Lost Girls by George D Shuman

strangely detached from her body. Her linen napkin fell to the floor. She snagged a nylon trying to extricate herself from her chair. Bob, chatting with the captain, now turned and started to rise, but she put a hand on his shoulder, pushed him down firmly, and led her daughter a few steps away.
    A young blond woman had taken a position behind the Italian captain, touched him lightly on his shoulder, and stooped to reveal faultless breasts. She smiled as she was introduced around the table. Carol saw Bob reach to take the woman’s hand, then turn to look at her, winking when he saw Theresa.
    “She was supposed to come back to the bar,” Theresa repeated. “I’m sure that’s what she said, but she didn’t and then I thought maybe I had it wrong, that she told me she’d meet me in the room or something. I was going to look around the plaza, but then the ship whistle blew and I came right back.”
    Carol wanted to reach out and shake her daughter, to get her to repeat what she’d said earlier and to put it in some context that made sense. But the girl looked distressed enough.
    “I was sure she’d be back in the stateroom, Mom. You know, getting ready for dinner.” Tears began to pool in her eyes. “When she wasn’t in the room I thought she must have already gone to meet you. I called your room, but no one answered; you were already gone, so I didn’t know where to look for you. I got ready for dinner.”
    Carol’s eyes glassed over. “We were having drinks with Ed and Marge….” Suddenly her voice trailed off; she was feeling the effects of the champagne, probably it was her empty stomach or maybe it was something cerebral, some knowledge that her world was changing and that it would never again be the same. “Call her,” she said frantically. “Call her cell phone, for Christ’s sake.”
    “Mom, I’ve been calling her for two hours.”
    “Call the bar, the place you had drinks, what was that place?”
    “I did that too.”
    Carol looked down at her feet and saw a scuff mark on one white shoe. “She didn’t get on the ship?” Carol’s voice was husky, her eyes looked helpless. “That’s what you’re saying.” She looked back to the table and to Bob and the captain. “Excuse me,” she said, stumbling toward them. “Bob?” she called out. “Bob, I need to talk to you.”
    A few minutes later the ship’s captain was reassuring them that this kind of thing happened all the time. That her daughter was surely on board the vessel. “Young girls meet young boys.” He smiled, hands clasped over his gleaming silverware as if cheering, looking up at the young blond woman at his shoulder. “Sometimes the heart drowns out the wisdom of the mind and, well, there are escapades and rendezvous and most likely…”
    Carol leaned down and put her lips against the captain’s ear. “Get out of your fucking chair,” she whispered icily.

7
W ESTERN H AITI
    Jill Bishop woke in cool sweat, heat radiating from the walls of the cell that confined her. She was groggy and nauseated by the searing pain below her waist. Vomit had dried around the corners of her mouth.
    There was a door made of wood and a slot in it at eye level. Behind her on the wall was another small opening through which she saw daylight, an air vent.
    She could smell the stench of body odor and vomit and raw sewage. She could feel the grit of dirt and sand under her bare legs. Someone had put her underwear, shirt, and skirt back on, but she did not see her shoes. She tried to lift her head, but the motion triggered a skull-splitting spike of pain through the center of her forehead; she began to have flashbacks of a room painted red, a gynecologist’s chair; she had been strapped to it and her head had been placed in a viselike device so that she could move only her eyes. An old black man with white hair gave her a shot between her toes with a hypodermic needle. There were bottles of dark liquids on a metal tray beside him and a camera on