Releasing a long, low sigh, I thought maybe I should pray. I’d been too frantically active the past few days to even think about praying. Now that I was lying still in the comfort of this cocoon, being lulled by the gentle sway, my mind played with some of the lines Joanne had read to me. I remembered something about “rushing around like some monster loose in God’s beautiful world” and how “you shouted past my deafness.”
Have You been shouting to me? I asked in an inaudible prayer.
The answer was apparently “no,” because only silence prevailed in our stateroom. For a long time I lay still, barely breathing, only thinking.
At last my heart whispered, I won’t run around like a monster anymore. I’ll control my temper and stop being so full of anxiety about everything, okay?
I knew it wasn’t a confession comparable to Augustine’s, but it was all I had at the moment. At least it was a start. Apparently that was enough to calm my mind, for I fell asleep.
Joanne was up early. I know she was trying to tiptoe around, but it’s hard to open a sliding glass door quietly.
“What time is it?” I muttered without opening my eyes.
“Seven o’clock here. Ten o’clock by my head.”
“Are we docked yet?” The motion of the boat seemed to have stopped, or else I’d become used to it.
“Yes, we’re in Mexico. You should come see this.” Joanne had wrapped up in one of the long terry cloth robes that were hanging in the closet when we arrived. She stood out on our small balcony, and the cool air from the new day filled our room. The faint scent of burning trash came in along with the air.
I grabbed the other thick robe and joined my early bird sis on the balcony. Variegated panels separated our balcony from the ones on either side, but we could hear our neighbors on the right side. It sounded as if they were moving their patio chairs around.
On the deck underneath us, the covered lifeboats were lined up and secured in place. Far below the lifeboats was the dark gray water of the Port of Ensenada. The day had not been roused for very long from its early December snooze, and though fully risen, the sun seemed to shine on us with the same grogginess I felt.
A faint haze floated in the air as Joanne and I leaned against the railing and studied the panorama before us. Low hills rose behind the sprawling city of Ensenada. Houses dotted the hills, their adobe-colored tile roofs blending with the dusty browns of the landscape. Directly below us was a modern-looking dock area complete with an outdoor restaurant, paved walkways, and a duty-free store. Just beyond the newly developed tourist stop sprawled a soccer field void of a single blade of grass. It was more like a dirt lot that was set up to one day become a soccer field. However, from the general appearance of the town’s worn-looking structures, it seemed we were looking at a soccer field that was used regularly.
I couldn’t relate to any of this—the touristy area in the foreground, the dirt lot that served as a soccer field in the middle of my view, or the sprawling, foreign-looking jumble of buildings that made up Ensenada. But my stomach didn’t tighten at the thought of disembarking and heading out into the city on our own.
“You ready for the morning buffet?” Joanne asked, stirring me from my reverie.
“It’s so early. I was considering another half hour of sleep. We won’t be able to pick up our rental car until ten o’clock, so there’s no rush to disembark.”
“But we’re up,” Joanne said. “We might as well go to breakfast, then dress and have a little time to look around town before we pick up the rental car.”
“Don’t you mean dress and then go to breakfast?”
“No, we can go in these robes. Sandy said on the cruise she went on everyone walked around in their bathing suits and pajamas, as if they were at a big, floating slumber party.”
I had to admit the thought of sliding my feet into a pair of slippers and shuffling off to a bountiful buffet sounded decadent. “Okay, let me wash the sleepies out of my eyes first.”
“Do you think our family is the only one that says sleepies?” Joanne called after me.
“Possibly.”
“Hey, did you bring any sunscreen?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t seem that hot right now, but it might be a good idea to buy some before we take off on our trek across Baja.”
I plunged my hands under the running water in the bathroom sink and realized my stomach hadn’t lurched when Joanne brought up that we were going to drive across the desert today. That was a good sign. I wasn’t completely ready for the journey ahead, but at least I no longer was knocked sideways by the thought.
Tucking our room keys and cruise passes in our bathrobe pockets, Joanne and I trotted down the hall toward the elevators. An elderly couple, who looked as if they were dressed for a day of touring Ensenada, complete with fanny packs and bottles of water, joined us in the elevator. They wore matching dark red pants and tropical print camp shirts, and both of them had on bright yellow sun visors. I noticed they glanced sideways at Joanne and me, as if we were dressed funny in our slippers and robes.
The Port of Call Café was filled with morning people. Instead of sleeping in, half the vacationers appeared to have opted for the early buffet. Joanne and I headed for the end of the long line, and I realized people were turning around in line and looking at us.
“Joanne,” I whispered, “it looks like you and I are the only slumber party girls on board.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you see anyone else walking around in a bathrobe?”
Joanne scanned the room. “No, but that’s their loss as far as I’m concerned. We’re comfy, and they’re not. Here, have a plate. Don’t you love these big, oval-shaped plates? These jumbo platters make it easier for us to load up on food without looking like a couple of crazed foodies.”
“Crazed foodies? Why not? We already look like hospital escapees.”
“No we don’t.” Joanne reached for a slice of pineapple. “We look like two relaxed chicks on vacation. Trust me, I’ve seen hospital escapees, and we don’t come close. Can you believe all this fruit? Look at the watermelon! In the middle of winter, no less.”
For a moment Joanne reminded me of Aunt Winnie the way she skipped around topics. Her lightheartedness was catching, though, and I decided if I stayed close to her, I wouldn’t look so strange strolling around in my robe.
“What do you think this is?” Joanne reached for a slice of plump, deep orange fruit. “Papaya, maybe? Star fruit is yellow, isn’t it? This is probably a mango or maybe guava. Do you want some?”
“I’ll pass.” I held up my hand as Joanne tried to add a slice to my plate. “One tropical fruit disaster is enough for me on this cruise, thank you very much.”
“That’s right!” Joanne chuckled. “Maybe I shouldn’t get too adventuresome in trying new fruit, either. We share the same DNA, but no offense, I’m not eager to share the same maladies.”
Like a couple of discerning gourmets dressed in fluffy lab coats, we gathered samples of only the breakfast items whose ingredients we could identify with a reasonable amount of certainty. Joanne was enthusiastic about the huevos rancheros and eggs Benedict. I was more interested in the chocolate-filled croissants.
Finding an open table proved to be a challenge. We wandered around with our filled plates, watching people eat and gauging how close they were to being finished.
“People are still staring at us,” I muttered to Joanne.
“It’s not the robes,” she said. “It’s the way we’re circling like vultures.”
“Come on, let’s see if we can find any places open on the other side.” I led Joanne to several large tables by the windows where two seats were open across from each other at the end. The rest of the table was filled with vacationers.
As soon as we asked if the end seats were available, the woman nearest the open seats said, “You two were smart.” She nodded at our attire. “I wanted to wear my robe, but I thought I’d be the only one.??
?
As soon as she said it, she pressed her lips together, as if she realized she just pointed out the obvious.
Joanne laughed. “Well, now you know you wouldn’t have been alone!”
The woman laughed and pulled out a chair for me. “Are you two going to spend the day shopping, or are you going on one of the tours?”
“Actually,” Joanne said brightly, “we’ve rented a car, and I guess you could say we’re going on our own sort of tour.”
We suddenly had the attention of all the other diners at the table. It was as if Joanne whet their appetites for something oh so much more thrilling than rifling through stacks of woven Mexican blankets from a street vendor.
“Where are you going?” another woman asked.
I wondered why Joanne had been so open with our private information, but then I felt a cool breeze on my legs under the table and realized that a woman who walks around in public wearing a bathrobe has very little power to conceal any of her secrets.
After Joanne told the people at our breakfast table that we were driving to San Felipe, one of them said, “I wish we had planned something like that. Your overland trek across Baja sounds much more interesting than the tour we signed up for.”
“What tour are you going on?” I asked.
“We’re taking a bus to see La Bufadora.”
“What’s that?”
“A blowhole. According to the brochure, it’s a hollow rock formation at the coast where the incoming tides send a spray of water shooting into the air like a geyser.”
“Sounds interesting,” Joanne said.
“I’m more interested in the vendor carts that sell churros in the parking lot.”
“Those are the long donuts, right?” Joanne asked. “The ones with the cinnamon and sugar?”
“Do they dip those in chocolate?” another woman at our table asked.
“I don’t think so, but if you’re interested in a little chocolate this morning, you should go to the cake-decorating event in the main lobby,” the woman next to me volunteered.
“My sister used to want to be a pastry chef,” Joanne announced.
I gave her a pained expression. “That was a long time ago, Joanne.”
“I know, but don’t you think a cake-decorating contest sounds like fun? We need to start this day with a little zip. Our cruise didn’t exactly get off to the best start yesterday.”
But Joanne was right. Our spa treatment wasn’t stellar. Showing up for breakfast in our robes didn’t exactly enhance my sense of relaxation. We already were packed but couldn’t pick up our rental car for several hours. A cake-decorating contest might be fun.
“We could even show up at the contest in our robes,” Joanne said.
I wasn’t the only one at the breakfast table who strongly suggested we change. As soon as I swallowed my last bite of cantaloupe, Joanne and I trotted back to our room to dress for the day and join the lively bunch in the center of the downstairs lobby.
The event was set up in the same area where we had watched the guitarist last night, but the space was transformed. The plants and baby grand piano had been pushed aside to make room for three rectangular tables that formed a U shape, open to spectators who now lined the steps and railing of the sunken center arena.
Joanne and I were given poncho-style aprons along with floppy chef’s hats and instructed to take our place at number eight behind the table. We were the last two to get into position. Two round cakes awaited us on individual cake stands. The double-layer cakes already were covered with a light chocolate glaze. I formulated a plan. A nice basket-weave border around the cake’s sides would be elaborate and impressive. If time was short, perhaps I could just make an inverted scallop trim around the top.
As I was planning, a slender, lively blonde stepped up to the microphone. “Welcome, everybody. I’m Lillie, your cruise director. Is this a great way to start the day? Chocolate cake for everyone! As you can see, our teams are ready to go. Each team will have four minutes to decorate his or her cake.”
“Four minutes!” I squawked along with some of the others.
“To give the teams a little help, we’ve asked our fabulous onboard pastry chefs to serve as pastry coaches.”
Spontaneous applause burst from the gathering crowd as a row of eight official cruise chefs marched over to the tables and faced each of us with their hands behind their white chef’s coats. Their hats looked more impressive than ours, and their serious expressions made me think either this would be a lot of fun but they were trying to play along as stoics, or they were repressing their aggravation over being taken from their kitchens.
One of the female spectators burst out, “We love your éclairs!” Her friends all laughed and clapped. I noticed a bemused expression on our chef’s face, whose embroidered name on his jacket was Francois.
“First, each team must select a captain.”
Joanne turned to me. “I think that’s you, Captain Melanie.”
The cruise director didn’t allow time for discussion. She jumped right in. “Okay, captains, stand behind your first mates. First mates, hands behind your backs. Captains, slip your arms through the opening in your first mate’s arms and reach for the tube of frosting, which, by the way, is chocolate. Chocolate frosting and chocolate cake. Does that sound good to anyone?”
An approving cheer rose around us.
Clearly we were going to be part of a humorous production, as I provided the hands to do the decorating but was dependent on Joanne’s eyes and her directions to know where to apply the frosting.
“Your personal chefs will demonstrate how to decorate your cakes on the cakes in front of them. First mates, with only your words, you are to direct your captains. Captains? Ready? Begin!”
With no preparation time, I took the frosting tube in my hand and tried to see around Joanne’s floppy hat. It was pointless.
“Mel, he’s starting on the top and making the frosting kind of go back and forth in little zigzags all around the edge.”
Okay, I know how to do that.
I fumbled to find the base of the cake stand and to connect with a point of reference. My thumb mashed into the cake’s side.
“That’s okay,” Joanne coached. “Keep going. Put the tube on the edge. That’s good. Now start making those zigzags.”
I went nice and slow, but Joanne spewed commands. “He’s done with his trim. Don’t worry about finishing ours. You can come back and do the trim at the end, if there’s time. Now, with your left hand, pick up the plastic gizmo on the table and hold it steady. He’s using his to make a rose.”
I’d done roses before with the same sort of tool and thought I might be able to do this part with some ease. It was getting hard to hear Joanne’s directions over the yelling from the other teams and the cheering from the enthusiastic audience.
“Okay, that’s good enough,” Joanne said with a lot of laughing. “It almost looks like a rose. He’s going on, so put the rose in the center. No, more to the right. I mean the left. Right, the left. No over.”
“Right or left?” I yelled in her ear.
“Doesn’t matter. Just put it on the cake. He’s doing the base now. Make a long line with a space followed by a circle and then a space and another line.”
“I don’t understand. What kind of line and what kind of circle?”
“It looks like about an inch for the line. Start with a dot and then break and do a dash, then a dot and another dash. Got it?”
“One more minute to go,” cruise director Lillie announced. “And it looks like one of our chefs is calling out for help here in the final sixty seconds. Francois at station eight is decorating the base of his cake with the Morse code for SOS.”
Everyone laughed, and I realized what Joanne had been trying to describe as a dot-dash sequence. I gripped the cake stand with my left hand, turning it toward Joanne while quickly applying the pattern with my right.
“Thirty seconds,” Lillie called out.
??
?He’s writing a word on top of the cake,” Joanne said. “Move your hand away from me. That’s it. Start right there. Now write something.”
“Write what?”
“Ten, nine, eight …”
“Anything! Hurry!”
With a loop of my hand, I made a capital J.
“Three, two …”
I followed the J with an O, and completed it just as the cruise director called out “One! Time’s up! Frosting tubes down. Let’s see what kind of confectionary delights our teams have created here. Captains, you may join your first mates by coming out from behind them.”
Stepping next to Joanne, I got a good look at our joint creation.
“That’s pathetic!” I moaned.
“No, it’s not,” Joanne protested. “Well, except maybe for the rose. And you didn’t finish the top border. But you spelled my name right.”
Energetic Lillie held up the cake created by team one. The design on the chef’s cake was several perfectly straight lines across the top. The contestant’s duplicate looked like a mutilated tic-tac-toe game board.
The laughter continued around the tables. Team five’s cake was dubbed the “moon cake” because of all the places the captain had inserted the tip of the frosting tube while trying to find a place to start.
“Look at all those craters!” Lillie said.
The team next to us had spent most of the time cracking up and yelling at each other and laughing some more. Their fun was reflected in their cake, which turned out to be a squiggly-giggly mess, and nothing at all like their chef’s elegantly decorated cake.
“Oh, my!” Lillie exclaimed when she stepped over to us with the microphone. “Look at this work of art! It actually resembles the chef’s cake. I think we may have a winning team here. What are your names?”
She held the microphone in front of me. “Melanie,” I said. My voice seemed to explode in a booming echo.
“Joanne,” my sister said as the mike was held up to her. “That’s my name on the cake. Jo.”