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and … well everybody who isn’t you, wishes they had your reputation.Laura Crawford pretended to be the girl next door with a Mary Tyler Moore turn-the-world-on-with-a-smile personality. You saw through her. She was a phony baloney. How many times have you told me that Laura’s sole agenda in those early days on your show was to get her own variety series and to become a bigger international star than you? It’s not your fault that her post-PP life was a mess. Her career stalled because she was difficult to work with. The
National Peeper
only kept her in the public eye because people got a sick giggle out of reading about her multiple divorce wrecks, and that bank-draining palimony suit filed by that lady golfer, and the stints in celebrity twelve-step basket weaving clinics.”
    Polly shook her head and said, “Placenta’s right. I have no feelings. Subconsciously I must be holding Laura responsible for making me feel washed up in the biz.” She took another sip from her glass. “I’m going to make it up to her.”
    “It’s a little late to become girlfriends,” Placenta said.
    “There’s nothing to make up,” Tim said. “Heck, when she was really down and out you purchased a few pieces from her art collection to help her get by. So what if you bought the Warhol, Bachardy, and Hockney at garage sale prices? She needed the bucks and you came through.”
    Polly looked at her son and Placenta. With sudden resolve, she knocked back the champagne in her flute with one long swallow. “There’s still one more thing I can do for her,” she said.
    Tim and Placenta exchanged looks of unease. “The best thing you can do for that dead woman is to let her chill, and allow the ship’s police or the Coast Guard or whoever handles crimes on the high seas, to do their job without your interference. Say something genuinely heartfelt about her at the beginning of your next lecture. She doesn’t rate anything more than that.”
    Polly wasn’t listening. “How does my skin look?” she asked as she opened her purse and looked at her reflection in a hand mirror. “It’s been ages since I had a facial. Hear that sound?” She waited a beat. “It’s my pores begging to be exfoliated. I could use a full body massage, too. My back’s been aching from sleeping on that god-awful mattress.”
    Placenta poured more champagne into Polly’s flute. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Drink this, and a couple more. Tim and I will rub your back and your neck and your scalp and your toes. I’ll even dust your navel.”
    Polly reached for the telephone beside her bed and pressed 0 for the operator. “The Starfish Spa, please and thank you,” she said. In a moment she was making an appointment with Rosemary.
    Polly hung up and looked at the two faces giving her reproachful stares. “What?” she asked. “I’m simply going in for a little R&R. While I’m trapped on this floating cemetery, I may as well enjoy the amenities.”
    Polly took the glass elevator from the Coral Deck to the Anemone Deck and stepped out into a quiet corridor. She followed the engraved placard that pointed to the Starfish Spa. At the opaque glass door she turned the knob and was instantly met with the scent of flowers and the soft plinking sound of Celtic harps. The music instantly made her miss the time she toured Ireland in
Spuds: The Musical.
And the aroma took her memory back to one particular warm spring night in the Hollywood Hills—a time when she had been deeply in lust with the chief makeup artist on her show. The air outside his home was filled with the perfume of night-blooming jasmine, and Polly now sighed as she remembered their furtive assignations, and how much she missed his physical touch.
    While thinking about her long-lost lover, a door to the inner sanctum opened. A young woman with short-croppeddark spiked hair, and lips the shade of bubblegum, reached out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Pepper. My