I Was a First-Class Stowaway

At a very dry time in a very shaky writing career, I was working as a waiter at a swanky restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, hating it thoroughly, wearing a uniform and being treated like some kind of culinary marine. I couldn't stand the fact that I wasn't sitting there dining with an adoring woman (give her long blonde hair for the hell of it and wide, alarmingly trusting green eyes), instead of worrying about whether or not some furious dentist were going to put me down because the Béarnaise sauce was not the way he'd had it (just a month ago, Helen) in Paris. From the huge windows of the restaurant, one Saturday afternoon, I saw, 1000 or so feet below, a glacier-white ocean liner making its slow, stately progress out of the harbor. I had never traveled on a big ship like that, but staring down, imagining the beautifully dressed strollers on the upper decks, I thought, fairly desperately, That's where I belong. What the hell am I doing here?

The epiphany didn't get me very far; the next mousse I served was all wrong (Jesus, Helen, look at this...); but a few days later, a friend and I were standing on a deck of the Leonardo da Vinci, and despite my baggy painter's jeans, tennis sneakers and faded red Lacoste shirt, I felt right at home. We had paid a dollar each to board the ship with crowds of well-wishers seeing friends off on one of the splendid ship's last transatlantic crossings. It was one of those rare spring days in New York when the sun is warm, the wind is cool and the sky is crayon blue. Through a thousand city smells, I could even detect a trace of the sea. I was high on the chemistry of the moment--the weather, the ship, the bright celebration of people leaving. The apposite sights of the World Trade Center--my prison tower--and the Statue of Liberty seemed to symbolize all too perfectly the reality of my life and the ideal world of the Da Vinci. A stern, electronic voice announced over the loud-speaker system, "All visitors ashore." Suddenly, I turned to my friend and announced, "I'm staying." The declaration hung in the air like the Bang sign out of a clown's pistol, except this one read, I Dare Me. Compressed into a few hypercharged seconds was the pure essence of madcap daring. I think that if my friend had chuckled and said, "Oh, bullshit, Pete, let's go and I'll buy you a drink," I would have happily let the moment pass with no more than a ripple of regret. But my friend Richard just stood there, looking at me smiling, pleased, I suppose, to be playing a key role in an unexpected drama. Then he nodded and said "OK," with more enthusiasm than I really wanted. I was at the edge of the cliff and I'd promised to jump. My stomach levitated.

"Last call," the crackling voice said. "All visitors ashore. The ship will sail in thirty minutes."

"How much money have you got?" Richard asked.

I searched my pockets and pulled out a tattered five-dollar bill.

"Here," he said, handing me $70. "I knew there was a reason I brought money."

My mind reached out for a handhold. Logic, the enemy of adventure, set in. You can't do this, it wheedled. I pushed it away with one simple, unanswerable question, Why not? I would find a few answers during the next ten hours.

I pocketed Richard's largess and handed him the key to my apartment, hurriedly told him the watering schedule of my plants, gave him a message for my mother. I also told him where to find my passport and asked him to send it to me at American Express in Naples, where, according to a notice at the entrance to the pier, the Da Vinci was due to stop for two days.

"Take care of yourself," he said. Then he took off his safari jacket and handed it to me. "You'll need this." He was gone, and ten minutes later, I felt the ship begin to move.

For the next seven days, I would see no land and I would have no contact with anything that reminded me of "reality." I would have no identity, or, rather, whatever identity I chose. I would literally be an outlaw, making up the rules as I went along. For the first time in my life, I was living exactly in the present, with my past growing dimmer on the horizon and my future absolutely unknown.

The next five hours were the most intensely exciting I had ever experienced, but in the pleasure of it were little twinges of dread, like the anxiety of a sky diver who, two steps into space, wonders whether he has packed his parachute just so.

The swimming-pool deck of the first-class area, where I had remained since deciding to stay aboard, swirled with well-dressed travelers still too buoyant to go to their cabins. I realized that the fact that I was 15 years or so younger than most of them, and alone, was going to single me out as much as my extremely casual clothes. Among the passengers, I could spot only two people who seemed unattached, a dapper old man in a Panama hat that somehow stayed on his head despite the brisk sea breeze and a tanned girl in her 20s, with long dark-brown hair that shone wonderfully against her pale-pink cotton dress. After several tries, I caught her eye and she granted me a brief, neutral smile.

Two hours later, when the first seating for dinner was announced, I went in for a crash landing. The deck had cleared as the sun slid into the sea. When passengers reappeared, they had changed to more formal outfits. The temperature had dropped with the sun, and no one stayed long on the deck before going in to dinner. Somehow, in the excitement of sailing, I had almost managed to forget that I was a stowaway. Now they were in, having turtle soup and clams casino, listening to a string ensemble play Love in the Afternoon, and I was out, beginning to freeze my ass off. I turned up the collar of Richard's thin jacket and tried to shiver with some kind of élan. I began to look at my watch (a Rolex, my sole valuable possession, to be flaunted often, like credentials, during the next week). By the time the second seating was announced, I felt as if I had been cold and hungry for days. With a rush of panic, I began to wonder not whether or not I'd get through the trip but if I'd survive the night. I knew that the next eight hours--until dawn brought warmth and perhaps an end to loneliness and despair--would be crucial.

I suspect that nothing is quite so self-enclosed as a ship on the open sea at three a.m. I have read how sailors on watch at that hour are prone to hallucinations, and now I know why. I leaned against a rail, freezing, bone-weary, and decided that in the morning I would turn myself in. Better a week in the brig than another night like this.

At last, sheer exhaustion overcame even misery. I dragged a wooden deck chair from a stack near the pool and set it up in a spot near an outdoor bar, more or less sheltered from the wind.

•

I woke up warm, with the murmur of conversation around me and the sun on my face. I didn't open my eyes right away, wondering if I were already the object of curiosity. I knew I must look as derelict as I felt. No one seemed to be paying attention to me. I checked my watch: 10:30. My stomach growled discontentedly as I realized another mealtime had passed.

"You're an admirably sound sleeper." The voice, husky and casually good-humored, came from the chair just to my left. I turned and saw the girl I'd seen the night before in the pink dress, this time wearing a black two-piece bathing suit with a short white-terrycloth jacket over her shoulders. In one expensive-looking hand she held a small cup of glorious-smelling coffee.

"Yes," I said, checking my watch again. "I seem to have dozed off for a few minutes."

"Try a few hours, at least," she said.

"And you've been sitting here all this time, with a stop watch?" I asked.

"Let's just say that you and I were the first here, and you had arrived earlier than the deck stewards," she said, indicating her chair mat and my lack of one. "That can't be all that comfortable."

My mind was beginning to thaw. I asked for one of her cigarettes.

"The truth is," I said, "I have been here for hours. Since dawn, in fact. I never sleep well the first night or two at sea. Been that way since I was a little kid on my first trip to Europe."

She smiled. Her teeth were whiter (continued on page 166) First-Class Stowaway (continued from page 124) than the porcelain of her coffee cup. Quietly, I thanked her dentist, her father and ten generations of intelligent breeding. Sensing sex and sanctuary, I got up and signaled the deck steward, a feral-looking character who looked at me resentfully. Obviously, I was talking to one of the few single women in first class. Buon giorno and tough shit, friend. I pointed toward a stack of blue-striped mats, and when he came over with one, I ordered a cappuccino.

My charming shipmate introduced herself as Ellen Wilson and I reciprocated, almost adding, "Stowaway, first class." The steward came back with my cappuccino and asked me the number of my cabin. For a second I panicked, then I began to pat the pockets of Richard's jacket with casual concern.

"Damn, I've forgotten my key, and I can't remember what the number is," I said. "I think it's on B deck, if that helps." With a wan smile, I shrugged, praying that there was a B deck and that it was first class. The steward looked perplexed.

Ellen intervened.

"Look," she said, "you can owe me one." And she gave the steward her cabin number, ordering a couple more coffees at the same time. I had passed my first test...with a little help.

We talked for several hours, quickly gaining the closeness that only an ocean voyage can create. Beer and peanuts gave me a renewed strength and perhaps some charm. Ellen was on her way to Africa, where she'd be meeting her fiancé, but she added without looking at me that on the open seas, the attachments of reality and dry land seemed far, far away.

Toward midafternoon, Ellen excused herself. "Will I see you at dinner?"

I had to think fast. I could get away with a little ruse with a deck steward, but not with a maître de. People were seated by cabins and checks were signed with room numbers, and I would be in jeopardy if I stepped into the dining room. I decided to reveal my "secret" to Ellen right away--or at least a certain version. I was traveling tourist and therefore wasn't allowed in the first-class dining room.

"Isn't it rather illegal for you to be up here at all?"

"I call it quite daring," I replied. "So how about meeting me in the bar later, for drinks?"

"Are you allowed in the bar?"

"No, but bartenders aren't as class-conscious as waiters."

After Ellen left for a siesta--without, unfortunately, inviting me--I went into one of the shops near the dining room and bought a razor, soap, shaving cream, some Eau Sauvage cologne (expensive but very first-class) and a kit to put them all in, laboriously explaining to the salesman that my luggage had been delayed on a flight from Boston. Then I bought a blue-nylon bathing suit. Now I had one entire change of wardrobe. I found a men's room near the pool and with some mild acrobatics and much smirking at occasional curious male passengers ("My cabin's so stuffy, isn't yours?"), I shaved and washed. Then, hanging my clothes on a hook inside a booth door, I went out and took a swim. All I had to do, I realized, was to look as if I belonged.

That evening, Ellen arrived in the bar a few minutes after I did, stunning in a silk dress, black and backless. Although I was still in my basic khaki-pants--Lacoste-shirt outfit, my shave and swim had made me feel almost debonair. The atmosphere in the bar was reassuring--bars, after all, have a kind of equanimity--and no one seemed to be paying any attention to me. Ellen took in my clothes with a faint flicker of her eyes and what might have been an appreciative smile.

"You look wonderful," I said, filled with simple awe at the way silk showed off her body.

"And you look...familiar," she laughed. Ellen's smile sent me into a deep gulp of vodka and tonic.

The evening was hypercharged and intense. Ordinarily, I would have paced myself with some deliberation, let the seduction stretch out tantalizingly over a few days. But this was different, an urgent case of ecstasy or the agony of another sleepless night on deck and, I had no doubt, a miserable surrender the next morning--a clear, daunting matter of sink or swing.

I considered that rather than freeze alone, I would throw myself on Ellen's tender mercy, admitting that I had stowed away and begging her to let me sleep on her cabin floor. What worried me was the treachery that can lurk in the hearts of people who have paid $2000 for something toward those who are getting the same thing free. As simpatico as Ellen seemed, if I had misjudged her, my joy ride would be over. I imagined her hearing my story quietly and then suddenly screaming and pointing at me until burly sailors appeared to drag me below decks for round-the-clock beatings. So I worked at my desperate game of charm.

Ellen spun out a background of money and fatuous finishing schools and a fiancé for whom and against whom she felt equally little. I described myself as a free-lance journalist who had just interviewed Diana Ross and Raquel Welch. I wove myself into a fabulously romantic tapestry as the evening progressed, and with each glittering thread, I felt more at home in the part. A little world-weary but brash and boyishly curious, I told of adventures that I had imagined for years, forays of the suppressed soul that had been dreamed so often they were almost not lies. She talked, I talked, we drank away my precious bank roll; but by midnight we were in her cabin, where rather than throw myself on Ellen's tender mercy, I merely threw myself on tender Ellen. Farewell, midwatch, I'd found a home and all its earthly comforts.

•

A sweetly athletic night, a long shower and a breakfast of coffee, eggs and croissants in Ellen's cabin carried me far from the teetering insecurity of the day before. Ellen agreed that it didn't make sense for me to stay in the stuffy tourist-class cabin I had invented for myself. When she suggested that I bring my luggage to her cabin, I revived my story about a mix-up at the airport (I had just flown in from the Coast, where I had completed a series of interviews with Robert Altman and Diane Keaton) and suitcases to be sent on to Naples by air. With what seemed a slightly long look, Ellen nodded and told me to take off my clothes again.

She had two ulterior motives. The second turned out to be getting my three or four pieces of clothing to the ship's laundry. Clad in bathing suits, hers now a devastating yellow tank suit that, I sensed, would turn transparent in high humidity, we spent the day at the pool. Confident now that if I looked casually at home, no one would suspect I didn't belong--not even the stewards and deck officers who had, no doubt, a sixth sense for spotting poseurs--I chatted gregariously with my shipmates. I let it be known that I was a journalist, and when one of the officers seemed a bit more interested than I wanted him to be, I mentioned boldly that I hoped to be able to interview the captain during the voyage.

Transforming myself into a successful journalist, and obviously one who lived within the world I wrote about, turned out to have been a master stroke. Soon I had virtual run of the ship. I mingled easily with the officers and the guests. I (continued on page 200) First-Class Stowaway (continued from page 166) was known as the giornalista americano and I made sure everyone knew I had recently interviewed a series of film stars. My identity became accepted gossip in first class. The trick, I learned, was to keep active.

The one place that remained dangerous and off limits for me was the dining room. Each evening, I told Ellen I thought it was better for me to go back to the tourist dining room, since my horrendously boring tablemates might wonder if something had happened to me. Although Ellen's complaints about a slightly overdone beef Wellington tended to make me wince and salivate, starvation was no longer imminent. I had discovered a midnight buffet in the bar--roast beef, turkey, cheeses--at which I became a regular. Whenever I was invited into someone's cabin for a drink, I was able, between sentences, to devour the remains of bon voyage fruit.

Life as a stowaway was working out pretty well. After four days, the sun and sea and Ellen had made a new man out of me, almost as pleased with life as the character I had created. No one suspected a thing. Or at least almost no one. One couple who stayed pretty much to themselves seemed to be staring at me whenever I saw them. To a temporary con man, that can be nerve-shattering. I began to wonder if liners carried undercover detectives to watch for stowaways or drug dealers. Finally, I went over to them and introduced myself, figuring to force them out into the open. To my surprise, it turned out that they were simply intrigued by me. Andreas Raab was a photographer from Austria and his wife, Lucia, an Italian aristocrat. When I told them about my luggage disaster, Andreas immediately offered to lend me clothes. He was about my size, and I like to think his taste was what mine would be if I had the kind of money he obviously had. When Lucia and I would take walks, she would introduce me to the senior officers. Everybody seemed to know her.

This whole escapade was unfolding as if I had written the script myself. Each day, I became more a part of my stolen world, and each day, I was nautical miles closer to "the other side."

Ellen grew tamer and more sensuous. We swam, talked, made love through the afternoons. Most of our nights were spent drinking champagne with the Raabs. One evening, I learned that we were about to arrive precisely at the midway point of the Atlantic Ocean, an event that occurs all too seldom in a young man's life. Naturally, that called for a celebration. In Ellen's cabin, we finished a bottle of her Dom Perignon '71, and we each wrote a private message to the sea before recorking the empty green bottle. I went after Ellen and declared myself to Neptune. I felt almost superhuman when I saw my statement on paper. "My name is Peter Dallas and I am a stowaway on board this ship." As I hurled the bottle into the rolling, endless water, I felt incredibly lucky to have started out on the impulsive adventure.

•

Now that I had access to more formal clothes, Ellen kept on reminding me how tired she was of dining alone and how tedious it was to constantly fend off operatic young officers. If there were any difference in price to be made up, she assured me she'd take care of it. I consented to join her. She phoned ahead to ask the staff to prepare an extra place at her table that night.

Entering the dining room that evening, dressed in a white-linen jacket and slightly short gray slacks, courtesy of Andreas, I noticed at once that only the one place was set, and I knew something was wrong.

A waiter approached, stared through me and said loudly to Ellen, "We have orders. No one allowed to change tables."

"That's utterly ridic----"

"Ellen," I whispered, hoping not to let this confrontation develop, "it's not that important."

"Of course it is, Peter, they'll set a place for you immediately."

We were joined by the head of the dining room himself, a swarthy character with all the physical charm of Dracula. "He is not first-class passenger. He does not belong here!" With the magnificent gesture of a third-rate actor, he pointed toward the main doors.

"I beg your pardon!" cried Ellen. "He is with me."

"He has broken rules," boomed the maître de.

"I would have thought," said Ellen archly, "that rules were for waiters." She turned to me. "Perhaps, Peter, when you interview the captain tomorrow, you should mention the manners of his crew." The maître de scowled gigantically, wheeled and stalked away.

After a tense five-minute wait, we were served our dinner, by a waiter surely hoping I would choke on a shrimp. I drank vodka martinis and fine Bordeaux alternately until it no longer mattered that 300 other diners were staring at me.

The next morning, I was seated in my usual corner of the library, making an entry in my diary, when an announcement came over the loud-speaker instructing all passengers to remain in their class accommodations unless they had written permission from the purser's office. There was no doubt who that was meant for.

By nightfall, my confidence was totally shot. To get myself out of a gloomy downward spiral, I considered what I'd already accomplished and how I had accomplished it. The secret had been in theater, and that was how I'd finish out the trip, as an actor so in tune with his part that the audience suspended disbelief. Since Ellen had mentioned an interview with the captain, an interview with the captain I would have. I wrote out a formal request and gave it to the first officer I saw the next morning.

By afternoon, notebook and pen at the ready, I sat amid the teak splendor of Captain Francesco Pescarolo's cabin. Captain Francesco Pescarolo was an imposing figure, his crisp gray hair and tan complemented so perfectly by the white and gold of his uniform that he might have been designed by an interior decorator. His absolute power at sea seemed to hover around him like an aura. I began to wonder if I had gone too far.

"Ah," he said, after I introduced myself, "Il giornalista americano. I have been waiting to meet you."

Was there a threat implied? Did the captain know all about me? I reminded myself that there was really no reason for anyone to suspect me of being anything other than I appeared to be--a well-connected, high-living writer. I conducted a reasonably good interview, talking of the great days of ocean liners and the sad state of the future without them.

With a mad leap, just as I was closing my notebook, I asked the captain if he'd ever had anyone stow away on one of his ships. Yes, he answered, he'd arrested a man just a couple of years ago.

"What became of him?" I asked, with journalistic interest.

"He was put ashore on the Azores," the captain said. "When last I heard, he was still there."

The interview went so well that the captain gave me a tour of the bridge. As I left, he shook my hand and told me that he was happy that we had talked. He smiled paternally at his officers and down onto the gaiety of the upper decks.

"This great ship deserves to have its last chapter well told. We will reach Gibraltar tomorrow and Naples two days later. If you are in a hurry with your story and I can help you get through the immigration authorities more quickly, do not hesitate to let me know."

Naples! Somehow, in the course of my heady play-acting, my success with such a discriminating audience, I had managed to forget the inevitable end of the drama: There would come a moment to debark, and I had no passport! I suddenly had no idea what I would do; but with 48 hours left before Armageddon, I had some confessing to do. Unsure of how she'd react, I had never taken Ellen into my confidence, despite several happy postcoital temptations to tell all. The time, however, had obviously come.

Ellen was delighted with the success of my interview with the captain.

"Imagine the color he would have turned," I said, "if he'd realized he was being interviewed by a stowaway."

Ellen stared at me for about ten seconds before bursting into laughter. "This is the most incredible thing I've ever heard," she said. "It's unbelievable! Fabulous!"

Later that afternoon, drinking Dom Perignon in Andreas and Lucia's cabin, I revealed my secret to them.

"Che romantico! Che favoloso!" was Lucia's immediate reaction as the tears of delight streamed down her face. "You must be so hungry! Andreas, quick, call for some food." And then Lucia proceeded to ease my anxieties with some unexpected information.

"It's very lucky," she said, "that you have come to us with your secret. We can help you. Any trouble you can get into in Italy, my family can get you out of. I am a Caracciolo--not a princess, as you call me, but at least a countess. I am going to telegraph the press to meet the Leonardo when it docks in Naples. I will fix it so that you will be a hero in Italy." Lucia went on to explain that her family were partners in the Italian Line, of which the Leonardo da Vinci was a part, which explained the special treatment she got from all the officers, the deferential recognition whenever we went walking. I think I was more surprised to learn of her identity than she was to learn of mine.

Together, we worked out a strategy to shape inevitable events to my advantage. Andreas pointed out that being caught by immigration types would be ignominious and might lead to the bureaucratic hell of Neapolitan jails and the endless foul-ups of the Italian court system. No, the only way to end a stylish adventure was stylishly. That evening, a gala ball was scheduled for first class, and it was mutually agreed that the festive dinner and dance was the perfect setting for my exposure.

I was certain my nemesis the maître de would be there and in the inevitable row over my arrogant return to first class, the curtain would fall on my memorable final performance, as I admitted everything. Ellen allowed that she might even slap my face in outrage when I confessed, a final touch I wasn't sure I liked all that much.

In my tennis shoes and red polo shirt, topped by Andreas' blazer and pink ascot, I cut quite a dashing figure among the gowned and dinner-jacketed gentry at the gala (though not half as flamboyant as Lucia, who outdid everyone in an evening gown that can only be described as frontless, the black-lace netting hardly obscuring her ample breasts). The ship's photographer snapped away in ecstasy as he circled our party. Ironically, though, the villainous maître de was nowhere in sight. Everyone else in the hall knew me so well by then, my presence was accepted as entirely natural; so, despite my best effort to get myself dramatically captured, I succeeded only in enjoying thoroughly the ship's most impressive social event.

My next move, the following morning, within sight of the Portuguese coast, was a written confession. I prepared a letter that I gave Ellen to give to the captain. I told her I'd be waiting on the top deck and that's where she could tell the captain's men to find me. By two p.m., I stood waiting, facing the bow, hair whipping cinematically in the wind. In surrendering I would be dignified, with perhaps just the trace of a smile on my roughhewn visage.

When two curious officers finally came for me at five p.m., I was a nervous wreck. The ship had arrived at Gibraltar, and in the commotion of docking, I was afraid I'd been forgotten.

"You are the man who interviewed the captain, no?"

"No. I mean, yes, I am."

"Come this way, please."

It was all very polite. But the interrogation that followed would have done justice to any World War Two spy movie. I was led into the office of the Leonardo's chief purser, a portly man sweating profusely despite the breeze coming through his portholes. He flung papers in my face, including a Xerox copy of my letter of confession and a color photograph of Ellen and me at last night's gala.

"Do you know this woman?" he demanded. It seemed a strange question. There she was, after all, in living color, with her arms around my neck. Three men who turned out to be plainclothes security guards began to throw questions at me from every side.

Finally, I interrupted the purser as he raised his voice in yet another question.

"Signore, I don't know why you're going through all this, since I've already confessed. But may I say you do it no less well than everything else is done on the Da Vinci?"

Suddenly, we were all laughing. Somewhat apologetically, the purser explained that, under international maritime law, I must be put in the brig. I assured him that I wanted no special treatment, that part of my karma was surely to experience the process of arrest and imprisonment. Everyone seemed to like that touch. One of the security guards handed me a pack of Marlboros, shook my hand, and then I was led down...down...down.... The brig was a metal room down among the humming turbines, with no windows and walls that slanted with the lower hull of the ship.

After a day of staring at my gray walls, wondering what Ellen was doing, I felt the engines stop and realized we'd arrived in Naples. I waited to be summoned above deck. When, after an indeterminate time, we began to move again, I panicked. Was I to be left here to starve? Half an hour later, a crew member appeared at my door.

"What happened?" I demanded. "Where are we?"

"American consul no show," he said. "But you are free to go. Captain's orders."

"Go where?"

"Back to first class, until we return to Italy."

The crew member escorted me to the dining room, where the passengers were having lunch. As I entered, they gave me a tremendous ovation. I found Ellen, Lucia and Andreas and joined them at the table, but the meal was interrupted every five minutes by autograph seekers who invariably asked me to append "stowaway" to my signature.

Ellen was frantic. "We didn't know if you were still on the ship or not," she said. "We were at the pier in full force--TV cameras, radio stations and all the Italian newspapers. Then Lucia stormed back into the captain's office and demanded that you get better treatment. She was formidable. 'I forbid you to treat him like this. He is not a prisoner, he is a gentleman.' And, you see, the captain obliged."

Nevertheless, I knew I was in a precarious situation. I had arrived in a foreign country without a passport, or even identification. I had no way of proving who I was or that I was an American citizen. From what Lucia could learn, I would probably be put in intensive security, where there was little she or her family could do for me. The captain had told her that the U. S. consul was not amused by my adventure and might be slow to help me establish my identity. And, finally, Richard had probably sent my passport to Naples, but the ship's next stop was Cannes, and then Genoa.

After hearing the possible extent of my plight, Ellen decided to disembark at Cannes and take the first plane back to the States, to help me straighten things out with the State Department in Washington.

"But what about your fiancé?" I asked, not really caring about him.

"George won't have to know. I'll take a plane to Africa and I won't even lose a day. One way or another," she promised recklessly, "I'll be at the airport in New York when you return, with a silver limousine."

"And a brass band?"

"And a blind chauffeur," she swore, with a smile that almost made me believe she would be there.

When we reached Genoa, just before I was escorted back to the purser's office, I bade farewell to Andreas and Lucia. "We'll drink champagne together in Rome and in New York," said the countess, kissing me on both cheeks.

I spent the next few days in hysterically intense prayer. I forswore strong drink, loose women, tight pants, vile language, littering, jaywalking, cutting in lines, even slamming down phone receivers. Eventually, the door to the brig was yanked open and an excited crewman led me up on deck, where the captain, the purser and a line of ship's officers shook my hand. Then a squad of uniformed police, shouting at one another all at once, hustled me off the Leonardo. On the pier, a mob comprised entirely of prepubescent girls chanted my name like cheerleaders, while paparazzi pushed through the crowds, popping flashbulbs. Someone handed me a newspaper with my picture on the front page. Thanks to Lucia's brilliant advance work, I had apparently become a glamorous outlaw to Italians anxious to take their minds off terrorism and inflation.

I was immediately taken to a civil-court room, where I was handed what seemed like 1,000,000 papers to sign, one of which committed me to paying back the $1500 I owed to the Italian Line--half my passage over and $600 for the armed guards who had shuttled me around. My next and last stop in Europe was the airport in Milan.

After all this, dear reader, you and I deserve a happy ending, and we shall have it. Outside the International Arrivals Building at Kennedy Airport, the silver limo was waiting, with Ellen inside. Her good old George was still waiting in Africa, and may be waiting there even now. The driver was not blind, as promised, but his rearview mirror had been taped over by my foresighted, soft and silky first-class angel.

"No one would suspect I didn't belong--not even stewards with a sixth sense for spotting poseurs."

"We finished the Dom Perignon '71, and each wrote a private message before recorking the bottle."