Fake It Until You Make It

Chapter 35: Saudade

"Esteemed Mrs. Mary and Victoria Smith..." Lisa read, as she picked the letter we found by the coffee table in the lounging area by the bar in the first level of our suite. "Welcome on board the Queen Victoria, we hope you enjoy your stay with us and find your accommodations suitable-"

I scoffed. "You could say that..."

The two-level first class suite was fancily decorated as a luxurious apartment. If you didn't look out the windows into the vast Atlantic Ocean outside, you wouldn't even be able to tell it was actually a cruise ship.

The Queen Victoria was high as an apartment building and walking inside it was as walking in a low-ceiling luxurious shopping mall.

As I explored our suite, walking pass the bar and the piano and around the narrow, round flight of stairs to the room above, Lisa kept reading.

"In your accommodations, you'll find your butler and concierge service-"

"Anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Vic Smith?" our butler – whom, I may add, was also British - asked as he followed the staff downstairs after leaving our bags in our room.

Lisa looked up. "No, Mr...?"

"Smith." He said, a polite smile never leaving his face.

Lisa gave me a look before smiling back at him.

"Oh," she chuckled, "what a coincidence..."

The butler, the other Smith, smiled more. "Yes, Ma'am."

"No, that would be all. Thank you."

After he and the rest of the staff had left, Lisa's smile vanished.

"That was awkward."

"Especially because he definitely knows your name is not Smith..."

"Yeah," she nodded, before looking back into the pamphlet. "But he won't say anything, they have a very good don't ask, don't tell policy from what I gathered at hiring."

I passed by the windows, and closed the curtains. Most of the passengers were still embarking and I didn't want to risk being seen – even though our windows viewed the sea. My paranoid mind told me some reporter could have hired a boat to follow us.

The entire room's floor was carpeted and the sofas and dinner tables had more tapestry under them. In the walls hanged some impressive artwork and the flowers in every vase in every table had nothing of fake in them.

"You didn't need to get the fanciest suite to ever fancy," I told her. "We'd be fine with one of those tiny ones, like in the Titanic." I joked. "It'd be romantic!"

"Yeah, for the rest of the trip..." Nathan said as he finished his security round on the place, "if you could refrain from making Titanic analogies, I'd appreciate it."

Nathan wasn't the only one uncomfortable by our unusual holiday idea: Eddy had stated from the start that he would not get his feet on a boat.

"It's not the boat part," he explained, "It's that it'll be on water for a week! In the middle of the Atlantic! In the middle of nowhere!"

So I told him to catch a plane in a few days and meet us in Europe with Vodka, like Lisa did with Jinu, who had no problem in letting us know his problem was indeed very much the boat part.

"It's like we, as a society, learnt nothing from Titanic." He said.

So we had Nathan and Louis, and they would have to do.

Lisa kept reading. "We also have 24-hour room service,"

"Every good hotel has that." I said.

"Bon Voyage bottle of Champagne and strawberries on embarkation."