was, and after thanking the last eerily compliant Earth Warden and shaking hands, he steered me in the direction of the only open restaurant.
"I'm not hungry!" I protested. He raised his eyebrows. "I can't eat now. I've got work to do.
Besides, I ate at the buffet when we had the meeting."
"You ate a turkey sandwich. Before you dumped all your energy into the attempt to control the storm."
David had a point - I'd burned profligate amounts of power, all day long, and now that I thought about it, my muscles had that oddly shaky feeling that meant I was about to crash. My head hurt, too.
I tried rejecting the whole problem again, but David knew when to press, and before I knew it, we were taking the big, sweeping gallery stairs down to the restaurant. It was called Le Fleur D'Or, and it was one of the smaller eating places on the ship - kind of an intimate date-type restaurant, with lots of dark woods and plush carpeting.
The hastily printed menu featured sandwiches, which I figured wasn't the usual fare. The place (and the staff) looked more used to handling lobster and exotic salads than BLTs.
They couldn't resist foo-fooing them up by cutting crusts off the bread and making little triangles, but a sandwich is still a sandwich, even if it's on challah bread. I think I ate a dozen, making sounds that probably would have been more appropriate in bed than at the table.
David didn't need to eat - Djinn don't - but they like to eat, to take advantage of all the human senses they assume in human form. So he had some kind of pasta thing and a glass of red wine. Could Djinn get drunk? I'd never really considered the question before. I tried to imagine David intoxicated; he'd probably be a sweet, sloppy drunk, not a mean one, I thought. He'd be throwing his arms around Lewis and mumbling about how much he loved the guy in no time.
Well, maybe not, but it was an intriguing fantasy.
"Thanks," I said, pushing back from the crumb-dusted plate and swigging half of my iced tea in convulsive gulps. "I didn't know I was that bad off."
"You've got limits," he said. "You should learn to pay attention to them occasionally."
"Hey, that's not fair. I see the blur as I blow past them." He came around, pulled my chair back, and handed me up to my feet in a courtly Old World gesture, very appropriate to this hushed, romantic restaurant with its subdued violin music. He combed his fingers through my curly hair in a slow, gentle gesture that left it straight and shining in the wake of his touch. "I was thinking more of actually staying within them."
"Funny. So where do we start with the rich folks?"
David turned to the waiter still hovering near the table, eager for any chance to break out of his boredom. "Do you deliver room service?"
"No, sir, the cabin stewards do that."
"Do they ever tell you about the difficult passengers?" That got a big fat silence. I could imagine that passenger gossip was one of those major disciplinary no-no things.
"We won't say who it came from," I promised, and gestured to David, rubbing my fingers together. He reached in the back pocket of his pants, pulled out a wallet, and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, which he placed on the table as a tip.
The waiter's eyes widened. "Cabin seventeen in first class," he said. "If you're looking for the biggest jerk."
"That's what I'm talking about. Mr. Prince?"
David offered me his arm in another of those dashingly gallant gestures. "Mrs. Prince," he said. "Cabin seventeen it is."
Cabin seventeen was located only a few doors down from my own spacious digs. As we headed in that direction, I saw Aldonza, the cabin stewardess, closing the door to room 22. She had a tray of used dishes balanced in her hands. I waved. She gave me a professional, polished smile in return, as impartial as a Swiss banker.
"Aldonza," I said, "can I ask you a question?"
"Yes, miss," she said, and tried not to stare at David too openly. "Of course." She was carrying about twenty pounds on that tray, and she was a slight little thing. As I glanced at David, I saw he'd already reached the same conclusion. He reached out and took the tray from her, despite her shocked gasp.
"To the restaurant?" he asked. She gave him a stunned nod.
"But, sir, you can't - "
He