Blame it on Rio

Marika returned and said with joy in her voice “Look what I found.” I looked up and thought she was referring to the beautiful apparition of the Martini that stood majestically on her tray. But when she bent down to place my salvation in front of me, I saw behind her the three Brazilian princesses approaching my table. Is there a word in the English language that describes a single moment when your heart goes from the depth of despair to soaring to untold heights? If there is, I do not know it, but it is what I felt right then.

The three were wearing similar dresses. Long, brightly floral, and almost touching the floor, they hugged their bodies to the hips where they flared. Carmen Miranda would have been comfortable wearing these dresses, but she would not have been as beautiful a sight as Elaine. Her dress fit her perfectly to six decimal points and her smile appeared to illuminate the room. Had I been a character in the Looney Tunes cartoons of my youth, my jaw would have dropped to the floor and my tongue rolled out of my mouth like a rug being spread before royalty.

I rose to greet them. Elaine, giving me the traditional double cheek kiss, whispered in my ear “I am so sorry we are late, my sister wanted to take photographs at the disco and she and Christina were taking forever.” This is the first time I learned of the mildly annoying genetic predisposition of Brazilian’s to photograph themselves doing virtually everything. But that day it did not matter to me at all. I was simply happy that Elaine was there and that my worst fears did not come to pass, my self-doubt unfounded.

Dinners on the Costa Pacifica often had themes to them. It added, at least in the minds of the cruise directors, to the festive nature of the voyage. That evening it was “Italian night” which seemed redundant to me on an Italian Cruise ship. I mentioned this to Elaine as we were perusing our menus and when Elaine laughed at my pyknic attempt at humor all the fear, loathing, self-doubt, introspection and worry that had characterized my day here to fore disappeared. She had, with a single chuckle, restored me.

We spent dinner talking about her day. It turns out that she had not gone on the excursion with her sister and Christina.  Elaine told me that they were all sharing the same state room and that one of her reasons for staying behind was her desire to, at least for a few hours, enjoy a little bit of personal space. The other major factor in staying behind was that Yara and Christina both had a proclivity to shop for tchotchkes in the same way a shark hunts for pray. Circling and circling until they were sure and then attacking with ferocity and eyes rolled back inside their head, acquiring objects that would fill their suitcase and after adorning their homes for short periods of time before becoming landfill.

I told her I understood. I certainly could relate to the need to be alone. While I am more gregarious than most, I am also very self-contained and need time by myself if I am to be me. And I had seen the princesses feeding frenzy in tourists’ shops. It had scared me.

I was on the verge of telling her “I wish I had known we could have had lunch” when I had a sudden attack of self-control. I thought, she wanted some alone time. Telling her you wanted to spend more time with her would put too much pressure on her and make you sound too desperate. As I exercised this remarkable feat of self-control Elaine looked at me with concern in her eyes and said “I would have called you for lunch today but I didn’t know your stateroom number.  So I couldn’t. “It was the first time Elaine showed the ability to read my mind. It would not be the last . Not that day. Not this lifetime.

At dinners end, Yara and Christina wanted to see tonight’s performance in the theatre. The crew was having a talent show and they thought this would be an enjoyable way to spend some time. Elaine gave me a look which said, “Please not that.” Taking her lead, I tried to convince them that a talent show would be awful considering the shows that we had seen had not exactly been stellar. However, the princesses were not to be deterred. We went. And, it was dreadful. I have cringed less watching horror movies. The jokes were so corny they could have been produced in Iowa. The performances so stiff that Claymation would have been more lifelike.

Taking our cue from our first night , Elaine and I spent much of the performance cracking wise.. It made us laugh. But it did not please Yara. She thought we were being disrespectful to those performing. And there is no doubt we were, but we were having fun, so we continued being smart assess. That is, until Yara told us if we could not control our comments that we should leave. Which is what we had wanted to begin with, so we left.

Our first stop was Rick’s Piano Bar which I thought amusing as one of our stops on our journey would be Casablanca. Clearly, other people shared my sense of humor as the place was packed. We moved to Rock Around The Clock lounge. There we chose a table as far away from the band as possible in the hopes that amidst the disco lights and booming sound system we could have a conversation.  Over several cocktails, caipirinhas for me and vodkarinhas for her, we talked the talk of people who do not want the conversation to end.

While we spoke for hours I can only remember one element of our conversation. We had been talking about Ilheus. She wanted to know if I had seen the statue of Jorge Amado.  Being the ignorant American I am, I asked “Who?” She then patiently explained that he was the dean of modern Brazilian writers whose books “Captains of the Sand,” “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands,” and “Garbriella, Clove and Cinnamon” were practically required reading for Brasileiros. I asked her which book I should read first, and she told me I needed to start with “Captains of the Sand.” I promised her I would read it and then asked if she had any favorite American authors. She paused only a second and said “Kurt Vonnegut. I love him.”

It was a singular moment. Kurt Vonnegut had been my favorite author since High School. Starting with “Welcome to the Monkey House” I had read every one of his books, multiple times. I loved his story telling, sense of irony and exposure of the absurd. He is one of the few authors I knew who could make me laugh aloud while reading.  Elaine telling me that Vonnegut was her favorite author told me in a single phrase morethat we shared more than a love of an author, we shared an outlook on the world and on life.

It hit me then. Like a thunderclap. I was in love.

Our conversation continued. Me, doe eyed and leaning in on every word. Hoping there might be an opportunity to kiss her but finding no suitable moment. Eventually, the band stopped playing and packed up their instruments. Our waitress appeared with our check and while polite, let us know that despite the bars name, it was closing.  I did not want the evening to end but the time had come and I offered to walk her to the room.

We held hands as we walked to the elevator and were silent as it conveyed us to her floor. When the lift stopped, we paused for a second in the vestibule and I said “I had an amazing time this evening.” She replied “me too.” For a moment there was an awkward pause that could only be filled by beginning our walk to her room or by a kiss. I chose the latter. It started out chaste and innocent but quickly turned into something else. One of those worlds shaking, knee weakening, mind destroying kisses that seem to defy time and known physics.  Where the world is forever changed for the better and you are left gasping.

I awoke mid afternoon with a dry mouth and a blazing headache.  My mind still churning away.  Did I make the correct decision in not going with Elaine and the other princesses to shore? I missed her for sure. I longed for her company in the way I always savored something new and delightful. I wanted to jump in feet first and totally immerse myself in it. While I had no problems with this aspect of my personality, I also knew that this was not always the safest course of action. Sometimes when you took a dive off a cliff into a crystal blue lagoon you found that there were rocks underneath the surface that would destroy you. I also knew from painful experience that not giving people space pushed people away instead of bringing them closer.

There were 14 days left on our journey. Take your time. There is no hurry. That sounded right. But it conflicted with everything I was feeling at the moment. Where all I wanted to do is soak in everything that is Elaine.

Conflict unresolved. I went to the gym to work through some of the dynamic tension. Hoping the physical exercise would release emotional pressure. It did not. Have you ever tried running on a tread mill on a rocking ship? Your foot placement is completely thrown off. Sometimes your feet hit the belt too soon or when you expect to find firm footing you find none. The result is the same. You are constantly off balance. And so it was with me in the gym. I never quite caught my balance on Elaine.

Part of that might have been my choice of music. I stupidly picked Adele’s 21 to power my workout.

Listening to Lovesong:

Whenever  alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again

Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again

And One and Only;

You’ve been on my mind
I grow fonder every day
Lose myself in time
Just thinking of your face
God only knows why it’s taken me
So long to let my doubts go
You’re the only one that I want

I don’t know why I’m scared
I’ve been here before
Every feeling, every word
I’ve imagined it all
You’ll never know if you never try
To forget your past and simply be mine

I dare you to let me be your, your one and only
I promise I’m worthy
To hold in your arms
So come on and give me the chance
To prove I am the one who can walk that mile
Until the end starts

If I’ve been on your mind
You hang on every word I say
Lose yourself in time
At the mention of my name
Will I ever know how it feels to hold you close
And have you tell me
Whichever road I choose, you’ll go?

I don’t know why I’m…

Not the wisest choice in music. It kept me as unbalanced as the ships rocking had on the treadmill. But I managed to finish an hour-long workout and returned to the rooms with few of my demons exorcised.

I prepared for dinner that evening with great care. The shower was extra-long. Shaving more methodical and closer. The selection of clothing was designed to put my best foot forward from the perfectly pressed khaki’s to impeccable navy blue b to the crisp French blue shirt and immaculately polished loafers. I knew that I would not look “cool”, whatever that meant these days, but I would the best I could for what I was. A middle-aged man looking to find romance one more time in his life.

When I finished dressing, I looked at my watch. I must have been anxious to get to dinner because they would not be opening the doors to the dining room for another hour. To kill time, I went to the Grand Bar Rhapsody on Deck 4. Pretending that I was a sophisticate from a Somerset Maugham novel or some Bond movie I ordered a vodka Martini. While I waited for the bartender to fill my order I turned to the stage.  The Brazilian duo of the bald man and tall woman with long dark hair were singing soft Brazilian songs that I had never heard but thought lovely and soothing. To my right were a group of over served Germans who were speaking too loudly in general but specifically because there were artists performing. I made a note to myself to avoid places where German tourists congregate and happily turned to my Martini for succor. It provided none. The vodka was watery and was half vermouth. Even the olives were desiccated.

I turned my attention to the room. I see the older Italian woman with the bright dyed red fauxhawk mullet styled hair. She is dressed in a very low-cut silver sequined gown and is attached to an incredibly young man who is dressed in a dark suit with matching tie. I have never seen a gigolo before. I mostly have thought of them as urban legend instead of as fact. I am fascinated by their interactions. She coo’s at him and feeds him little treats from the bowl of nuts sitting at their table.  His response is obsequious and pet like and I wonder, out of personal amusement, whether she keeps a Pekingese as well.

Dinner is called and I make my way to they table. I have been anticipating this moment all day and I wait at the table in eager expectation of Elaine’s company. And I wait. And I wait. And I wait. When 20 minutes had passed  I understood that all of the angst and anxiety I had been feeling all day were for nothing. I had been an idiot. My dive from the cliff had hit the unseen rocks. What I felt was not shared and that she and the other Brazilian princesses were avoiding me and avoiding dinner. I signaled our waitress Marika.  When she arrived I ask her to bring me a vodka rocks and told her that I would like to order dinner. She asked pointing to the noticeably empty seats “ Don’t you think they are coming?”

Looking at my watch I replied, “I don’t know but dinner started a while ago so I think it is unlikely.”

Sensing my sadness and embarrassment she said soothingly “Well, why don’t I bring your drink. And if they are not here by then we will put in your order.

While I waited for my liquid comfort to arrive, I allowed myself to feel humiliated. I spent the whole day thinking about this woman and clearly, she had very different thoughts about me. How could I have so badly read the situation? How could I have been so foolish to believe that this Brazilian beauty would be interested in this average joe from New York. What a schmo.

The elevator we used was in the far aft of the ship and I was far forward so I had to walk down what seemed like an endless hallway to get to my room but I was totally distracted by the kiss. What did it mean? Did she like me in the way that I hoped that she would. Was she trying to send me a message? Weren’t her lips wonderfully soft.  I was so distracted by her kiss that I overshot my stateroom and embarrassingly had to double back.

After hanging up my clothes and brushing my teeth I climbed into bed turned out the lights and opened my iPad. Normally when my brain is hyperdrive like it was after Elaines kiss, reading soothes and distracts me enough that I can slip quietly to sleep. But reading was not helping . I kept reading the same paragraph over and over again without any comprehension or recollection. My mind refused to slow down, refused to stop asking questions. What did the kiss mean…it was just a dry lipped kiss nothing more. Then why did it feel different that just a kis? Why couldn’t I get this girl out of my head? Why was I continuing to think about the brief second our lips had touched? Why am I am behaving like such a girl? Did she do this to me on purpose? Did she know how she was effecting me?

Eventually, I gave up and turned the light back on. Had I been at home I would have turned on the television and watched some show about picking, storage lockers or pawn shops until my brain was so deadened that I would fall back to sleep. But the most exciting channel on board ship, the only one where I could understand what was going on, was the one that showed the ships position and various cams on board ship. Boring program yes, but not one that held that magic combination of holding ones attention just long enough to distract while at the same time being so mindless that you could drift away. It was time for my old friend Jose Cuervo.

I had picked up a bottle going through duty free and figured that a few good pulls on the bottle would put me out as quickly as a baby who has just been given formula. I took two large pulls from the bottle and went out to my balcony to smoke a cigar.

It was warm and the sea was calm. The only sound was of the ship slicing in its way through the South Atlantic. On the horizon, a full moon was just pulling itself out of the black sea, back lightening clouds making them look ethereal.  The dark night revealed the Milky Way, The Southern Cross,and the rest of the constellations of the southern seas. A song from the distant past became an ear bug.  I couldn’t get it out of my head.  I pulled out my phone and searched through the songs until I came to the song I could barely remember and put it on speaker. Southern Cross by Crosby Stills Nash and their impeccable harmonies with the words that had been eluding me.

Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin’
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten
I have been around the world looking for that woman girl

Who knows love can endure
And you know it will
And you know it will

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from

When the music ended, I listened to the sound of the waves against the hull and let the movement of the ship and let the view of the galaxy envelope me. How many worlds was I looking at? How many souls staring at the night sky thinking of the endless permutations of the universe. Did love exist everywhere in the universe or was it just a human perversion?

I thought of Elaine. I know what I thought I felt. But it got complicated from there. That unique space where a solution creates a problem. It was confounding. I remembered what a teacher had taught me long ago. The best way to solve a problem was to break it down into parts.  Then solve the parts you can and hope that will resolve the riddles of the parts you did not understand.

I started with the obvious, Elaine was beautiful. She looked as if she belonged in a Paul Gaugin painting. She had long thick black hair and brown skin. She had curves where a woman should have curves. I thought about her smile which she seemed eager to share and was luminous. I thought about the form fitting dress that she was wearing that night and the swell of her breast…how round and firm they looked and how they seemed to fit her body perfectly. I wondered, not for the first time what it would be like to see them and hold them. I thought of her ass…what had my cousin in Sao Paolo called it…. a bunda. It was shapely and round and was accentuated by her wasp waist. I pondered what it would be like to hold her close our bodies melded ….

Clearly, I was attracted to her. And I knew she was to me. Not because of anything that she said but 1000 little things like a soft touch to the hand or arm. A glance. Conversations punctuated by the excitement of sharing personal stories and intimacies.

But was this just the overexcited imaginations of a lonely middle age man on vacations? Did I see what I wanted to see, a beautiful intelligent woman falling in love with me. Or was it a mirage that would disappear the minute I left the ship.

It became an endless thought loop. Swirling, whilrling and reversing itself. Conclusions always just an inch away but never closer.

To break the cycle I tried reading again. While I could comprehend full sentences, the words held no interest to me.

I tried another shot of tequila. All it did was remind me of something a Customs and Border Patrol Officer had once told my father when he brought a bottle of tequila back from Mexico. “Son, that stuff will make you see double and feel single.”

I sampled the extra large Toblerone bar I had stashed. I hoped the sugar high and the attendant insulin infusion would send me headlong into the land of nod.

But sleep remained elusive. For a long time I just  lay there in the dark rock , impervious to the rocking of the ship and gave in to the invetible thoughts about Elaine. Just before dawn as the sky was turning from black to gray I fell asleep.

We were already docked in Maceio when I awoke the next morning. Stupidly, I had forgotten to close the curtains completely to my room and the bright tropical sunlight had flooded the room. It was still early, just a little bit after 8am, and I tried to fall back asleep but it was as elusive as it was the night before.  This was frustrating because I had nothing to do that day, save writing, as I had decided not to take any tour that day. Maceio from its description in the guide book had seemed like a resort town with beautiful beaches and little else. While I love the beach, I had not fully recovered from my sunburn as of yet and to pay money not to get any sun just didn’t make an awful lot of sense to me.

Elaine had invited me to go out and tour the city with her, Yarra and Christina but I had declined. I had told them that I had come on board the ship to relax and to write and here to for I had done too much relaxing and not enough writing. So I told them I was going to write today. What I didn’t say was that I wanted to spend the day with them, to be close to Elaine, but I didn’t want to impose on their good nature. I didn’t want to outlive my welcome.

It was a stupid move because I woke up wanting to spend time with Elaine.

Unable to sleep anymore I threw on a pair of shorts, a t shirt and a pair of flip flops and walked up the flight of stairs to deck 9 and the breakfast buffet.  The place was going full throttle as my shipmates were try to throw down breakfast before they left on their various tours. I was lucky enough to get in line behind an elderly German couple who had decided the purpose of the buffet was to try as many of the offerings as possible. This required contemplation, dialog and conversation and very little regard for the line that was growing behind them. Finally, when they have paused for what seemed to be five minutes in front of the pork product area, I said “Geburstag” which means birthday in German as I couldn’t remember the word for excuse me and hoped that mentioning birthday would keep them from being too angry with me as I cut in front of them.

I found a place at a table that was along one of the two main aisles of the restaurant. I hoped that I might see Elaine and cajole her into having a cup of coffee with me. It wasn’t to be. I saw a lot of German Tourists, talking to loudly and wearing socks with their sandals but no Elaine. I saw the cordovan headed woman whose hairstyle was a crossbreed between a French braid and a mullet. She was still looking for husband number 6 so I quickly looked away. Still no Elaine. I saw a group of French tourists, dressed mostly in white with their sweaters perfectly draped on their shoulders but not Elaine.

Eventually I gave up and after stopping at the bar for a half dozen bottles of water I went back to my stateroom and began to write. I spent the morning at the keyboard. The words came easily for a while and it was a simple task to get lost in the story and the words. Which is why I was not that surprised when I looked at my watch and saw that it was already late morning but the minute I stopped typing the lack of sleep caught up with me. So even thought my work was going well the call from pillow was like the Siren’s call to ancient sailors. I didn’t care what the consequences I needed to reach that pillow.

Remarkably, though sleeping did not come easily. When I closed my eyes, I saw Elaine. I thought of her soft voice and sparkling eyes. I conjured conversations that we had the night before and was delighted to remember her irreverent sense of humor. I recalled our chaste kiss in the elevator and wondered whether she had been as struck by as I had been.  And, I was struck by my stupidity. What an idiot I had been not to go along with them today. I rationalized it by saying I had to write. I did and I wanted to because that was one of things that I hope to accomplish on this trip but for some reason spending time with Elaine seemed more important than my writing just then.

I tried to convince myself that this was really the right way to get to know Elaine. That giving her space and time to miss me was a good thing. To give her different experiences that we could share at dinner would insure our conversations never lingered. But I knew that as true as some of those justifications might have been that the bigger truth was that I had made a mistake and should have gone with Elaine that day.

When sleep came, it was fitful.

The Spa on the Costa Pacifica was called The Samsara Spa and their “hook” was that they specialized in eastern treatments. I had been curious about their Ayurvedic rituals.  Not because I thought that the east, especially India had a unique take on spirituality, but I have found over time that opening myself up to new experiences allowed me to understand myself before. Besides, I love the word ritual. It makes me think that there is something deeper to the experience than just a massage or a facial.  And besides, I thought to myself aren’t birthday’s all about rituals.

I had chosen a ritual called “Shirodara” The pamphlet they had handed me at the front stated:

“Shiro means “head” and dhara means “pouring of oil.” The result is a purely enchanting experience. This treatment is guaranteed to relieve the stresses of daily life and reenergize your vital energies. A flow of warm oil is directed onto the third eye, to induce the Alpha state of deep relaxation, integrate brain function, and create brain wave coherence. This is followed by luxurious eastern massage techniques on the scalp, which focuses on the meridian lines and the crown chakra, bringing harmony and well-being to the body.”

I did not know about third eyes, Chakra and the like but I did know that it was going to be a new experience and that, to me, is  what birthdays are all about.

When I had arrived at the spa I was escorted to a small room by my “therapist.” She was petite, and Philippiana, and had her hair in a bun tied tightly to her head as if she were a school marm in the old west. The room was dimly lit and smelled faintly of aromatic spices and oil. In the middle of the room was a massage table covered in a crisp white sheet and behind it a tri-pod made of dark wood that supported a brass vase several feet above the table. Tina, my therapist, told me that I was to undress down to my underwear and lie face up on the table with the sheet covering the lower half of my body.

I did as  instructed and after Tina made a few adjustments to the table including better support for my neck, she placed a warm wrap around my eyes. She explained that it would help me relax and release any “toxins” I should have in my sinuses. She told me that in a few minutes that she would begin to slowly drip oil onto my forehead right in front of my third eye and that would resonate with my “nervous system” aligning my chakras and produce a deep relaxation. And, that while the oil dripped, she would massage my body producing further relaxation and chakra alignment. I thought of all the B movies I had seen where the Chinese water torture drove men to insanity and hoped that was not going to happen now. Too late now to change treatments I relaxed into the new experience.

Massages almost always produce deep relaxation for me. As my muscles are kneaded, tensions slips away and I often find myself asleep or in that in that state between consciousness and sleep where you mind drifts from one thought to another like a river flowing. As the oil, which was warm, viscous, and fragrant dripped onto the middle of my forehead and my shoulders and neck rubbed with skilled strong fingers my mind wandered.

I thought of the day I had just had with Elaine. We had never stopped talking and she so kind. I wondered what it be like kissing her.

The oil dripped on slowly like a metronome against my forehead but softly as if I were being stroked.

My thoughts turned to my parents. I worried about how my mother was handling the stress of caring for Pops alone, but I let it go as there was nothing I could do. I felt concern for my father. He has been so sick and pondered how long he would allow the dialysis to go on and when he would let himself go but let that go because I could do nothing to help him now and I was living an adventure he would surely love me savoring for him.

My mind drifted back to Elaine. I hoped she was having some of the same feelings I was having. I have never been good at picking up on those signals. The first woman to whom I had made love had said said to me as I was taking her pants  off “It is about fucking time.”

The oil dripped on but I was less conscious of it now and it had become like mantra, a whisper in the background of my awareness.

I thought about my birthday. No one knew it was my birthday on board. The captain had sent me a card but I think it was really a computer. Did I want to make a big deal of it? Did I want to mention it or make a big deal of it. The decision like all good decisions came to me easily. I would not make a big deal of it, but I would not ignore it either. I would order a bottle of champagne and ask them to toast to my birthday but make it like it was just an excuse to have a little more fun.

Images of my past birthdays came into my mind. Chocolate cakes with Vanilla icing.  Mom always cooking my favorite meal. Left over birthday cake for breakfast. Celebrating the night before…the jewish tradition of the day beginning the night before…thinking it was great way to begin “your day.”

The oil was dripping more slowly now a signal that the session was coming to a close. I took a deep breath and exhaled as if a sigh.

I thought of the evening before. The night I met Elaine. If I had been at home, we would have been celebrating my birthday then. I would be opening whatever gifts I had…Was Elaine my gift this birthday…She appeared on my birthday a wish as certain as I had blown out the candles….But were the stirrings that I felt, felt by her as well or is this some fantasy a lonely man on a long cruise makes up for himself….

My therapist said “Mr. Paul, did you enjoy your session.”

“Yes, very much. It was….enlightening.”

I arrived at dinner as early as I had the night before. Sitting at the bar, waiting for the dining room to open, I watched the Germans smoke and get drunk. The wait and the crowd gave me the space to ponder the existential question of why people where socks with sandals.

My plan was to get to dinner so I could surreptitiously order a bottle of champagne before the Brazilian Princess’s arrived. Then, when we arrived, I would propose a toast to my birthday and their company.  But as Robert Burns (or was it Kiss) observed “the best laid plans of mice and men often go asunder.” First, there was no wine list at my table and then there was no Marika or anyone else around to bring it to me. When Marika finally did arrive, along with the wine list, so did Elaine, Yara and Christina.

I do not know why I decided that completely formal rules of etiquette applied here but I did as I had the night before and stood as they approached the table. They were dressed as they had been the night  before, formally in long dresses, with make-up precisely applied, and jewelry hung or draped over strategic body parts. Elaine, unsurprising look magnificent.  She glowed and I yearned. I held the chair for her and as she sat down, I asked casually “Do you like Champagne?” She replied “Of course, but you don’t have to order wine for us.”

I said excuse me but if she could bear with me for a second I would explain. I asked the other two princesses whether they liked Champagne or not and while each said they did both also said that they didn’t drink very much. I called Marika over and asked her to bring us a bottle of Veuve Cliquot a bottle of wine I enjoyed as much for the color of its label as I did the taste of the wine.

When the champagne arrived and was poured, I held my glass and said “Today is my birthday and then looking at Elaine “and I can’t think of anyone else I would rather being spending it with than you.” And then clinked glasses with each of them.

Elaine said “But you didn’t tell me it was your birthday today. Why didn’t you tell me we could have made a bigger celebration?” I told her I loved my birthday but that I was a bit reticent to mention it as it seems a little unseemly for a person my age. It was a stupid thing to say and I knew the minute that it came out of my mouth. It begged the question how old are you and that is not a question that I really felt like answering, I didn’t want Elaine to think that I was too old for her. But it was out there and Yarra asked the inevitable “How old are you…” and I thought that I could see a bit of devilish grin on her face.

I thought about lying. I know that I look younger than my years. But I also hate to lie, and it is a lousy way to start a relationship with anyone.  I told them “55.” Their silence was stunning, and I thought for a second I had made a horrible mistake being so honest with them. Elaine came to my rescue. She put her hand on my arm she said “Really, you don’t your age at all.”

“How old do I look.” I replied hoping for a mid-forties estimation. She replied “35….” Whether she was lying or not I do not know but it was certainly the right thing to say to me at that point as it made me comfortable with telling them the truth.

Dinner was wonderful as the champagne served as the social lubricant that I hoped that it would. We talked about families and trips that we had taken. We talked about Gabriel Garcia Marquez and of movies that we had seen and loved. They threatened to have the entire wait staff come and sing me happy birthday, but I flushed and begged them not to so in the end Marika just brought me two deserts and we clinked glasses and my princesses wished me a good year.

After dinner Yarra and Christina insisted that we go to the show but not before berating us over the behavior Elaine and I had exhibited the night before. They told us, in halting English and some Portuguese that I didn’t understand, that we needed to be quiet and respectful of the performers. At some during this dressing down Elaine and shared a glance and she flashed me a conspiratorial smile and had I known her even an hour longer I would have grabbed her hand.

Elaine, when we finally made to our seats in the theatre, said “Fuck them, we will do we want to do. If the performers stink, I do not mind telling them so. “ I was both surprised and delighted by her use of the invective. Surprised because Elaine appearance was that of a very proper lady and considering the language barrier you would not think that she have such a command of swearing; Delighted because I had grown up with a father who had his vocabulary considerably expanded by the his stint in the army and I had a tendency to use the same colorful language that he did. It made me realize that I could relax a little more around Elaine. It also made me know what I had just surmised about her….that she had depth and was complicated. I knew that I wanted to plumb her depths.

The show was much better than the night before. It featured a Brazilian duo. A tall, shapely woman with long dark hair and a lovely face as the vocalist and a short, round, bald man who accompanied her on the guitar.  They played a series of Brazilian standards that Elaine seemed to know the words to as she often sang along with them and occasionally they played a song I knew such as “The Girl From Ipanema” and “Brazil.” And much to Elaine’s and my surprise they were good. Not only were they good musicians but good performers managing to capture the audience with their passion for the songs they were singing.

As the night before, Yarra and Christina decided that they wanted to go back to their cabin and upload the hundreds of pictures they had taken that day. So Elaine and I went back to Rock Around The Clock to have a nightcap. The club was only slightly more crowded than the night before and we found ourselves a seat, sitting side by side on a velveteen banquet in the back of the restaurant.

We listened to the band, contemporary Brazilian music primarily Axe, talked and drank Caiparhina’s. As the conversations progressed I found myself both listening to Elaine and paying attention to my own inner dialogue….wondering when the appropriate time and place to kiss her. She was captivating and funny and smart . There were many times where I wanted to grab her hand but didn’t bound by both shyness and confusion of what the right thing to do in her culture would be. The result was that I was far more formal than I would have been. My mother might have called it, to my great embarrassment, being a real gentleman. However there were times where I could not hold back and would touch her arm or knee to make a point.

Eventually, the band stopped playing and I could see the bartenders looking at us with hope that we would get the message that they wanted to go to bed. So, reluctantly, I walked her to the elevator. We pressed the call button and stood there awkwardly not knowing how close to stand to each nor quite what to say to each other to end the evening. The elevator came and we stepped into it pressing 7 for her and 8 for me. She stood close enough to me so that I could catch the subtle fragrance of her perfume.

The elevator chimed and the door opened to deck 7. I said “I had a wonderful time tonight.”

“So did I.”

I leaned forward to kiss to bid her goodnight kiss her goodnight and was greeted with soft lips pressing against mine. The kiss did not last long but lingered just long enough to know that that there was something more to it than politeness. She smiled, stepped off the elevator, gave a little wave and walked towards her room just as the elevator door closed.

I held out my hand in introduction and said “My name is Paul.” She replied in perfect English “My name is Elaine.” I was not prepared for an English sounding name and embarrassed had to ask her to repeat her name. It took two tries before I understood her to say Elaine by which time my cheeks were glowing in embarrassment.

Her hand was soft and warm and unlike so many women who hold your hand as it were overripe fruit her grip was confidant and strong. Before I could even think about it I reached over and pulled the chair next to me away from the table and gestured for her to sit.

As I sat down, I thought “ What a lucky coincidence that this was. The only woman on the ship that I had noticed, the only woman on this voyage I had wanted to meet was now sitting next to me. I made a mental note to thank god and to remember to bring cash to the next meal to tip the Maitre D.

I wish I could tell you that I could remember every single bit of our conversation that night. That I could repeat it word for word. That each syllable is indelibly etched memory. Sadly that is not the case. I was so overjoyed to be relieved of the burden of only listening to my own thoughts, of being with people who spoke my language well, and being next to this woman who had caught my eye for days that the specifics of our conversations are lost.

What I remember is that all asked where I was from and when I told them New York they got very excited about my city. They all told me that they loved it there. Elaine mentioning that she has been there many times and had even lived there for a while studying English.

They told me that they were from Rio. And when I told them how much I had enjoyed the city a few days previous Elaine told me that you could see Rio in a day and that I needed to come back and let her be my tour guide. Attempting to flirt I said I would hold her to that, but she said “of course. It is why I said it” almost as if I had insulted her integrity. I thankfully did not know then that Brazilian custom dictates an invitation to your home when you meet someone. Regardless, for the second time that evening I felt the blood rush to my face embarrassed her taking my comment the wrong way. I swore to myself to tread more easily in the future.

At one point I asked Elaine how she had come to be on this cruise. She told me that her sister Yara had planned the trip, but she had come because her father had been very sick and she had been caring for him.  Caregiving had taken an emotional toll that she knew she needed to get away to regain her health and her spirit.  This took me back a little. Not because I didn’t understand the need to take a vacation from caregiving but because I understood all too well. It was, after all, was one of the main reasons for being on the cruise. What were the chances?

I recall the conversation was easy, that the food and service good and that all to quickly the last crumb of dessert consumed. I didn’t want the dinner to end so I told them that “I would be honored if I could buy them a drink’ feeling far more a shy teenager that the middle aged man I was. When they declined they must have seen my face drop because Elaine said to me “But we are going to show would you like to go with us?” I readily agreed and followed them into the theatre with my hands clasped behind my back like I had seen all the sophisticated European men walking the night before in a vain attempt to be far more sophisticated and polite than I normally am. I am not ashamed of thinking at the time that Elaine possessed a great “bunda.” Which at the time was the only Portuguese word I knew.

We thoroughly enjoyed the show. Not because the show was good but because it was bad. Elaine, as it turned out, had not only learned English but she had learned a few words I had not learned until I was in college and had an absolutely wicked sense of humor that corresponded to mine exactly. We spent the entire show making fun of the acts, which to be honest, was not hard to do. But our raucous behavior earned Elaine and I a reprimand from her sister and Christina who thought we were being very impolite. But Elaine kept going. I seem to recall her saying something sophisticated like marvelous like “Illegitimus non carborundum” only having to explain that it was GI Latin for “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

The problem with enjoying yourself is that time passes far too quickly.  And, far too quickly the show was over. I did not want the evening to end so I renewed my invitation for drinks. Yarra and Christina said they wanted to look at photographs but Elaine, graciously, agreed.  We found our way to the Atrium Bar on deck three,  at the bottom of the central well of the ship. There was a Brazilian duo playing. The man playing the guitar was short and rotund. The woman beautiful with a figure that would be admired by geometers with long dark hair. Their music was perfect backdrop for conversation: Brazilian standards, bossa nova, and jazz.

We asked our waitress for two Caiparinias and we began to talk. And then we talked some more. Then we talked some more. There was never a moment’s pause in the conversation. There was always something new to say. One of us would always be reminded of another story or joke or situation we had been in. It was as if we were two people who had known each other their whole lives yet had never met and had plenty to get caught up on.

As we talked, I was made more and more aware of how beautiful Elaine was. Her face was a perfect oval with high cheekbones, deep brown eyes, with a sensuous mouth that had an easy smile that was iridescent.  But it was more than physical beauty. There was an inner quality as well. I could sense a very gentle soul with inherent kindness and lurking behind a veil of shyness an imp looking for the joy and humor in life.

Several Caipirinhas later, it became evident that the bar was in the process of closing for the night.  I signaled for the check. While we were waiting for it to be brought to me Elaine asked what I was doing the following day in Salvador Bahia. I told her that I had not signed up for a tour early enough so I was going to stay on board the ship and write. She said “You don’t need a tour. Christine, Yarra and I can show you around. I have been here many times.”

As we walked to the elevator we made plans to meet the next morning. When her elevator came, I leaned forward to kiss her good night and was presented very quickly with her cheek. I smiled and told her I had a wonderful time this evening and she replied that she did too.

When the elevators doors closed I stood there a moment before I made my way to my stateroom.

The next morning Elaine and I me at the bottom of the gangway. There Costa’s crack photography staff had positioned several models wearing outfits that were supposedly authentic to the middle 19^th century in Brazil. Their white dresses hung off their shoulder and hung to their knees and were trimmed with bright floral embroidery around the neckline with a matching belt. On their heads they wore a white turban made of a fine cotton and tied in front. It was here that I first learned of the Brazilian compunction to have photographic evidence of everything. Christina and Yara insisted on having several photographs taken with the models.  first by the ship’s photographer, and then by their own cameras

The port building is Salvador Di Bahia is like every port building I had seen in Brazil. A very long narrow one story building with a high roof and a number of small shops inside where un-adventuresome tourist can buy a quick souvenir and then return to the ship. The only thing that made Salvador’s different than the others I had seen was that it was a little longer than the others and of course the “gauntlet

Immediately upon exiting the building we were besieged by street vendors who wanted to sell us something. Most hhad religious ribbons to sell. Bahia is the center of the Candomble religion, a faith that is a mixture of Catholicism and an African religion brought into the country by slaves.  Other had t-shirts than they thought we should own. Taxi drivers wanted to show us around. Fruit vendors wanted to make sure that we did not get scurvy. And they followed us around like they were paparazzi and we A list celebrities. I did my best to keep them off of the girls and myself but me telling them to get out of our way and pretending I was a pulling lineman in the NFL but seemed to have little or no effect.  It was just more chum for the shark exciting to even larger levels of salesmanship.

The good news was that the minute we cleared the port building they lost interest. Elaine explained to me that normally that they were not so bad; she had been here before, but that my luminescent skin and American accent made them think us easy marks.  She said she was hopeful that I kept careful watch over my wallet.

Our first stop was at Mercado Modelo which was just around the corner from the port. It used to be Salvador’s main market where farmers would come and sell their produce, but the growth of the city had changed that. Now it is largely used for vendors who wanted to sell trinkets and local handyworks to tourists. I had had no real interest in going here but Christina and Yara I would soon learn were Olympic class shoppers of tchotchkes and any opportunity to buy a trinket would be worthy of a stop.

The market, despite the early hour, was crowded and Elaine and I followed the girls down one aisle and then another and then they seem to disappear. Elaine asked me if I was interested in buying anything here and I said no. She then said “Let’s go. Places like this are too crazy and too crowded. I do not like places like these. Everything here is shit.” I decided two things at that moment. First, that she said the word shit better than anyone I had ever heard use that particular invective. She and I  also shared a dislike for small crowded places. However, on the way out of the market we did stop a number of stalls where some local linens were being sold. Elaine mentioned that Salvador was known for its cotton and linens and that she had bought some here her last time and she loved them. The fabrics she looked at were beautiful, simple, with rich colors and admired her taste.

As we left the market, Elaine explained to me that the city of Salvador was divided into two cities, an upper and a lower. She told me that to get to the upper city you had a number of choices, you could walk which would be arduous and take us through some of the less pleasant parts of town; you could take a taxi which would be expensive or we could take the Lacerda Elevator which is a large public elevator that take citizens and tourists alike up the cliff face to the upper city. She said that she preferred taking the elevator because it was inexpensive, ½ Real, about $.16 and didn’t take long.

We walked the short distance from the market to the elevator and stood in line. And stood, and stood some more and after five minutes or so it became apparent that the line was not moving. Elaine made some inquiries and was told that one of the two elevators was broken so it was only moving at 50% capacity. We were in the process of deciding to take a cab when the line suddenly lurched forward. Apparently they moved whole blocks of people inside the structure to make sure they didn’t get overcrowded and so when the lined moved it really moved. When it came to pay, to my embarrassment Elaine had to pay my way as I had left all my change in my room and the smallest currency I had was 50 Reals.

The elevator ride was blessedly short as it was very crowded and very warm not unlike a New York City Subway car on August day with the air conditioning on the fritz. When we walked out of the elevator building the sun had decided to reappear and the lit the town brilliantly and to me it looked like it belonged in Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.

To the right was a beautifully church like building that looked to have been built in the early 19^th century. It was the former town hall turned into a museum of the city. Ornate and white and glowed in the mid-morning sun.

To the right was a a plaza that offered up a fine view of All Saints Bay and the lower city below. The bay was a beautiful aquamarine, with a small marina for pleasure craft in the foreground, a small old fort in the middle distance and further out you could see freighters at anchor. It was beautiful and easy to see why this place had been inhabited by the Portuguese since the early part of the 16^th century.

With Elaine leading the way we headed up the street that ran parallel to the cliff. The buildings looked old, and from the colonial period.  However, as Elaine explained,  that there had been an extensive restoration project. UNESCO had named Salvador, a World Heritage Site, and considerable funds had been spent remaking history. I noticed that many of the buildings had music stores in them and asked her about it. She told me that the city had a nick name “The City of Happiness” because of a rich musical culture much of with an African flavor l as  Salvador was the center of the slave trade in Brazil.

Eventually we made our way to a large open square. Elaine explained that this was the site of pillories. Where public punishments would take place in effort to keep the slave population under control. Runaway slaves were often tortured in public or hanged here in effort demonstrate the fate of any who defied authority.  She told me that while Brazil did not abolish slavery until the later part of the 19^th century that its history with slaves was far “calmer” than in the United States. That there had not been the prejudice that we had towards people of color, but that slavery was largely seen as an economic necessity and that modern Brazil did not have the same racial tension that existed in the US.

As she explained this all to me in her very soft Brazilian accent, I realized that this was a very bright woman. Not many people in the US could give an accurate and well informed description of a city they didn’t live in. She also smiled and laughed a lot and tolerated my endless questions with good will and humor. She had been beautiful from the moment that I had met her but as we walked and talked I realized that this was a woman of substance and style wrapped in a wonderful 5’3” frame.

Off the square we bore right and made our way to the entrance Church of Sao Francisco. She told me that she didn’t believe in this religious “sheet” it was beautiful and that I should see it.  It was crowded with vendors forming another mendicant gauntlet outside the entrance Elaine put her head down and pushed through the crowd and I followed in her wake but as I got close to the door I saw a man in a wheel chair. It looked as if his body ended at his waist, yet he legs that pointed away from his body at a 90 degree angle. He held his hand out in supplication. I was completely horrified by his appearance and tried to find a loose real in my pocket to give him but before I could I was pushed into the church. I grabbed Elaine and pulled her back to the door because I wanted to share with her my horror and empathy for this poor man. She was equally aghast and could see that this woman had a heart.

Our walk to the church took us through the convent. Next to the walkways were a series of blue and white tile works that depicted different virtues. Elaine explained that these were for the common people who came to church and who could not read so they learned the values of the bible by what was depicted on tiles  While I don’t believe in many of the values of the church I thought these were wonderful because they were so practical my favorite being one that taught the virtue “of being in the middle of the road.” I wanted to take a picture and put it on a tea party website.

The church was dramatically different that the church in Ilheus. It had been simple and elegant. This church’s interior is best described as exuberant. Every surface is covered with“golden sculpted painting and woodworks.” I overheard a tour guide tell their group that this was a near perfect example of Portuguese-Brazilian Baroque Church…a golden church. I didn’t know about that, but it was imposing and beautiful in the way some houses are at Christmas when they go all out with the lights.

We left the church and walked around the town. Not really sightseeing. Not really shopping. Just walking and talking like two friends who had known each other for an exceptionally long time. She was telling me about her teenage years when the country was in the midst of a lot of political turmoil and confided with me at one point she had even been a communist. I don’t know whether she thought I would be shocked but she told me in way that suggested she thought that I would not approve. I think I surprised here when I said “ You know Winston Churchill once said That if you not a liberal when you are you have no heart….” And before I could finish she said “And if you are not a convservative when you are older then you have no brain.” I was very impressed she knew the quote.

Eventually, the heat, which was massive , the humidity which was oppressive and the strain on our feet got the better of us. The elevator lines being too long, w jumped into a cab and headed down the hill. How we came to discuss politics I cannot recall but as we drove through awful slums and she was told me of a former President who had been very rich but also very corrupt but that he kept on getting elected. I asked why and how this could happen and she said to me “We just think a fat rat will eat less than a skinny rat.” I laughed aloud at the common sense and was completely charmed. It made me want to reach out and hold her hand or have some physical contact but not knowing what the rules were in Brazil I resisted. We passed the rest of the trip frustrating her in my inability to pronounce the word Salvador.

At the market we went in search of Christina and Yara but could not find them. We consoled ourselves by having a beer at an open air café at the back of the market. Just as we ordered Christina and Yarra emerged from the end of the market and joined us. They starting speaking in Portuguese but the beer was cold and delicious and they seemed to be enjoying each other’s company so I turned off the conversation and concentrated on the stage at the end of the café. There were a group of young men and boys dressed all in white demonstrating Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that combines dance and martial arts. Graceful and athletic it is wonderful to watch especially with cold beer and a beautiful women

Eventually, they started passing the hat and one of the older boys came to our table. When I reached for some money Elaine said. “No, don’t give this son of bitches any money. It will only encourage them.” I was charmed because bitches came out beeches and it sounded so much nicer when she said things like than I did. Unfortunately, this produced a controversy between the girls. Christina and Yarra felt we should pay something especially since the guy who was passing us the hat was giving us the evil eye. Eventually Elaine relented and we through something in the hat and the guy walked away with a smirk.

We made our way back to the ship, through the same gauntlet we had passed through on our way into town and past the security at the boats entrance into the safety and blessed air-conditioning of the ship.  And there we said good bye. The day before, before I had my Brazilian princesses, I had made an appointment to spend a good part of the afternoon in the spa. It was expensive but it was my birthday and at the time I thought I would be spending it alone. So we said good bye and that we would see each other at dinner. There was no handshake. There was no kiss. Just a wave and a promise to see each other at dinner.

It was on the elevator back to my room that my mind began to churn about the time Elaine and I had spent together that day. She had been a great guide in a city that she had been in many times. I am sure that she had better things, more fun things to do, than to show me around the city. Why was she doing this. Was it a random act of kindness or perhaps she was looking at me in the same way that I was looking at her? I was so attracted to her. She was beautiful. She was sexy and if I stared it her too long certain biological processes happened almost immediately which had not happened to me in many many years. But there was a glow to her as well, I do not mean an aura, a glow. I could tell that she was kind. I could tell that she was smart. But it was something more. Something that I could not my fingerbut I knew I would try to decipher like a codebreaker

My musing and my questioning of myself went through lunch. Surprisingly, since I had been thinking of her, I almost ran into Elaine head on. She looked frustrated and a little angry and told me she was on her way to the pasta station and that her sister and Christina were sitting over on the port side if I wanted to join them. So after grabbing my lunch I walked over and tried to find them but I couldn’t spot them so I sat in a seat facing the sea and watch the sea birds skim over the water and thought of how well Elaine’t shirt had fit that day and how it had perfectly outlined the curve of her breast.

Lunch over, fantasy as yet incomplete, I decided to head to the spa.  I had not walked a 100 feet when I ran into Christina and Yara.  They asked if I had seen Elaine when I said the last I had seen her was on the other side of the ship at the pasta bar, Yara said “That bitch” and they broke away. I spent the rest of the walk thinking about what the relationship between the sisters must be like and wondering what had happened between the two of them that Elaine would flee and Yara would call her a bitch.

I also wondered if I should have told Elaine that it was my birthday and spent the rest of the walk back to my room thinking about the ways I wanted to celebrate the day.

She looks up at me as I pass by but before I can make eye contact with her I lose my situational awareness and almost bump into one of the waitresses who is carrying a tray fully loaded with drinks. Embarrassed, I slink away. Back in my room, I lay on my bed and try to nap. But for a long while all I can think of is the brunette.

My nap was deep. The rocking sensation of the boat and the excesses of the night worked me into a sleep that lasted for hours. But it was not a refreshing nap. Instead it left me groggy and feeling shaky. Normally I would not have even considered going to the gym, I felt that unwell, but the extra slices of pizza were weighing on my mind and  I didn’t want to be that cliché guy who went on a cruise and gained 15 lbs.

The gym on the Costa Pacifica is located on deck 11 as far forward as you go. While relatively small it is well equipped with weights, exercise machines, treadmills, and bikes. I chose the exercise bikes to torture myself on because I did not have the ambition for anything else. The bikes have a video monitor and for a while I tried to find a channel that might entertain me during my sweat fest but there are no English channels and my Portuguese had not improved in my sleep. My choice of entertainment consists of the Costa promotional video where they celebrate the launching of their newest vessels, (It was a lavish video with very odd elements including a contortionist in a large martini glass) or an out of date Italian exercise video. Eventually, I turn the video off and listen to Adelle and focus on the mesmerizing  waves of the South Atlantic. 50 minutes was enough to assuage my pizza guilt and after a stretch I go below to my state room.

My work out had taken me through dinner.as I planned.  For sustenance and a lack of better options I return to the Pizza Buffet and gobble my way through half a pie. Eating alone is a bore and the company awful. It also made me feel like a loser.  At least, I rationalized, it was better than eating with Diego in silence. As I get up to go I looked at the table adjacent to me and there is Diego reading a book. Clearly he had been as enthralled with our conversation as me.  I smile and wave and he sheepishly returns the gesture.

After dinner I waddle, eating a half pizza will do that to you, down to deck five again.  I ensconced myself in the Rondo where they served Viennese Pastry and coffee rationalizing that it as a tribute to my father who was born in the capital of the Hapsburg. It also had the strategic advantage of being located in the main thoroughfare on the ship. It was an excellent place to sit and watch the world go by and perhaps spy a brunette.  The pastry was not worth the calories. Demel’s should sue them for using the phase “Viennese Pastry.” .The coffee was hot and bitter enough to take the taste of awful pastry out of my mouth.  And the cognac I had a little later on certainly livened things up significantly.

But it was an absolutely fabulous place to watch the world go by and I reached a number of conclusions. At age 55 I was one of the youngest people aboard. 78% of all the women on the ship had cankles. Germans only think they hold their liquor well. Italian passengers had the best shoes and knew how to drape sweaters around their shoulders better than any other nationality. European men always walk with their hands clasped behind their backs and they don’t really walk as much as amble.

Sadly, the brunette was nowhere to be found and after a while I signed my chit and went to bed.

I awoke the next morning as we were docking in Ilheus. Laying in bed I decided that the dinner situation had to be changed. This was supposed to be a cruise for my pleasure and dinner had become something I dread instead of welcoming.  I wanted to be social. I missed the human contact. The situation would not change by itself.  I would make it happen. As a consequence, before I reported to my tour I made a detour to the service desk on deck 3 to check into how I could change my eating arrangements. I was informed by Nate, the oh so helpful, oh so happy crew member, that I had do to that with Maitre D during my dinner service that evening.  Frustrated by his cheerful inability to help me solve this situation, I was tempted to bring whip out my inner New Yorker to resolve the situation using gestures and language that don’t teach in English classes but I restrained myself.  But vowed to talk to one of the Matre D’s on my return to the ship from the tour.

The tour I had chosen was not your typical town tour where they show you the historical highlights of the town then dump you in some commercial center so the local merchants can acquire some of your hard earned Reals. Frankly, I didn’t know much about Ilheus, up until a few weeks before and I was profoundly ignorant of the place. What I knew was that Jorge Amado, the famous writer, had lived here and was to this place as Hemingway was to Key West. I also knew that the beaches were famous for their beauty and that it was the center of Cocoa production in Brazil.

I had no interest in shopping. My sunburn had put me on the disabled list for the sun so the beach was completely out. The next best option was to go on a tour of a cocoa research facility and a sloth rescue habitat that included a stop at cocoa plantation, chocolate factory with only the briefest of stops in the downtown area for souvenir shopping.

My luck continued when the placed me, the only English speaker, with a group all German tourist. Everyone was a couple and then there was me. The only good news in this from my point me and I was told by my guide that she would translating all were seeing in both English and German and of course the seat next to me would be open.

The bus took us out of town and it traveled through some of the seamier sections of Ilheus with poured concrete apartment blocks replete with satellite dishes, and laundry hanging off the sides of buildings. Only a few had air conditioners and considering the heat, which was brutal, I wondered how they managed. There were service stations, markets that were mostly open air, and bars that looked like I wouldn’t survive long should I stumbled into one. Soon enough we were on a country highway riding through low riding hills covered with deciduous trees. It was beautiful and it was easy for me to understand how the Brazilian’s had chosen the color of their flag.

It did not take long to reach the Cocoa Research facility. It was boarded by a brick wall and required the bus to pass through security and then report to a headquarters building made out of the same red brick as the wall so our guide could pay for our entry. . Eventually we made our way down a long straight road while our guide explained that the facility was actually being used for many types of research to help the uplift the economy in Ilheus. She pointed to low lying ponds that were being tended to by workers and told us they were experimenting with fish farming. Pointing to a grove of cocoa trees she said that all groves had banana trees within them explaining that they helped with the pollination.

The bus pulled into a low lying building’s parking. It was a facility created to demonstrate  the modern way in which the cocoa plant was harvested and turned into chocolate. The tour consisted of us walking down a very narrow hallway with windows that allowed us a view of workers conducting a variety of different jobs. It was not very interesting or enlightening. I already seen this segment of “How Its Made” on the Discovery Channel.  I hung back and let the words drift over my head. But at one point I made the mistake of standing just next to a display as our guide explained its contents. I was literally shoved away from the display by the Germans who seemed felt as strongly about the exhibit as they did about Poland in 1939.

I walked down to the end of the hallway to the little reception area where they were to serve us a refreshment of chocolate liquor. What I did not realize is that it also served as an opportunity for some of the more entrepreneurial of the workers to sell us some of their “homemade” and “fresh” chocolate. I was not exactly put off by their aggressiveness, I do live in NYC, but I was not in the mood to be hawked at so I walked outside where at 10AM it was already brutally hot and humid.

Eventually our guide emerged and walked us across the road to where there was a small grove Cocoa plants. They are not overwhelmingly beautiful trees but the seed in which the nibs grow are beautiful in orange and yellow and are shaped like an oblong gourd. Sadly one of our group members wearing their pre requisite sandals Germans are issued when the leave the country made the error of stepping on a fire ant hill and any further exploration of the grove was put off until the “fire” was put out.

Soon we were back on the bus and driving deeper into the reserve eventually coming to a little turn about that had a small hut next to it. As the door to our bus opened a woman emerged from the small structure to greet us. She was not alone. She had two sloths, or slow monkeys as our guide called them, wrapped around her as if she were wearing a fur. The Germans could not push past me fast enough to get to her. I think what makes sloth so attractive to humans is that their faces are white with dark patches only to accent their nose and eyes. They look like us only a little developmental off. That and the fact that thee movement is so slow it looks to be slow in slow motion is mesmerizing. I withstood the Germans as much as I could and got close enough to the woman so I could pet one of them and was quite surprised when the fur was rough…a kitten they are not.

Seeking refuge from the throngs around the sloth woman I walked down the path to their habitat only to come across a rather large tarantula crossing the path. Which of course made me think…why did the Tarantula cross the path…to get the other side. It was a beautiful creature. Black with white hairs covering its body with just a touch of red. It blended perfectly with its environment but sadly my staring at him attracted attention and I was eventually shoved out of the way by the Germans.

The sloth facility was a brick and wire enclosure. There were three slow monkeys in residence and they were hanging on the fence waiting for some of the tourists to feed them looking very much like here no evil, see no evil, hear no evil only sloths not chimps. I stood and watched their slow transverse up the fence and to where their hanging vines were arranged. They are amazing creatures to watch although their long nails that look like some sort of Klingon killing device were not that inviting. Eventually I was shoved out of the way by the Germans and sloth like made my way back to the bus stopping only to watch a parade of Carpenter ants carry bits of leaves and other flora to their mound.

The Cocoa Plantation we stopped at next was perhaps my favorite stop of the day. Not because of the tour itself where they showed us the raw beans and how they were processed before mechanization.  That was fairly boring because our guide neglected to translate into English perhaps realizing that the Germans were the big tippers of the day. I was also tired being boxed out by the Huns who didn’t seem to be able to enjoy themselves unless they had planted an elbow into someone’s body. Instead I tried to find a shady spot and just take in the scenery.

One of the things that caught my attention immediately was the plantation house. It was not large like I would have imagined but small maybe a half dozen rooms total. Made of native wood and stone it was situated under a grove of trees at the top of a small hill. Off the side was a large double tiered, covered, patio. I walked up the grassy hill and immediately saw the sense of why the house was placed where it was. Not only did it have a commanding view of the countryside, hilly with cleared pastures and groves of cocoa plants but it was strategically placed to capture a breeze. This, along with the shade trees kept the house cool even though it was uncomfortably warm out.

On the patio they had arranged some refreshments. I was unsure of the food and the drink. I had not seen it prepared and I had been told legions of stories before the trip of folks who sampled food and spent the remainder popping Imodium and keeping near bathrooms. I did not need that kind of a fate. But the food looked so good. All types of local confections and cakes so eventually I compromised with myself and only had a small piece of cake that was very good and a little coffee thinking that the heat would kill any of the bacteria that were threatening to take my colon hostage. The Germans grunted with pleasure as they had piece after piece of cake and chugged the fruit juices placed out for them. In effort to ignore them, I imagined that I was in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel and watched the world turn very slowly.

Our last stop of the day was the town of Ilheus itself. The guide told us that we were stopping there to see the historic church and the town that Jorge Amada had made famous. I suspected that while there might be a sliver of truth in what she said my working theory was this was the point in the tour where we were supposed to provide direct aide to the town by transplanting the Reals form our wallets into their store’s coffers.

The truth was somewhere in between. The church, Sao Jorge de Ilheus, is a beautifully preserved 17^th century church painted in ecru with white accents. It is perfectly framed by the flawless blue sky. It was cool inside so I sat in one of the pews and stared at the frescos that were beautifully maintained and watched as many came to pray and others to take photographs. After a while they hard wood of the pews got the better of me and I decided to stroll through the town.

At one café, Vesuvio, they had a life like statue of Jorge Amado sitting at a table. I guess that this was Vesuvio one of the bars that is featured in his novel Gabriella Clove and Cinnamon. I resisted the temptation to take a photograph. I also resisted the street vendors who were only mildly aggressive in getting my attention. The stores held little interest to me as I had all that I really needed and saw no need for a souvenir from this place.  I made my way back to the bus and watched the world go by while the Germans finished distributing their Euro’s to the shopkeepers of Ilheus.

By the time we got back to the ship it was late afternoon. I was tired thirsty and hot and wanted nothing more than to collapse on my bed. Which I did and  instantly fell asleep. I awoke with a start a little panicked because I had thought that I had missed my opportunity to change my seating at dinner. It was just 6 so I was nearly the first person into the seating when they opened the door.

The Maitre Di was a very stocky Italian with salt and pepper hair who really looked the part. Not only was his Tuxedo immaculately pressed and tailored but the half glasses he wore at the end of his nose gave him the appearance of kindness and authority at the same time. I explained to him my problem. That I didn’t want to eat at the early dinner that I was too young for that seating and that my first dinner had been a disaster because there was no one in which to speak English…couldn’t he please place me in later seating and with someone who even spoke a few words of English.

He gave an understanding nod and pushed his glasses just a little further down his nose and began attacking his computer with both mouse and keyboard. Every once and a while he would he would mutter something to himself, shake his head, and click on his mouse and bang away at his keyboard. And with every click and shake of the head I would lose a little hope. Doubt began to creep into my mind. What if I have the spend the next 15 days eating by myself at the Pizza bar. Would it be too embarrassing to fly home from Recife and just skip the whole second part of the trip? I was ready to walk away and begin checking airline connections when the Maitre D looked up at me. Taking off his glasses he said “I am sorry but I do not have anyone who is an English speaker who I can place you with. I have checked and all the tables are occupied.” I was swearing silently to myself when he added “But I do have three Brazilians who are traveling by themselves and I know they speak a little English. Would you like it if I placed you with them?”

At that point I would have even sat down with a table full of the Germans who been bruising me for the last three days just to have someone to talk with so I quickly agreed.

I don’t like to look slovenly and normally I take a bit of time to make sure that my appearance is good enough or maybe just a little better than what the situation dictates. That evening, I dressed with particular care. I am still not sure exactly why but some little voice inside my head was telling me that it was important that I make a good impression on these Braziliero’s. So I put on a blazer and a collared shirt with freshly pressed khakis and shoes that looked as if they had been polished in the not too distant past. When I decided that my appearance would not make anyone shriek and runaway in terror I   headed to the bar. I wanted to be near the restaurant when it opened for its second seating so I would arrive before the other guests.

I don’t remember the drink. I remember being very nervous for some reason which was very unlike me. I meet new people professionally on a constant basis and I have been accused on more than one occasion to be able to generate a conversation from a cement wall. But tonight, I had butterflies doing a samba in my stomach. When the doors opened for the second dinner seating, it was a little trepidation that I walked to my new table.

The table was a single aisle up from the back of the restaurant and the second table in its row and was directly adjacent to the windows that lined the restaurant. When I arrived at the table no one was there which was not exactly a surprise as I was perhaps the third person to enter the restaurant that night, so I chose to sit on the near side of the table in the seat nearest the door in case I needed a quick getaway.

I was quickly greeted by my head waiter who said her name was Marika and that she would be my waiter. She was a tall Philipina woman with jet black hair and while not beautiful she was very “handsome.” I relaxed a little made comfortable by her gentleness. She asked me if she knew the people I would be dining with and I told her that I did not that I had just been assigned this table. She told me not to worry as she would make the introductions.

The room began to fill with guests. And no one joined my table. I eyed the bread on the table as I was very hungry as I hadn’t eaten lunch that day but I resisted because I thought it would be very embarrassing to have a hunk of butter bread in my hand should my dinner mates arrive at an inopportune moment. The room filled some more and still my table remained empty. The bread began to get more and more attractive and I was just about to break down and have a piece when I felt Marika tap my shoulder and tell me that the other diners had arrived.

I stood up to greet them. The first person I was introduced to was Christina. She was blonde, in her mid fifties and had probably been quite a beauty in her youth and was dressed for dinner in ankle length gown.  She was the same woman I had seen taking pictures in Rio and later on the pool deck. The next woman to introduce her to told me her name was Yarra which I had to ask her to repeat twice because it was an unfamiliar name to me.  She was the same age as her companion and about the same size with cordovan red hair and bright green eyes. Like her friend she was dressed for dinner in a gown. She shook my hand and tilting head in the direction of the Maitre di’s podium….said “My sister…she has to say hello to everyone.”

I turned and saw the brunette. And, just for that moment time seemed to slow just a little bit. Her brunette, thick and luxurious hung over her shoulder. Like her companions she was wearing a floor length gown but it clung to a body that had curves in all the right places and seemed lithe and strong. She was saying hello to Marika and her face was alight. Her smiled looked genuine and real and I knew in the instant that I would like this woman.

The hot tropical sun, a long day of touring with people whom I could not communicate with, and the welcome air-conditioning on-board ship conspired against me so that when I flopped onto the bed in my stateroom I fell asleep immediately. When I woke an hour later, I realized two things. My sunscreen had not been effective as I could begin to feel the heat and tightening of skin that a sun burn brings and that I did not have the emotional energy required to sit through another dinner with Diego. There were options including eating at one of the cruise’s two fancier restaurants where you were charged a supplemental fee; several snack bars on the ship offered menus in which you could construct a meal, room; a pizza bar that was open 24 hours a day or room service.

I decided to go up to the Pizza Buffet on deck 9 as it was the easiest and at least there I could read the book on my iPad,  eat at my own speed and I knew the conversation would not be any worse than it had been the night before.

It turns out the Pizza was pretty good, not NY Pizza good, but good enough.  I probably ate a couple slices more than were good for my waist line but I was feeling a little sorry for myself. It had been another solitary day for me.  While I am used to being alone as I live alone and I am often on the road for business being alone here felt different. It seemed that everyone on board were couples or part of a large group. As a consequence, it was more than being alone. It was not being part of a group. A lone wolf following a pack. I had hoped for more from trip. I had from the start realistic expectations. I knew that at the absolute best I would be a plus one. The odd single person in a group of couples.  But I had confidence in my gregariousness. That I would be able to break social barriers and engage with people on board. I had failed to realize that the vast majority of my fellow travelers would not be from English speaking countries.  Most of my fellow passengers were Brazilians, Italians, Germans and Dutch with a smattering of French. As a consequence, my hopes for engagement were limited.  I could not even sit near a person at a bar and overhearing their conversation jump in with a pithy remark or witticism that would allow me to join a group.

I am nothing though if not an optimist.  After I had my fill of pizza, I decided to  go to the main lounge on deck 3 and have a drink and listen to a live band play soft Brazilian music. One caipirinha later I was gone. The lounge was dead, and the music was too loud for me to even make a conversation with the bartender.

Still in hopes of meeting someone I walked up the central stairway to deck five where there were a number of bars. The first one I came to was the Grand Bar Rhapsody. It had a large seating area of plush seats surrounding an wood dance floor and adjacent stage. There was an oompah  band playing a polka and I concluded, rightly or wrongly that the Germans had taken over this bar. German’s are notoriously rude travelers and while I speak and understand some German I had no desire to Polka so I kept on walking.

The next bar was a “salon” with velour chairs and couches where couples and small groups of people had after dinner drinks ate “Viennese Pastries” and listened to a Kenny G style Jazz. I am in favor of after dinner drinks. I have a genetic attraction to pastries. I don’t even mind listening  to “smooth” jazz now and again. However,  sitting here amongst couples or couple of couples enjoying a mellow moment of indulgences seemed particularly lonely to me. So I moved on.

The next stop way station on my way to finding a little companionship was the casino. I am not a gambler and the physical attributes of those playing the slots machines was less than attractive. Imagine Hunter Thompsons most horrifying descriptions of casinos denizens as drawn by Ralph Steadman in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I didn’t have enough drugs nor nearly enough drinks in me to stay. So I pressed on.

Rick’s Piano Bar might have been interesting as it has a very intimate feel and the music seemed pleasant, but they were only serving wine and I definitely need something with a more active ingredient. I kept placing what foot in front of another.

Finally I came to the Rock Around the Clock Bar. I liked the room immediately. It had a large bar arranged in a large oval near its entrance. It was dark and the band that was playing sounded as if they might have had a few music lessons and the lead singer was very pleasant on the eyes.  I perched myself on one of the bar stools and a tuxedoed Phillippino barman immediately asked what I was drinking. I asked about his selection of Vodka and he said he had Smirnoff and I told him I would have a double. It is not my favorite vodka and I laughed at myself again when I thought “Any ship in a storm….”

I did a survey of the room.  It is a large taking up the entire fantail of the ship on deck five. It could easily seat 500 people on multiple levels of banquets and free-standing tables. The band played from a small podium adjacent to the arched windows and in front of them a small dance floor. Other than me there were just 9 other people in the joint. Two were sitting adjacent to me in the circular bar. There was a couple seating near the band apparently enjoying the show.  There was a waitress, two barman and two people in the band.

I asked the barman if it was always this crowded at the bar and he told me that no that I should have been on the trip the week before. It had been Carnival and the place was jammed to the rafters with Brazilians getting their party on. On that cruise the boat had been packed with over 4000 guests. This voyage, there were less than 1800.

I ordered another double and thought about my fate. I had to face the facts that with so much of the ship empty and the rest filled with people whom I did not even share a language with that the chances of meeting new people was going to be very slim if not impossible. I rationalized that the real purpose of this trip had always been to have an adventure, to be able to write everyday…to improve that craft and to finally start the book that has been bouncing around my head for years….that I should enjoy that aspect of the trip and use it to listen to  that inner voice that all writers hear. As a consequence, I did what good writers do. I ordered another double.

I awoke the next morning to brilliant sunshine reflecting over a teal sea coming through the partially open curtains on my windows. I realized two things almost immediately. First, if being  a good writer was dependent on drink I would be a failure. I felt like a sponge after three days in a desert. My cardio vascular system was on speaker. My head stuck in a vice.  This was compounded by a wicked sunburn from yesterday’s tour.  The skin on my arms was on fire and my face felt like I had applied blush with habaneros. Brilliant… day two of the trip and I was already on injured reserved.

Deciding that coffee was needed and breakfast was called for I went up to the Breakfast buffet on deck 9. It was there and then I became familiar with the feeding habits of the German tourists. They seemed to have little regard for lines. I was pushed aside a number of times without so much as a grunt of an apology by a number of them when I was standing in front of item that happened to catch their fancy. Standing in front of the pork products, sausage and bacon was particularly hazardous so I settled for some bread , butter and honey and retired to the port side gallery to eat my breakfast in peace and to nurse my newly acquired bruises.

Rehydration, caffeine, and simple carbohydrates did their trick and I soon began to feel remarkably similar to a human being. I decided that if I could not spend the day out in the sun, I would try to make the best of it by continuing to write the piece I had been working on so I returned to my cabin and flipped open my computer and began to write.

The piece I was writing had been inspired by a visit a few days prior with my cousins in Sao Paolo. They had pulled out a file of old photographs that their grandmother, my fathers mothers sister, had been sent my grandmother. Most of the photographs I had never seen before. One photo in particular, a portrait of the two sisters had particularly moved me. It had been taken in 1922. They were young woman in full bloom who were about to say goodbye to each forever. It was a heartbreakingly beautiful picture.

There were also various pictures of my childhood showing my parents in their youth which brought back memories of the most innocent and wonderful times of my life.

But I had broken and cried when at a picture of my father as shave tail lieutenant. The contrast of him so young so close to the beginning of his life with the man I left in New Jersey, frail and old, had rung my emotional bell and I wanted to write about the feelings that the photographs had raised in me.

I knew when I tackled the project it would be hard to write. It would be wading through a lot of complicated emotions. That morning was particularly tough. Partially because the photograph I was working at describing touched the holocaust and my families unpleasant history in it.  Combined with my adventures of the night before, despite my recent revivification,  my emotional threshold was low..  Several times I need to physically take a break from my writing and go out to my balcony and steady my emotions and plot the course to the next paragraph.

The writing was going well and when my stomach began to beckon lunch. I am very reluctant to leave my keyboard. Eventually an empty stomach and cramping muscles from being huddled over a laptop keyboard forced me to a stop. I braced myself for German tourists and I made my way to the lunch buffet. I brought my iPad with me and attacked a Jasper Fforde novel along with my pasta.

Long ago on some trip to New York City my mother in attempt to keep her small boys occupied had taught me the game of trying to guess the back story of the people we saw on the subway.  The game had stuck and when I am by myself, usually in airports, I play the game just to past the time and perhaps amuse myself. I am playing the game as I pass through the big open area by the Calypso Pool on my way back to my stateroom.

The first person I see is a man who is tanned the color of teak, as wide as he is tall, wearing a Speedo bathing suit that is barely visible through his rolls of fat. He has his cell phone in his hand and as I approach he slowly pitches forward asleep half resting on the table he is sitting in front of.  I imagine him a small business owner from Stuttgart whose wife has convinced him to come on this trip and he is spending his days drinking beers by the pool hoping that one his employees calls him in need of a solution to a problem he is sure they cannot handle on their own.

At a nearby table sits a woman with brightly dyed red hair that is arranged in cut that looks like a mullet making love to a Mohawk. She is nearing seventy years old and is wearing make up that looked to have been applied with an overloaded airbrush . She is also wearing a bikini that might have looked good on her 50lbs and 30 years ago but now was a testament to the fact that she had not found a mirror in her cabin. I imagine she is from a small city in Italy and is  on the cruise to see if she could find husband number five or at least make good use of what ever gigolo’s happened to be aboard. I avoid eye contact with her.

Then just off the pool deck, where the overhang creates a shaded area from the biting tropical sun, I notice three women trying to arrange their chez lounges on the crowded deck.  The first is the blonde I had noticed dockside in Rio taking photographs. Talking with her is a petite red head who is visibly giving the other instructions in Portuguese about how her chair should be arranged. With them is the brunette I had seen by the gangway the day before. She is wearing a bikini which she fills out nicely, large sunglasses that made her look glamorous with luxurious thick black hair that comes to the middle of her back. Wow.

She looks up at me as I pass by but before I can make eye contact with her I lose my situational awareness and almost bump into one of the waitresses who is carrying a tray fully loaded with drinks. Back in my room, I lay on my bed and try to nap. But for a long while all I can think of is the brunette.

The  cabin’s steward had left on my bed a small piece of paper on which was printed my dinner assignment. It told me that I was at the first dinner which began at 6:30 PM and that my table was 183. I was excited. I had gone on this trip alone and one of the things that I had hoped for was meeting new people at dinner. I had watched a lot of Love Boat in my time and understood that this was the way of meeting people. Combine this with my gregarious nature and thought by the end of the cruise I would have a fleet of new friends.

It was these high hopes that I headed off to dinner that night. The first blow to my fantasy was the table was for two instead of the 8 or 10 top I had imagined. But I still held out hope. Perhaps my dinner party would be exotic woman with an even more exotic backstory. Is not that how meet cutes work. That fantasy was soon dashed with the arrival of Diego, the recently graduated law student from Buenos Aires.

He was friendly and could not have been any nicer. At least I think he was genuinely nice as I spoke no Spanish and only enough English to tell me his name and let the waiter know he had an American Express Card.  We tried to speak to each other through hand signs, Spanglish and pantomime but it was a failure. We spent most of the evening staring off into space wishing that dinner and embarrassed by our silence. I left dinner thinking that I had made a grievous error in taking this trip. But I am an optimist so I went to the bar and had a few drinks in the hopes that I would be able to meet new friends while commiserating with my old friend Jack Daniels. Jack was sympathetic but the bar scene was dominated by loud music and couples that ruled out meeting anyone new.

That night I lay in bed with sleep always just beyond my grasp wondering whether I should cut my losses and just fly home.

I awoke the next morning as the ship pulled into Guanabara Bay in Rio Di Janiero. It was a picture postcard day with picture postcard scenery.  Tall mountains, the tallest on the Atlantic, with plush green forests, ringed the harbor.  Sugarloaf, with its famous cable car, made famous in film and posters lay to port. I was excited. Rio, at least in my imagination was a mystical place of Carnival and what I later learned to call Carioca spirit was on my bucket list of places to visit. Moreover, I knew Dad had never been there and was looking forward to telling him about my adventures here.

Our time in port was only eight hours. Not nearly enough time to fully appreciate the city but I was determined to make the most of the time I had. As a consequence, I had booked through the ship a “Jeep Tour” of the city. The brochure showed happy tourists complete with cameras and sunglasses, touring the city while riding in the open back of Land Rover Discovery’s. I had chosen it because it sounded a little more adventuresome that some of the other tours which were largely conducted on air conditioned buses and seem to be mainly designed to give people a chance to sight see a little and shop a lot.

It was apparent that the jeep tour was not exactly what was envisioned in the brochure. There was not Land Rover Discovery. It had been replaced by a pick-up truck fitted with wooden benches and makeshift seat belts. The tour was really more an audition for the driver entrance into Formula 1 racing.  It turned out that it was really more of a grand prix race on the back of a pick-up truck. My compatriots on this expedition were two sixty something year olds from Lucarno, Switzerland. They, of course, spoke no English and my Italian is limited to a couple of dozen words most of which could not be shared in polite company and one for toothpick (stuzzicadenti) which baring a dental emergency would do us much good on this trip. Thankfully our guide spoke both Italian and English and promised to do dual translations for us.

The trip began on a mad dash through the city streets up to the Statue of Christ the Redeemer that sits on top of a mountain overlooking the city. The great news about being on the back of a pickup is that you notice a lot of things you would notice on a bus like how close Brazilians like to avoid accidents by millimeters or the drunk not yet home from the night before giving you the evil eye when you were paused at a traffic light.

The roads to the Redeemer have more curves than a geometry textbook and steep. Some are the roads are lined with beautiful homes. Other with slums or favellas where having a roof was a big luxury. But the forest and the trees are pervasive. To avoid being consumed by fear of dying in a fiery crash at any moment I focused on the forest and the crystal blue sky that had blessed us that day. That and being impressed with the legions of bicyclists who were making their way up the steep grade seemingly undaunted. My quadriceps ached just looking at their efforts.

Our timing was perfect. We reached the statue just as the sun climbed about the head of the statue giving Christ a beautiful halo. Our guide lectured us many facts about this penultimate symbol of Rio but I was overwhelmed by the panoramic view of the city and retained little of what she said except that the architect of the monument was Jewish. She explained that he had been chosen not only for his talent but to make the symbol more than the obvious religious one. That Rio, and Brazil, were embracing of all religions and people. Normally I would have cracked wise and said something about Christ’s architect being jewish but I didn’t think my fellow travelers would appreciate my sense of humor so I just smiled to myself.

As impressive as the statue was the view was more impressive. The crystalline day allowed us to the whole city from lagoon to Ipanema to Copacabana to Bahia Dicuca from sea to forest.  It was awesome. I thought how fortunate I was to be here and how lucky Rio De Jennerians were to live in this beautiful spot.  At one point while I was enjoying the view an iridescent blue butterfly landed on the railing where I was standing. I have a thing about butterflies. I think they are lucky. So I made a wish to return to Rio one day when I had more time.

The next stop was the Ipanema which is a beautiful beach side section of the city. It is of course the section of the city that Jobim made famous and as we drove through its busy streets I tried to get a sense of the inspiration for that beautiful jazz melody. The crowded outdoor cafes,the beautiful women headed to the beach, and the bustle of people doing their everyday life allowed you to easily imagine sambas and bossanovas. Inspired by the sights, I sought and found a version of The Girl from Ipanema sung  by Frank Sinatra and Tom Jobim and played it on speaker for my and other passengers enjoyment.

The Tijuca forest our next stop. It completely surrounds the city and is densely populated with trees of every sort from Palm to Oak to species I have never seen before. There were hanging vines that would have made Tarzan happy and beautiful flowers in red, yellow and purple that would have made an impressionist reconsider his palate. But it is the story of the forest that I found the most amazing. In the 1700’s it was completely deforested to make room for coffee plantations. But the deforestation had a horrible effect on the city. The tropical climate turned dry and with it the city lost much of its ability to survive. The city fathers, came up with a remarkably ambitious plan that was far ahead of its time. They decided to reforest the mountains surrounding Rio. They accomplished this through the use of 2 slaves who labored away for 10 years planting every single plant in the 50 square kilometer forest.

Deep in the forest, the tour paused long enough to take a hike to a nearby waterfall. At one point along the trail our driver became very animated and kept calling “Cobra” and pointing towards the ground. Alarmed, thinking that a venomous snake was nearby we all shied away until the guide explained that “cobra” in Portuguese means snake.   Regardless,  I was glad I didn’t wear flip flops. The waterfall was gorgeous as waterfalls tend to be. On the way back to the “Jeep” we passed  a statue of a slave bent at the waist,  his arms reaching out his hand cupped around a live flower someone had placed there. It was a memorial honoring the slaves that saved Rio.  We are told that Brazil’s history with slavery is not as onerous as the United States. The slaves were treated far better and were not considered inferior simply because of the color of the skin. While I know that this is not entirely true, Brazil imported three times the number of slaves than did the US, I am not aware any statues to slaves in the south where they helped King Cotton become an economic power.

On the way out of the forest the driver abruptly stopped in the middle of the road. He pointed to the tree limbs above us where a pack of monkey’s were leaping from tree limb to tree limb trying to cross the road without touching the pavement. I had never seen a monkey in the wild before and I am mesmerized by their graceful movement in the trees and how camouflaged they were from their environment. Then it occurred to me what was happening and it made me laugh. I now knew how the monkey crosses the road. I was going to share this hilarity with my other passengers but realized that they would never get the joke so I just smiled to self.

Eventually we made our way to the Copacabana. I could tell that it was a totally different type of beach than Ipanema. There seemed to be more athletic things going on. There were lots of volleyball nets set up on the beach and there were many mini soccer fields. I was not tempted to play “The Copacabana” by Barry Manilow but I would not have had the time anyhow. Our truck driver must have looked at his watch and realized the tour was running long so he was doing his best to show us the city at 120 kilometers per hour. I was not unhappy with his decision because I had realized that despite my best American sunblock I had managed to get pretty crisp from the tropical sun that had been beating down on us all day.

I bid good bye to the guide and the Swiss and made my way through the port building to the dock. Trying to take a short cut to the boat I cut around the path through a seating area where I saw a short woman with long blonde hair taking pictures. I realized that I was lost and reversed course and eventually made my way to the docks where I saw a very attractive brunette standing near the gangway scanning the dock as if she were waiting for someone. I wistfully thought to myself that I wished she were waiting for me.

She looked as if she belonged in a Paul Gaugin painting.

Long thick black hair, brown skin and curves where a woman should have curves. She moved with the grace of a lioness.  She smelled of the beach and she tasted like the tropics. She was as soft as an evening breeze and was as sweet as honey from lavender fields. She was all that I had ever dreamed of yet could never begin to hope for myself.

I had not intended to go on a cruise. In fact, I never thought I would go on any cruise but timing and circumstance conspired against me. Here,  I was on a dock in Santos Brazil 6,000 miles away from home, by myself, wilting in the tropical heat, waiting to go on board a luxury liner that was to be my home for the next 18 days. 4 weeks previous my most ambitious travel thoughts had been whether or not to take the Lincoln Tunnel or GW Bridge. How the hell had I gotten here?

This journey of 6000 miles began with the step when my company laid me off.. There was no animosity involved. Their core business, a division I had not worked for, had suffered a major loss, a customer who represented 90% of their revenue had pulled their business and the company was forced to regroup. This included laying off most of their staff in the United States including me. They had treated me fairly and I had no gripes, but it allowed me the time to take a vacation that spanned beyond the standard 7 days or even the nearly unheard fortnight…

I had seen the trouble coming at the company. Their offerings to customers did not add up at all. They were coming to market late with products and were making promises that they could not keep. As a consequence, I had been looking for the next step in my career when the ax fell. Within days of me being laid off I had a new job offer and could go away without the fear and worry of finding employment hanging over my head.

I needed a holiday. I was also hopelessly tired and in desperate need of time from my normal life. For the previous 2 years I had been working a full time job while also taking care of both of my parents. My father was ill. A combination of a bad fall, prostate issues, and extended stays in hospital had confined my father to a wheel chair and dialysis three times a week. I commuted back and forth to New Jersey 3 or 4 times a week to make sure that he was well taken care of and to spell my mother from her duties as primary care giver.

My mother is the type of woman who needs to create order from chaos. And, if there is order to create better order.  Part of my job was to keep her from going to crazy from her inability to make this situation any neater or any better. She is also a cancer survivor whose bout with lung cancer leaves her wheezing at the smallest exertion. She needed my help and I was happy to give it but the commuting, the caregiving, the stress of aging parents all contributed to a fatigue that could only be cured by getting  away from it all for a little while.

I needed to go far enough away so I could not be drawn back into the day the day of my parents so I could focus, for a time,  on me. To provide the space needed, to rediscover who I was and hopefully lay a path for the future.

The final puzzle piece of how I found myself here was a tragedy. The Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia ran into a reef off the Italian coast and sank. It had been the lead story on every modern conveyance of information. Why not? From a news perspective in our day and age it had everything. There were the great visuals of a ship lying on its side a gigantic rock stuck in its hull. The salaciousness of a Captain who seemed to like entertain women on the bridge while he should have been minding the helm and was such a coward he abandoned the ship before most of passengers. There was the human interest of people dying and the breathless stories of those who had survived.

I am almost ashamed of the fact that I realized almost instantly that this was going to drastically reduce their ability to sell berths on their ships and that I could probably get a cruise for a very affordable price. But not so ashamed that I didn’t visit their site.

In fact when I went to their site they were indeed having, pardon the phrase, a fire sale. Reviewing their offerings one cruise immediately stood out to me. An 18 day cruise that would take me up the coast of Brazil stopping in Rio Di Janiero, Ilheus, Salvador di Bahia, Maceio, and then Recife. And while I hardly knew where any of these places were or why they were important, they sounded exotic and ripe with adventure. But the trip got better.  After leaving Brazil the ship would then cross the Atlantic stopping in Fuchal, Maderia, Casablanca and then ending up in Savona, Italy.  The fare was less than $100 a day including all food and beverages.  That was almost as much as I spent every day at home in NYC. I had never been to South America. I had never been at sea on a ship. I had never crossed the Atlantic or even the equator. I had never been to Africa. It checked all the boxes. I booked the trip.

The next several weeks were even more hectic than my normal life. The winding down of the job took time. The company I worked for was an Israeli company and getting anything legal out of them was a challenge and they work on a scorched earth basis.  Negotiating with them and “leaving the camp site better than I found it” was both stressful and time consuming. On top of which I was in negotiations with my new company which required a great deal of attention as well. On top of that I had been offered a number of consulting contracts and  was working on developing a business plan and meeting people on that as well. Ironically, considering I just lost my job, I had never been busier from a business perspective.

Then there was prepping for an extended stay away from home. I was single but I had a dog.  Trying to figure out where he was to go and how he was to be cared for took some time. Eventually I asked a woman whom I worked with and who was “in between” apartments to come and stay in the apartment and babysit it and the dog.. Of course that made things easier but I still had to make sure Yankee had enough food for a month and write out instructions for Ramona on the proper care and feeding of my best friend.

Then there were my parents. Both father and my mother now relied on my help. While strictly speaking I didn’t need to get their permission to go on their trip. I did want their blessing. My father was easy. Confined as he was to a wheelchair I knew that my trip would be like an adventure for him. He would live vicariously through the emails and the photographs I sent. His only request of me is that I spend a few days in Sao Paolo with the grandchildren of his mother’s sister. I was reluctant because I did not know them but I also knew how much this would mean to him. As a consequence, despite my own personal reservations, I agreed.

My mother was another story. I knew that it was she that would be the one who noticed my absence the most. Over the course of the past two years I had become her sounding board. I was the one she went to when she was frustrated. I was the one she went to when she was angry with my father or she was frustrated with his care.  She placed her burdens on my shoulders and expected me to carry that load. And while I had accepted this as my responsibility, I also knew that my knees were beginning to buckle with the weight of those burden. I was shorter with her than I had been in the past. I was less willing to listen to her problems. I knew that I had to get away or I would not be able to accept any new burdens she gave me. So I pretended to ignore the pained look on her face as I told her of my plans and instead concentrated on her words which were of acceptance.

The only issue that really got my stymied is to what to bring on this trip. I was traveling to four continents, going from a tropical climate to early spring, I was going on a ship that had occasions from ultra casual flip flops and shorts to black tie.  How do you prepare for a cruise when you have never been on one? I knew I needed new clothes and a variety of odds and ends to make sure I had what I needed even if I was in the middle of the Atlantic but I hated to shop. I don’t like trying on clothes. But they were necessary evils now so I sucked up and eventually got all that I needed.

When I boarded the American Airlines flight to Sao Paulo on March 10^th 2012  I was wound as tight as I have ever been and frayed like a rope that had been used too often.

The trip had not started smoothly

The cab ride from Sao Paolo to Santos where the ship was departing from while beautiful proved a little too adventuresome for me. Not only do Brazilian drivers make Boston drivers look good but they also insisted on going the speed of a small jet. I had gritted my teeth and clenched my butt cheeks on the entire ride down to the port. Then the cab driver got lost. Mind you he had a GPS but he insisted on not using it. Instead he kept on asking locals where to go. And of course I understood nothing of what they said and we kept on going in circles. Eventually I was forced to break out the GPS function on my iPhone and guide the driver to the docks myself.

My challenges only began there. It turns out getting on a cruise ship is a rather lengthy undertaking. First, you have to drop off your heavy luggage in one place. Then you have to drag yourself and other cases, briefcase smart suitcase, through tropical heat to the customs shed, where 3 boats are trying to load passengers. You then need to figure out where your line is and  wait in a building that only dreamt of air conditioning with thousands of other people attempting to board the ship. In my case the wait was well over an hour and by the time I made it to my stateroom on Deck 8 I was a sack of sweat and a bigger emotional wreck than when I had left New York.

As I unpacked and prepared the cabin for my extended stay my mantra was that it had to get better. That the cruise was going to be great. I had not made a mistake coming on this trip by myself. That I was going to have a great adventure. That I would be able to write to my heart’s content and that I would meet new people and the world would be generally kind to me.

As we left Santos a thunderstorm broke. Red forked lightening tore at the sky. Deep throated booms rolled across the sea.  Watching the storm from my balcony I wondered if my wishful thinking had been just that or whether this was the true portent of things to come.

When my father died 8 years ago today, he left behind a legacy that could have been written by Horatio Alger.

He had survived a brutal boyhood of poverty and prejudice in Vienna. Along with his family, he managed to escape war torn Europe 3 months after hostilities were declared. Upon arriving in this country at age 14 he was placed in the third grade because of his poor English skills. Just three and half years later in June of 1943, after digesting a dictionary and endless movie matinees, his English had so improved that he matriculated at Syracuse University. By September of 1944, when he was inducted into the US Army, he had completed his sophomore year in college. He became the youngest 2^nd Lieutenant in his division and along with his comrades in the 88^th Infantry Division, 913^th Field Artillery fought his way up the boot of Italy until wars end.  Remarkably, after 2.5 years of active duty and rising to the rank of 1^st Lieutenant, he managed to graduate on time with his class. Within a few years he managed to get a PhD in experimental psychology and meet and marry my mother. He built a storied career in his field first at Bell Telephone Laboratories running Learning and Instructional Research Department and then at Columbia University Teachers College where he was the Cleveland E. Dodge professor of Education and Technology.

Along the way, he managed to raise three children, David, Marissa and myself, all of whom adored and respected him and with whom he managed to forge unique relationships.

His mythos was so strong and our love for him so deep that his story of survival and success became our own. It was a mantle we gladly wore. One that always made us stand up a little taller and puff our chests out a little more. I, a lover of stories, loved his personal saga so much, that I badgered him into taking trips to Israel, Alaska, and Vienna with me so I could get to know him and his story better. When he got sick and was hospitalized, I would spend hours with him talking about his life and unlocking stories that I never heard. By the time, he decided that he had enough, and chose to leave this world I felt as if I knew the man as well as any son can know a father. I felt like he had told me all the stories from his life worth telling and that if I chose to write a biography of him, I could.

Then, I found out, he left a chapter out of his story. Not only from me, but from everyone in his life including his wife. His army records did not match the stories he had shared with us. He was forced to confess that the reason for the discrepancy had been because of his involvement with the recovery of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen. Maddingly, he would tell us almost nothing else about his involvement except to say he had heard something about the Crown during his final days in Vienna, shared it with his draft board so he could finish his sophomore year of college. Eventually he had been coopted into going to Europe, via the Southern Route, to help with the Crown.

And then he died leaving a gap in our lives that could never be fully filled and a story unfinished.

In part, to fill the hole in my life that Pops’s absence created, and in part to finish a story that had been started and not finished I began researching the Crown’s recovery and Dad’s involvement. At the time I began this quest, I thought it would be easy. After all, who really cares about an old European crown enough to keep information classified and Army records should be fairly easy to access. Needless to say, I was wrong on both counts.

The Crown turned out to be the single most important crown in Europe. An item that was highly coveted and sought after by the US, German and Russian forces in the closing hours of the 2^nd World War. The Hungarians were hell bent on secreting it away to maintain possession of this, religious and symbol of their country. The Germans wanted as a negotiating chip. The Americans and Russians sought it because of its symbolism and how it could be used to shape Europe in the post war years.  All of the parties wanted to keep secret their involvement to avoid embarrassment, missteps, and to protect the reputations of those involved.

The Army was not an easy resource to crack. Not because of government bureaucracy, although that didn’t help. But because of design choice made by the Army in the late ‘60s. Back then the Army had a problem. Nearly 12 million men had served during the 2^nd World War. Each one of them had an army record that was inches thick. These files were located all over the US and needed to be consolidated. To that end, the Army commissioned the building of a new National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis.  In due course, all files were transferred to the state-of-the-art building. Then, shortly after midnight, on July 12, 1973 the building caught fire. It burned for 22 hours and took firefighters two days to enter the building. 85% of all the records in the building were damaged or destroyed. All of which could have been prevented if a fire suppression system had been included in the design of the building but at the time it was considered too risky as water is a destroyer of paper.

Even though there has been a 47 year effort to recover these files, Pop’s “burn file” is irretrievable which meant to find out his record we have had to trace his path through “morning reports” and other available document  from induction in Hartford Connecticut to his discharge at Fort Dix in January of 1947. This required the efforts of two certified NARA researchers, countless letters to archives and involved persons, FOIA requests to CIA, Department of State, and Carter and Eisenhauer Archives and  the purchase and review of a library wing of books and other documents.  The end result of eight years of research has been less than satisfying.

We have managed to track my father through most of his journey. However, maddeningly, there is a six week gap where we have not managed to account for his whereabouts. This directly coincides with the period of time where the US was actively looking for the crown.  While I believe I know the role Dad played in this minor melodrama at the end of WW2 and beginning of the cold war, I can prove none of it.

Without giving away any of the story what I can say, is that I believe in early May of 1945 Dad was transported via the Southern Route https://military.wikia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_air_ferry_route_in_World_War_II to Central Europe. Once in Europe he made his way to Vienna, where along with Army CIC and OSS agents they began looking for specific people who could help unlock the Crown mystery.

My research focus is here. Trying to a find a record of my father’s trip through existing American and Russian records which is complicated further by Coivd’s closing of most archive facilities.

That being said, I have begun writing the second half of The Crown with what information I do have available and will publish when it is polished enough for readers.

Also, if you have any suggestions on research that I have not done on the crown and my father’s involvement I would love to hear your suggestions.

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