DOUBLE KNOT by Gretchen Archer Page A

swimsuit.”
    “Yay.” I rolled my eyes.
    We lugged the bag full of busted dishes between us to the balcony doors, slid them
     open, poked our heads out, cleared the area for witnesses, scooted across the deck,
     then lobbed Bianca’s Louis bandoulière into the Caribbean Sea. The wind caught it
     like a vacuum and it was gone. Forever. Fantasy dusted her hands. “Well.”
    “I can’t believe we just did that.”
    “Davis?” I was facing the Caribbean, from which Bianca Sanders’s Louis Vuitton bandoulière
     would never return. Fantasy was facing my bedroom. “Look there.” She pointed. “Look
     at your cat.”
    Anderson Cooper stood at the open balcony doors. With a $25,000 Probability poker chip between her front paws.
      
    * * *
      
    “I don’t like that man.”
    “Mother, there aren’t many men you do like.”
    She’d saved me a perfect sun chair. One that gave me a panoramic view of the glorious
     Caribbean on one side and a full view of the salon on the other. I’d be able to see
     the Navy SEALS my husband was surely sending if they dropped from the sky, climbed
     over the deck railing, or busted through the front door.
    “Davis, that’s mean spirited and not true.” Mother slapped her Woman’s Day closed, tipped the brim of her sunhat, so big it looked like an open umbrella on
     her head, and got a good look at me. “Heavens to Murgatroyd. What are you wearing?”
    I was wearing the only swimsuit option I had. I was supposed to be in a photoshoot
     in front of a Picasso in the ship’s art gallery on Deck Eight all morning wearing
     a Saint Laurent lace mini dress, and in another photoshoot at a waterfall in the middle
     of the ship’s botanical garden on Deck Ten all afternoon in a Givenchy hot pink satin
     cape blouse over hot pink satin pencil capris. My cruise itinerary looked exactly
     the same every day: photography sessions in different inappropriate outfits all over Probability . The only clothes I’d packed for myself were of the comfort variety to wear between
     the shoots, in the suite, or to sleep in. No lounge-by-the-pool time had been built
     into my schedule, so I had to wing it. I was at the pool winging it in the only thing
     Bianca packed that would even halfway work, a string bikini (I know…) (you should
     see my bellybutton) she actually sent with the intent that I have my picture snapped
     in it (not a chance in all holy hell), and the only thing I could find to wear over
     it, a sheer gauze Madonna robe fringed in thousand-foot-long white silk ribbons. The
     train on the robe trailed a half mile behind me and was earmarked for yet another
     page in the Pregnancy Album, this one shot in the Probability portrait studio and against a solid white backdrop and a pose Bianca called “Baby
     Belly.” My instructions were to wear the robe, barely wear the robe and only the robe,
     wide open, the shot a profile of my naked body with the mile of robe sprawled out
     behind me. Bianca had an instructional note card with the robe, handwritten on her
     gold-foil Dempsey & Carroll stationery: “ In Baby Belly, you are to gaze lovingly at Ondine as you caress her, David, and it
     aggravates me to no end to have to REMIND you to have a daily manicure . Essential for this particular photograph and for God’s sake, have a salt scrub at least 12
     hours beforehand. GLOWING, David. I want to GLOW in this photograph. ”
    (No.)
    (No. No. No.)
    “Could you not have gone to the shopping mall, Davis? Could you not have gone to the
     T.J. Maxx or the Marshalls and bought yourself a decent swimming suit?”
    “I really didn’t think about it, Mother.”
    “Well, you look ridiculous.”
    (I knew.)
    The air was pure, the view spectacular, the soundtrack of slicing through the sea
     in a luxury liner glorious. Because of the cool breeze blowing the fringe of silk
     ribbons all over my face, and for a split second blowing away my terror, I couldn’t
     really gauge the temperature.