the table. "Hand sanitizer, anyone?"
"Madame?" Darko stood above me, pencil poised midair.
I shivered as a waiter bounded past our table, stirring up a cyclone of cool air that chilled the back of my neck. "Fruit cup," I said, as a dozen more waiters converged into the aisle, to-ing and fro-ing like Olympic relay racers.
Darko clicked his heels. "I come back soon to take your entree orders."
"Enjoy the peace and quiet while you can," Jonathan Pond advised me from across the table. "Wait until you see what happens when they get really busy."
"Spoken like a veteran cruiser," I said, smiling. "How many trips does this make for you?" He looked like an aging computer geek in desperate need of a makeover -- bad haircut with a fierce part down the middle, black-framed eyeglasses held together with a wad of duct tape at the bridge, round shoulders, and white Oxford shirt buttoned all the way to his Adam's apple. All he needed was a pocket protector crammed with leaky pens and number two pencils. The only feature about him that didn't scream Stereotype was the plaster cast and blue sling shackling his right arm.
"Actually, this is my first cruise," he replied, "but if I'm sitting here, something's bound to go wrong. It goes with the territory these days. I'm cursed."
Oh, my God! A kindred spirit! I nodded sympathy, feeling an instant bond with Jonathan Pond. "I know exactly what you mean. I've felt that way ever since I started this new job of mine."
From behind his Coke bottle lenses, he fixed me with a somber look. "I wasn't being flip. I really am cursed."
The three Vikings exchanged curious looks with each other before breaking out in disbelieving smiles. Margi regarded Jonathan's cast with the kind of lust dieters direct at double chocolate cake with extra frosting. "Excuse me, I hope you don't mind my asking, but how long have you been wearing that cast?"
Jonathan wiggled the fingers poking out the end. "Three weeks."
Duty hardened Margi's gaze. "Have you sanitized it yet? My clinic recommends weekly scourings with a nonabrasive cleaner. I have some with me; would you like to borrow it? It smells a little like lemon-scented hog manure, but it does a dandy job of getting rid of those nasty germs."
Margi's fanaticism in her battle against common household germs had earned her the nickname "Immaculate Margi." Her sister was even worse. We called her "Lysol Linda."
"How did you hurt your arm?" I leaped in before Jonathan could crush Margi's feelings by saying he'd rather be devoured by germs than smell like a pig.
He twisted his mouth self-consciously. "A surfing accident."
"You surf?" Wow. He sure didn't fit my image of your average surfer.
Nils's interest in Jonathan Pond escalated tenfold. "The three of us, we would like to learn this sport." He slapped his chest before nodding toward Gjurd and Ansgar. "The conditions in the fjords are not so good, not like in your Hawaiian Islands. Where do you do your surfing?"
"Mostly in my dining room," Jonathan said. "That's where the computer is set up." He paused to reconsider. "Where it used to be set up...before the accident. I was surfing the net when a pickup truck hit the house. Lost its brakes and plowed through the wall at sixty miles an hour. I'm lucky I escaped with only a broken arm. You should see what it did to my computer; it was really gruesome. I have a photo. You want to see?"
"That's okay," I said, as he started reaching for his wallet.
He stayed his hand. "Are you sure? I have pictures before the fire and after."
"Fire?"
"Yeah. The house burned down the next morning. Totally unrelated to the accident. Electrical short or something. Went up like a matchstick."
I stared at him in shock. "Was anyone hurt?"
"No one was home when it happened." He exhaled a painful sigh and with downcast eyes explained, "My wife left me last summer. Ran off with someone in her gourmet-cooking class. But who could blame her? Beth liked nice things. French copper cookware, Henckel cutlery -- everything I couldn't afford to buy her anymore, even at online discount prices. I give her credit for sticking around as long as she did, after they outsourced my job to India. Beth is a real dish. I couldn't expect her to wait around forever while our finances improved. Anyone who's ever been unemployed knows that sending out resumes to potential employers and finding the right job can take months, sometimes years."
"How