I was the one who exclaimed over baby pictures, listened to long descriptions of vacations, and congratulated people on engagements.
Rhett is not a people person. He’s a big ol’ fuddy duddy and never stops working.
I walk casually along the wall, avoiding all eye contact. Hopefully, anyone glancing my way will assume I’m a wife or girlfriend of an employee and look elsewhere.
The smell of the food hits me, and the ground briefly swoops out from under me. I haven’t had so much as a coffee since I got up and rushed to the cruise dock.
No one is in line at the buffet, so I approach the stack of large white plates and pick one up. It’s a dizzying array of Caribbean food. Jerk chicken. Rice. Plantains with dipping sauces in green, red, and yellow. Empanadas.
“What would you like, love?” The woman’s smooth dark skin is as flawless as a Cover Girl ad.
“One of everything?” I ask.
She grins. “We can manage that.” She adds a hefty serving of the steaming chicken, several fried plantains, a spoonful of rice, and a golden-brown empanada. Each of the sauces is artfully ladled between the dishes.
“Some salad?” The next woman holds tongs over a bowl of gorgeous greens mixed with slivers of vegetables I don’t even recognize, glistening with a light oil dressing.
“Yes, please.”
I’m handed a bowl of it by a smiling woman who says, “The bar across the way has water, Goombay Punch, and adult beverages.”
“Goombay Punch?” For some random reason, Rhett’s secret nickname, “Mr. Juicy,” pops into my head.
“It’s a popular Bahamian soda.”
I glance over at the bar. It’s a dangerous place, surrounded by at least six people I talked to most every day.
“Thank you.”
I don’t need a drink at the moment. I just need to eat.
I find a small table at the edge of the cluster of seats. I debate turning my back on the pool to avoid identification, then decide I should keep an eye on anyone approaching.
I eat the salad first, that swoony feeling coming over me again at the variety of flavors in the tangy vinaigrette. No one has noticed me, so I dip my first plantain into the green sauce.
It’s heavenly, a touch sweet with a heavy dose of cilantro. I’m very glad I’m not one of those people for whom cilantro tastes like soap.
The red sauce is so spicy that I have to eat rice to tone it down. Then the jerk chicken fills my mouth with a warm, toasty flavor with a bite at the end.
I calm down with the food and take in everyone on the main deck. I spot Viola in the hot tub, standing out in a bright pink bikini. Kenna sits on the rim, only her feet in the water, nodding mindlessly at Viola’s chatter.
That used to be my job.
A pang hits me that I got trodden so hard by my so-called best friend, and yet I still miss her. Viola is that moderately toxic friend you know you ought to quit, and yet her light shines so brightly, you’re drawn to her anyway. Life was never boring with her around.
But she got me fired. I wonder if she did such a good snow job on whatever marketing disaster she got me blamed for that it will never be undone. It’s been two weeks, so I assume that while she was mediocre at marketing, she was excellent at sabotage.
And for what? Rhett? My job? Is that what she wanted? I was never clear. All I know is that she made a stray comment that she thought Rhett was looking at me more than he ought to, then BOOM, two days later, I’m called into HR.
There wasn’t much I could question without a deep dive. Every requisition I was presented with had Rhett’s signature on it, and my initials showing that I’d given it to him to sign. But hewas the boss, so he wasn’t going to be the one to get fired over a half-million in useless expenditures, all uncovered by Viola and a shocked Marney.
No, that would be me.
