DOUBLE KNOT (2 page)

“I’ll be right there, Bianca.”

“You don’t have time to go anywhere,” my mother said. “You need to change clothes
or you’ll be late.”

“It’ll be fine.” Bradley put an arm around Mother’s shoulders and pointed her toward
a set of royal blue club chairs beneath an abstract oil painting the size of a garage
door. “The ship won’t leave without her. Have I told you how nice you look, Caroline?
Very sporty.”

“Sporty?”

“Sophisticated,” he said. “I meant sophisticated.”

Mother, who’s never been in a canoe that I know of, much less on a cruise ship, was
dressed as Mrs. Fleet Admiral in Christmas red double-knit pants with a navy blue
cotton blouse buttoned up to her chin. Over the blouse, she wore a crisp white linen
jacket with gold piping and big gold anchor buttons. On her feet were red Easy Spirit
crisscross sandals with a wide wedge heel. The only things she needed were stars,
stripes, and a marching band behind her playing “Anchors Aweigh.”

“Very stylish,” my husband said.

My mother blushed. Shaking my head, I crossed the room the other way for the elevator
in the closet.

Bradley and I lived on the 29
th
floor of the Bellissimo in more than ten thousand square feet of the casino manager’s
residence. We’d recently redecorated, and by redecorated, I mean we stripped it down
to the bare bones and put it back together in a contemporary way with lots of windows,
cherry wood floors, beamed ceilings, clean lines and open spaces. Included in the
remodel was a (Jack and Jill nursery!) private elevator that only passed between our
home and the one above us. Where Richard and Bianca Sanders lived.

I pushed the up button. This would get me out of changing clothes. Except it didn’t.

“David, you look like a pregnant twelve-year-old.”

“How are you today, Bianca?” I lowered myself into a gray slipper chair at her bedside,
my sundress blooming around the babies. The chair had no arms, so it would be up to
me to hoist myself out of it when the time came.

“I’m miserable, David. Perfectly and completely miserable. You realize my very life
and that of Ondine’s is gravely jeopardized. How dare you ask how I am. How would
you be, David, if you didn’t know if you’d live to see tomorrow?”

Tomorrow, Bianca, I’d be in the middle of the Caribbean Sea.

Last week, she finally got her wish and was diagnosed with an actual complication
of pregnancy, this one not imagined and no laughing matter—gestational diabetes. Who
knew pizza had so much sugar? She was on the lowest of the low end of the diabetes
scale, and her team of doctors said she could enjoy safe blood glucose levels immediately,
within the hour, if she’d just get out of the bed and stop with the Papa John’s.

Thus the misery.

“I need to sit up, David.”

It was like two sumo wrestlers trying to help each other off the floor. I got behind
her, then counted down. “Three, two—”

Mission accomplished, and we were both out of breath.

Bianca fanned her puffy face with both hands. “What time do you sail, David?”

(It’s Davis.) “At seven.”

“Good. You have plenty of time to change clothes.”

“The Vera Wang jumpsuit.”

“Exactly.” Now she was fanning herself with the top half of the bed sheet. Her breasts
were enormous. And by enormous, I mean freakishly large. “Wear it to the party. Make
a very good impression for me. I mean it, David.”

I sneaked a peek at my watch. If I didn’t get on the ship soon, I wouldn’t make an
impression at all. I waited. And waited. I didn’t want to sit down again for fear
of having to get up again. “Did you need me, Bianca?”

She let the sheet go and it floated around Ondine. “It’s my birth plan, David. I need
to go over it with you again.”

We’d been over her birth plan exactly one million times. A suite of labor, delivery,
and if needed, surgical rooms had been constructed and completed to her birth team’s
specifications at Biloxi Regional Medical Center on Renyoir Street. Every possible
scenario for getting Bianca to the hospital, three-tenths of a mile from the Bellissimo
(honestly, she could waddle there if she had to), had been accounted for, and Bianca’s
transfer team had been at the ready for weeks. If she told me she felt a twinge in
her pinkie finger this very second, I could push one button on my phone and have her
at the hospital in five minutes, four of those hauling her out of the bed.

“Everything’s ready, Bianca. Your transport team is on standby, they’re doing two
drills a day, and I promise you, everyone’s ready.”

“It’s not that.” She smoothed the sheet. “It’s the people. I’ve decided there are
too many people attending Ondie’s birth.”

I could have told her that. I did tell her that. Months ago. When she added the nannies
(nursery, lactation, day, night, and an on-call—one baby, five nannies) to the roster
so they could bond with Ondine at birth, I gently suggested it was too many people
for such a deeply personal event. She told me I could scurry off alone and have my
babies behind a bush like a woodland creature, but don’t tell her a videographer and
someone on hand to touch up her hair and lip gloss were too much. In addition to the
videographer, the lip gloss lady, the nannies, the doctors, the nurses, her labor
coach, her husband, and her teenage son (ewwww), Bianca wanted her
dogs
in the labor and delivery suite. Gianna and Ghita, her Yorkshire terriers, who were
getting a little gray in the snout, were also on the guest list for Ondine’s birth.

“It will be one physician instead of four. Two nurses instead of six. Richard will
be there, of course, and you. Everyone else is out and you’re in.” She made direct
eye contact with me, something she didn’t do often. “I need you there.”

My phone buzzed with a text from Bradley.
Davis, it’s time
.

“Bianca.” I stood. “I can’t be in two places at once.” A theme that had been peeking
into the window of my heart since the day we learned I was carrying twins. “What if
you go into labor while I’m on the cruise ship having my picture taken?”

“Work it out, David, and change clothes.”

* * *

I grew up in Pine Apple, Alabama, a little spot in the road below Montgomery, where
not much happened. I moved to Biloxi and took a position with the Bellissimo almost
four years ago, and since then I’ve been incarcerated, poisoned, and had my hair set
on fire, and all that’s in addition to learning enough Chinese to get through countless
high-roller dinners impersonating Bianca Sanders. I loved my job, I made six figures,
I missed it already, and I could honestly say I’d given it my all and I’d hang up
my spy hat next week with no regrets. But when it comes to Bianca Sanders, I wondered
who in the world would fill my size six shoes.

TWO

Jessica DeLuna wanted my job.

She had a job of her own; she was Miss
Probability
.

Jessica and her husband Maximillian were contracted—not by me—to fill
Probability
with rich people. They were loosely, or tightly, I’m not exactly sure, connected
to DeLuna-Elima Securities in New Orleans, a bank loosely, or tightly, depends on
how you look at it, connected to the Knot on Your Life slot machines in
Probability
’s casino.

The deal went down over Virginia striped bass.

The husband, Max, handled a bazillion-dollar trust for the Fillauer Estate, old New
Orleans money. A year ago, about when project
Probability
went into full swing—timing is everything—Jess and Max accompanied the controlling-interest
playboy son to the Bellissimo on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday so they
could be there to intervene if young Richie Rich Fillauer went a little casino crazy.
The Fillauer kid took first in a $500,000 blackjack tournament without touching the
trust and the DeLunas were so impressed they didn’t leave.

Richard and Bianca Sanders, and by Richard and Bianca Sanders I mean Richard Sanders
and the person who sits through boring dinners pretending she’s Bianca Sanders—and
that would be me—had young Fillauer over to celebrate his big blackjack win. He asked
if his financial advisor and wife could tag along. It was the first time I met the
DeLunas and I hoped it would be the last.

That didn’t happen.

Over jumbo lump crab and shrimp, Mr. Sanders told our guests about the next big thing
on the Bellissimo horizon—
Probability
. Max DeLuna was delighted. He wanted to hear more. Between creamy asparagus bisque
and baby wedge salads we slipped out to the Sanders’ library to marvel at the scale
model of the fabulous ship. It was when the Virginian bass was served and the amenities
and events aboard the maiden voyage were discussed in detail that DeLuna proposed
he reach out to his upper-crust clients and gauge their interest levels in booking
($1,000,000 spots) one of the fifty luxurious suites for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Mr. Sanders, in a moment of vanilla bourbon cheesecake madness, hired DeLuna
and
the wife as
Probability
’s host and hostess—no background checks, no salary negotiations, no corner office
disputes.

I almost choked on my white chocolate meringue.

First, as anyone in the gaming industry would tell you, never spontaneously hire casino
management. Next, isn’t it curious, and by curious I mean a flaming red flag, that
a successful banker would accept an impromptu job over fish? What’s wrong with the
job he has? And why the wife too? What was she supposed to do? Lastly, and most important,
I wouldn’t have sanctioned the hiring of these two to fold napkins, if for no other
reason than the fact that Mr. and Mrs. DeLuna didn’t speak to each other or make eye
contact one time in five courses. There’s a story there, a story better not played
out on a half-billion-dollar ship in the middle of the sea. Regardless, and without
a thought to policy, procedure, or marital discord, Mr. Sanders put them on the payroll.

It’s (his casino) not like I could kick him under the table.

From that moment on, Max DeLuna worked offsite doing who knows what. I’d barely seen
him since the Virginian bass. Jessica, on the other hand, got a big office right down
the hall from my husband. She’d done an impressive job, if an impressive job can be
measured by how many times she weaseled her way into my husband’s office for no good
reason. That, plus the fact that the ship was, indeed, full of ridiculously wealthy
people.

I was hoping to avoid the DeLunas for the duration of the cruise.

That didn’t happen either.

Hers was the first face I saw the second I stepped onto
Probability
.

“So! You’re here!”

Barely. I had one foot on the gangplank and the other on the teak deck when Jess popped
up.

She stared past me. “You’re alone? All by yourself?” She clutched her heart. “No one
to see you off?”

She was looking for Bradley. I swear the woman was after my job
and
my husband. Every time the subject came up, and it was usually-to-always me bringing
it up, Bradley somehow worked the words “wildly fluctuating progesterone and estrogen
levels” into the conversation.

“There’s something not right with the DeLunas, Bradley. And whatever it is, it has
nothing to do with me being pregnant.”

“You need to get to know her,” he’d say.

“Oh, really?”

“Give her a chance, Davis. She’ll grow on you.”

“Are you saying she’s grown on you?”

He pulled me close. “Oh, my pregnant Davis.”

Jessica met me, real me, early on. Not something a Super Secret Spy usually sanctions—it’s
hard to stay super secret if everyone knows who you are—but in her case, I was ready
and willing to make an exception. Her job, as it turned out, was to staff and stock
the fifty suites to the whims of the fifty guests’ every imagined desire, and word
had come down from the Bianca Sanders Maternity Ward that if Jessica sent one more
intrusive questionnaire, Bianca would get out of the bed and kill her. At some point,
Jessica would have to be told the guest in the Sanders Suite wasn’t Bianca. Instead,
it would be me. Send the foie gras surveys to me. I was all for telling her the truth,
thinking it would get her out of my husband’s office. Which is where we were when
we swore her to secrecy.

“So, wait.” Jess looked up from the confidentiality agreement. “When I see Bianca
Sanders I’m really seeing
you
?”

“Correct.” I smiled.

“That night at dinner it was
you
?”

“Yes.”

“You two are
married
?”

“Right again.” I tucked into my husband a little closer. “We are.”

And here we were. On
Probability
.

“Well, you look just adorable,” she said. “Like a little flower mommy.”

Next to her, I felt like I was wearing little flower mommy wallpaper. Enough to cover
a very large wall. She was barely dressed in head-to-toe cream satin, a cropped sleeveless
top over a long pencil skirt, and the skirt was slit. All the way up one of her long
brown legs. Jessica was runway tall and stick thin, with long silky black hair, Maleficent
cheekbones, and ink-black almond-shaped eyes. To offset all the thin, she had DDD
breasts; to offset all the exotic islander dark, she dressed in shades of white—vanilla,
antique, and smoke. The package of Jessica was very dramatic and she was well aware
of her effect. Let’s put it this way: If the whole room wasn’t looking at her, she
wasn’t happy. And since we weren’t in a room at all, Jessica spun me around, hooked
an arm through mine, and chattered me to a more populated venue like we were BFFs.
Which was part of her grand scheme to rip my job and husband out from under me. This
constantly being nice to me.

She nicely told me my medical crew had just arrived and my photography crew had already
checked into their staterooms on Deck Two, the level housing everyone’s entourages.
My mother and my others were safely on Deck Seven, the level with ten of the fifty
VIP guest suites, including mine. My stateroom attendant had arrived. My butler and
personal chef weren’t in the suite just yet, but they’d be along shortly. All was
well. Thanks to her.

She led me through a wide arched doorway into a solid gold atrium, six stories high
with a sweeping gold staircase in the middle, where four porters flanked the entrance,
three men in navy blue suits stood at the foot of the staircase behind gold desks,
two clusters of rich people sipped champagne, and one lady played a golden harp under
a blinding crystal halo chandelier. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look
at Jessica and she was very happy.

She made me feel so pregnant.

* * *

The ship ran on a central processor somewhere I’d never see, and the passengers were
connected to the processor, thus the ship, by personal electronics. I wasn’t issued
a room key; I was given a Saygus V2 five-ounce handheld computer. One of its many
features was that it operated as a telephone too, which was way down the app list
from V2’s primary purpose—that of being the major component of
Probability
’s security system. It made perfect sense that you couldn’t put this much wealth in
one place without a security system to rival that of the Heaven Embassy in Hell. The
passengers were connected to all this safety by individual 60GHz mobile transceivers
in the shape of a phone. A phone with GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer, compass, proximity
and vital statistics sensors. A phone, without which we couldn’t move around the ship,
eat, sleep, or gamble. Take every electronic spec you’ve ever heard of or imagined,
add ten years of technology, then stuff it into a device barely bigger than a credit
card. And that’s how you stay safe, enjoy, and navigate
Probability
.

My mother, who had to relearn the television remote every single day of her life,
would surely love it.

A man behind a gold desk named Corwin, who was a dead ringer for Hugh Grant—the hair,
the teeth, the accent—did a quick facial recognition and fingerprint scan on me, then
waved a V2 in front of my nose. “You understand this replaces your personal electronic
devices.”

“Yes.” I knew that. Guests were warned well in advance that the ship’s system wouldn’t
recognize any signal not connected to
Probability
’s central processor.

“You can’t lose it.” He passed it to me.

“I won’t.” It weighed two cotton balls.

“If you lose it,” he said, “you’ll have to swim home. And in your condition, I wouldn’t
recommend it.”

Jessica hid a yawn.

Hugh Grant passed me a leather-bound encyclopedia. Gold stamped on the cover:
The Compass
. The pages were gold-leaf edged. “It’s a passenger directory,” Hugh said. “Inside
you’ll find information about the ship and short dossiers on your fellow shipmates.”

Short? The book weighed ten pounds.

Jessica made a big show of looking at her watch.

“Does it tell me how to get to my room?”

“Press the map on V2, Madame.”

I pressed; the phone pointed.

“Your concierge will arrive momentarily to escort you,” Corwin said.

“I’ve got this, Corwin,” Jess said.

“No, I’ve got this.” I’d had about enough of her. Just then, the computer in my hand
buzzed. The screen said I was getting a call from the Bianca Casimiro Sanders Suite.

“So, your thumb,” Jessica said. “You answer the call with your thumb.”

I pressed my thumb against the sensor.

“It’s me.” My partner, Fantasy. “Do you know what I’ve been doing for two solid hours?
Getting your mother and Anderson Cooper in this room. You’d better get your pregnant
self up here before I jump off this boat.”

“It’s a ship,” I said. “You call it a ship.”

“You’re going to need what I call a lifejacket if you don’t get here and take care
of your mother and Anderson Cooper.”

“I’m on my way.”

* * *

Probability’s
transportation system, Zoom, consisted of individual spaceship capsules that seated
six and ran on a suspended oval track around the perimeter of Deck Three. Just above
the water line. Think Disney monorail, but private, with plush carpet, chocolate brown
leather seats, and Ultra HD 4K televisions displaying
Probability
amenities. Of which there were many, including Zoom, which felt like flying. If my
mother didn’t pass out on this, I’d be surprised. Of more concern to me, at the moment,
was how Anderson Cooper fared, because that was a stowaway smuggling situation.

Zoom stopped and I stepped off. A red dot popped up on V2, with a corresponding red
dot blinking above one of five glass-door elevators in front of me. I scanned V2 against
the elevator control panel, the doors opened, and I stepped into the casino. Not the
actual casino—the back wall of the elevator was an LED screen panning the casino on
Deck Eight that would open at seven tonight. This was my first peek and
Probability’s
casino was spectacular.

The promenade featured larger-than-life ice sculptures; I saw Neptune, Captain Jack
Sparrow, and either one of the Weeki Wachee Springs mermaids or Morticia Addams. I
couldn’t tell. Along the west wall were table games: poker, blackjack, roulette, craps,
and baccarat. The east wall held a massive glass bar and plenty of luxurious lounging,
the color scheme throughout was navy and silver, waterfall prism lights floated and
twinkled above everything. The best part was in front of the bar. Back to back in
two rows of twenty-five were the stars of the show—
Probability
’s slot machines—Knot On Your Life—one with (Bianca’s) my name on it.

I studied V2, wondering how to ask for a casino pit stop; might as well (avoid my
mother) check it out on my way to the suite. I love casinos. But before I could talk
myself into it or out of it, the elevator doors opened and spilled me out on Deck
Seven. So I took the path I was destined for: Suite 704.

The casino wasn’t going anywhere.

I had a whole week.

With my mother.

Standing at the door, I had no idea how to get in. I shook V2 trying to figure it
out, but before I did I heard gear clicks and bolt slides. It opened.