Tales of the Cruise

Tales of the Cruise My aunt comes back from the cruise with tales of adventure. The food, the music, the exotic customs, all the amateur anthropology of the eighty-year old widow. A single figure stands apart in her narrative, a salesman, retired, also eighty. "He was so persistent," says my aunt coyly, "he prepositioned me all the way to Venezuela." I picture the scene clearly. At the dinner table he leaned across the salad plate and said to my aunt with a wink, "With. Amid. Between." And dancing one of their slow, shuffling fox trots, one of their slow, shuffling tangos, his thin lips whispered to her earring, "Of. Unto. Despite." My aunt backed away from his arms. "Please," she whispered hoarsely, urgently, "I must think of my poor Nat, may he rest in peace." She sits down at the table and takes a pill. The salesman tried to restrain himself through the costume party, the Casino Night, through the Gaucho Bar-B-Q, and the comedians. When they are by the shuffleboard court (everyone slathered in sunblocker, wearing dark glasses), in seductive tones he chants to her alone, "About. At For. Within" My aunt is refined and cautious. She looks towards the green islands and responds, "Past. But. Except Over" And they speak of their great-grandchildren and they ride the pink jeeps. Leonard Orr Washington State University, Tri-Cities 54 ...