“Let’s get on the ball, buddy. Let’s get that Leica down here.”
“Come give Mother a kiss. A nice, big one.”
“Not right now,” Teddy said absently. “I’m tired.” He closed the door behind him.
The ship’s daily newspaper lay just outside the doorsill. It was a single sheet of glossy paper, with printing on just one side. Teddy picked it up and began to read it as he started slowly aft down the long passageway. From the opposite end, a huge, blond woman in a starched white uniform was coming toward him, carrying a vase of long-stemmed, red roses. As she passed Teddy, she put out her left hand and grazed the top of his head with it, saying, “Somebody needs a haircut!” Teddy passively looked up from his newspaper, but the woman had passed, and he didn’t look back. He went on reading. At the end of the passageway, before an enormous mural of Saint George and the Dragon over the staircase landing, he folded the ship’s newspaper into quarters and put it into his left hip pocket. He then climbed the broad, shallow, carpeted steps up to Main Deck, one flight up. He took two steps at a time, but slowly, holding on to the banister, putting his whole body into it, as if the act of climbing a flight of stairs was for him, as it is for many children, a moderately pleasurable end in itself. At the Main Deck landing, he went directly over to the Purser’s desk, where a good-looking girl in naval uniform was presiding at the moment. She was stapling some mimeographed sheets of paper together.
“Can you tell me what time that game starts today, please?” Teddy asked her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Can you tell me what time that game starts today?” The girl gave him a lipsticky smile. “What game, honey?” she asked.
“You know. That word game they had yesterday and the day before, where you’re supposed to supply the missing words. It’s mostly that you have to put everything in context.”
The girl held off fitting three sheets of paper between the planes of her stapler. “Oh,” she said. “Not till late afternoon, I believe. I believe it’s around four o’clock. Isn’t that a little over your head, dear?”
“No, it isn’t … Thank you,” Teddy said, and started to leave.