Page 9 of Without a Clue

“Shh,” Neena says tersely, pushing him forward.

She stops us and waits ’til everyone moves on.

When he’s shuffled ahead so far that he and the others are on board, she continues. “Hugh really does know, love. When he’s right, he’s right. He called out Bick Denton before he ever even picked up a pen. I thought it was crazy at the time, but sure enough, now he’s Bick Denton and giving us all a run for our money.” She smiles motheringly as she looks at me. “And he says the very same of you. Says your research skills are bar none. And I’ll tell you what right now. It’d be a true pleasure to see you giving us all a run for our money too.”

“Just because I can find him a unique set of weapons, means, and methods for his books doesn’t mean I can piece all those facts together into anything cohesive. Believe me, Neena. I’ve tried. Researching pieces and parts for Hugh’s books is one thing. Writing a masterpiece, as I have discovered to my great disappointment, is another. I can talk about dimethylaminopropionitrile all day long, but creating anything with actual creative genius is another.”

“Hugh disagrees. He says you’re talented.”

“Yeah, well, currently my ‘manuscript’ is something between a journalistic piece and a medical dissertation, a bunch of technical terms gurgled up and emotionlessly splattered on the page.”

She shrugs. “Hugh says though, love.”

“Yeah, well, he can be wrong sometimes.”

“That he can.” She pauses. “But not when it counts like this.”

Agree to disagree.

“Oh, you just need someone to push you off the ledge is all,” Neena says, shimmying herself through the narrow entrance on board the ship, holding on to her hat like Marilyn Monroe. The silvery heads of several staff members turn.

An attendant opens his mouth to welcome us on board, but Neena raises a finger with a smile. He waits, gloved hand over gloved hand.

“I’m going to tell you a little secret, darling.”

“I don’t believe you are capable of secrets, Neena.”

“We’re all terrified when we first start. None of us think we have what it takes. You know what Hugh says: ‘It’s all about the first chapter. It’s all as simple as getting down that first chapter. Once you’ve got that, you’re nearly there.’”

How many times has Hugh said that to me? A hundred. A thousand.

When are you going to give me what I want, Pip? I want to see that first chapter. It’s all as simple as getting down that first chapter.

“And that’s where we differ, you and I, Neena,” I say calmly. But it hurts, really. It hurts to have to defend the painful reality that I so wish were not true. “You actually had talent under that imposter syndrome of yours. I don’t.”

“You know,” Neena says, looking at me with huge, eternally sympathetic eyes, standing beside the welcoming staff member with his now equally large, sympathetic eyes. “One of these days, I’m just going to break into that laptop of yours and read it myself.”

I frown. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I absolutely would.”

“Breaking into laptops isn’t really on brand for you, Neena.”

“There’s almost always more to people than meets the eye.”

At a sudden gust of wind, she grabs her floppy hat and pushes it down firmly over her sparkling starfish clip. “Ah,” she says with a sigh. “The sea. There is nothing quite like the sea.”

The cruise ship is smaller than one of the giant cruise liners, bigger than a ferry boat and capable of taking on the open seas, but more manageably sized. Quainter. Classy. The hull and main deck are a gorgeous baby blue, the color of hydrangeas sweeping over Cape Cod porches in summer, the color of stately swinging French doors of old châteaus teeming with life in the countryside. Everything else is a pearly white, from the ornately designed railings with their graceful swerves and swoops, to the bow where a figurehead of a woman with an intricate golden crown smiles as she looks with confidence to the glistening sea. Crisp blue and white bunting banners flap everywhere overhead, stretching across the bow side with the glistening pool to the stern and the generously sized lounge chairs in striped blue and white on the other. Pagoda-style umbrellas in various shades of blue and white surround the pool, all with golden tassels shimmying in the breeze.

Waiters in deep blue waistcoats and blue feather bow ties glide around us, arms laden with crystal glasses full of fizzing amber and pink.

The cruise ship is straight from the twenties. It’s classic glamour in a boat.

And, uncoincidentally, an absolutely perfect choice for the location of The Magnificent Seven’s Inaugural Book Cruise.

I exhale as I watch the first impressions stretch across Jackie and the others’ faces. Everybody’s thrilled. Everybody is smiling in wonder at something—the waiter in his gorgeous purple-blue feather bow tie who just slipped seamlessly backward between two clusters in his polished black roller skates, the cocktail glasses in his hand not even so much as quaking at the shift. The slew of people—older women mostly—already stretched out on pool chairs on the sundeck, books (of The Seven, naturally) in hand.

Gleaming white marble side tables stacked with our team’s books can be seen everywhere. (I thought it’d be a nice touch, but make no mistake, discussing mailing 2,500 books to the liner with express wishes to “thoughtfully set them around” was a more difficult conversation than one would think. Eventually we landed on a smattering around the ship and a neatly tied bundle on each person’s pillow.)