Margi Swanson. This was Margi's first trip with us. She worked part-time as an RN at the medical clinic in Windsor City, but she said she was reaching the age where she needed to start spending some of the money she'd spent a lifetime earning. She'd recently lost seventy-five pounds on the "Eat Everything in Sight and Still Lose Weight" diet, so as a reward to herself, she'd signed up for the cruise.
"Where'd you find a balloon?" Lucille asked suspiciously. She was wearing her favorite piece of jewelry pinned to her sweater today -- a quarter-size campaign button with her deceased husband's cigar-smoking face stamped on it. Her good friends, the Teigs and Stolees, had surprised her with matching earrings for her birthday. I guessed next would come coffee mugs and calendars. In today's marketplace, the possibilities were endless.
"It's not actually a real balloon," Margi said in a stage whisper. "I'm using a condom."
Gasps. Wheezing. Choking.
"What size?" asked Nana.
"Jumbo. It blows up to the size of a beach ball."
Nana's eyes lit up. "You got any more?"
"Plenty. I stocked up at the clinic. If rampant hanky-panky breaks out aboard ship, I can hand them out to the masses."
Suppressing a grin, I turned toward Nana. "Why do you need condoms? George isn't even here."
"Them jumbos are hard to find, dear. I'm stock-pilin'."
Nana's boyfriend, George Farkas, Windsor City's only resident with both a prosthetic leg and hardware the size of a SCUD missile, had planned on cruising with us, but he'd come down with a sudden case of shingles and been forced to cancel. His doctor didn't know what had triggered the episode, but there was mention of stress. I figured the thought of being the focus of Nana's romantic notions for ten days had finally gotten to him. I mean, he'd barely escaped with his life in Italy, where the beds had been stationary -- he'd probably been plagued by nightmares about what could happen on the high seas. No wonder he'd gotten stressed.
"Did anyone find a rock?" asked Osmond as he adjusted one of his double hearing aids.
"I did," said Bernice, pulling it out of her Aloha Princess tote. "In the spa. There was a whole bunch in one of the rooms I toured, so I borrowed one."
A cocktail waitress with a tray of tall, icy beverages skirted around us, offering free drinks to the people camped before the dollar slots.
"Which way is the spa?" asked Lucille.
"That way," said Bernice, pointing right.
"That way," said Dick Teig, pointing left.
"Three decks up," attested Alice.
"One deck down," corrected Margi.
Uff da. What was happening here? Iowans never got lost. Ever. Since the beginning of time, no Iowan had even taken a wrong turn! The fact that no one knew how to get anywhere revealed an incredible phenomenon: Everyone's natural directional system apparently stopped functioning near large bodies of water. Either that, or the new souped-up metal detectors at the Des Moines airport had caused the first incidence of group dementia ever recorded.
"Show of hands," Osmond shouted. When there was a vote to be taken, eighty-eight-year-old Osmond always did the honors. "How many of you found a paper clip?" All hands went up. "A map without advertising?" Five hands went up. "An eraser?" Nine hands went up.
"Mine's attached to a number two pencil," confessed Margi. "That won't get me disqualified, will it?"
Ding ding ding ding ding.
Seated on a high stool before a shiny one-armed bandit behind us, Grace Stolee let out a scream and pointed to the circular white light atop her machine. If the dings and flashing indicated a winning jackpot, Grace had just hit it big.
"Don't move!" instructed her husband as he leaped off an adjacent stool and aimed his camcorder at her. "This is Grace winning a big jackpot aboard the Aloha Princess." He shot a close-up of the coins pouring into her tray. "Quarters." He panned higher. "Flashing light." Then lower. "Three winning sevens." Dick Stolee kind of had a thing for stating the obvious.
"What's the payout, Grace?" he asked, zeroing in on the payoff chart below the window.
Osmond Chelsvig abandoned the group to film Dick Stolee filming Grace. Alice Tjarks dug her camcorder out of her tote and positioned herself to film Osmond, filming Dick, filming Grace. What was it with these guys and the infinity shots?
Grace stabbed her finger at the payoff chart. "Three sevens, three quarters, that's --" She screamed again. "TWENTY THOUSAND QUARTERS!"
"How much is that in real money?" asked Dick Teig.
While the majority of the group hurried