The Unsinkable Greta James(14)

“You say that like it’s a sailboat. They’ve got everything here. Why don’t you try the casino? Or go shopping at one of those stores in the atrium?”

Greta stares at him. “Is that what you think I like to do?”

“I have no idea what you like to do,” he says. “Except play guitar.”

“Well, I tried that already, and my neighbors weren’t too pleased.”

He rolls his eyes. “Please try not to get kicked off the ship, okay?”

“What could they even do?” she asks. “Send me off on a dinghy?”

“I don’t know, but let’s not find out.”

Over his shoulder, she sees the Blooms and the Fosters, all looking equally refreshed, and when the doors open, they file into the auditorium behind a decent-sized crowd, pretty much all of them in their seventies.

Mary leans over to whisper to Greta as they take their seats. “Have you read it?” she asks, gesturing at the image of Ben’s cover, which is being projected on a screen at the back of the stage. “We did it for book club. It’s beautiful.”

“I’ve never even read Call of the Wild,” Greta says, her eyes wandering around the room, which is more than half full. This is where they hold the big shows at night, the dancers and comedians and magicians that pull in large crowds, so it’s actually not a bad turnout, though already an elderly man is snoring behind her. It sounds like a buzz saw, but his companions either don’t notice or aren’t bothered by it.

A thought occurs to her, and she turns back to Mary. “When?” she asks with more urgency than intended. “When did you read it for book club?”

At first, Mary looks confused. But then it clicks and she gives Greta’s hand a sympathetic pat. “Your mom loved it too,” she says with a smile.

When Ben walks out, Greta sits forward. He’s wearing a tweed blazer with a blue-and-white checkered shirt underneath, and he spreads his arms wide and grins at the audience.

“Wow,” he says, looking delighted by the size of the crowd. “I guess we have a lot of Jack London buffs on this ship, huh?”

The audience chuckles at this.

“How many people here have read The Call of the Wild?” Ben asks, and quite a few hands go up. His eyes comb the theater, and when he notices Greta, he pauses for a second, looking surprised. She half-raises her hand, deciding she must’ve at least seen the movie at some point. Mary gives her a sideways look, and Greta shrugs.

“How about White Fang?” Ben asks, pulling his eyes away from her, and Greta lowers her hand as several new ones go up. “Okay, great. That’s not bad. But I have a feeling I’m about to stump you all. Who here has read The Cruise of the Dazzler?”

There’s a ripple of laughter when people twist around to see that there are no longer any raised hands. Ben stares at them in mock astonishment.

“C’mon, folks. That was one of his first novels. The Cruise of the Dazzler. Very important for our purposes here today, since you should all know that I’m planning to be the dazzler of this cruise.”

On the other side of her, Eleanor lets out a bark of a laugh. “Corny but cute,” she says, leaning in to whisper to Greta. “Just my type.”

Ben introduces himself but he doesn’t linger on his own story. Instead, he moves right into talking about Jack London’s perilous journey through Alaska at the height of the Klondike gold rush, and all the writing that came out of those long wintry months in the Yukon. Greta had expected it to be kind of boring, listening to him discuss the importance of the stories in a historical context and the problematic aspects in a modern one. But it’s not. He’s not Billy Joel at the Garden; he’s not Springsteen at Asbury Park. But he’s a good speaker, and he brings the past to life in a way that keeps everyone’s attention. Which is no easy feat, given that it’s probably nap time for half the audience.

When it’s time for questions, he calls on a woman in the front row who is waving her hand so hard it looks like she’s trying to hail a cab. “How long did it take you to write your book?” she asks, then sits back in her seat, satisfied.

“Oh,” Ben says mildly. He adjusts his glasses, then gives her a smile. “Well, I suppose you could say it took most of my life, since I’ve been thinking about Jack London since I was a kid. But as for the actual writing, maybe a couple years. I had done a lot of the research already, just from a lifetime of interest.”

“But it’s fiction,” says a man sitting a few rows down. “So that’s got to be harder. You had to make the story exciting too.”

Greta finds it amusing that so many of the questions about his process are similar to the ones she’s asked again and again in interviews, and she can tell that his answers—like hers—are somewhat canned at this point. But still, everyone is leaning forward with genuine interest, waiting to hear what he has to say, and it occurs to her that they must have read the book. All of them. For some reason, this comes as a surprise.

When the talk is over, her dad starts to head out along with the Fosters and the Blooms. “Don’t want to be late for bingo,” Mary says as she scoots past Greta’s knees. “You coming?”

Greta glances at her dad, trying to gauge whether he’d like her to, but to her relief, he’s already walked off with Davis and Todd.