On Thin Icing by Ellie Alexander

corduroy checked cap.
    “Nice to meet you, Dean,” I replied, raising my eyes at Carlos. “I’m Jules, I’ll be catering the weekend, and this is…” I paused. “Carlos—another chef.”
    “I noticed the aprons. What’s Torte?” Dean asked.
    “It’s my family’s bakeshop back home in Ashland.”
    “I believe I know the place. On the plaza?” Dean took a large swig of the wine that Tony placed in front of him. “I’ve been there before. Yes, yes, I had excellent homemade crisps. Quite nice.”
    “Thanks.” I sipped the wine. It tasted like berries with a hint of tobacco. The finish was smooth. It should pair well with the hearty meal we had planned.
    Carlos swirled the burgundy liquid in his glass.
    Tony glared at him. “What, are you going to stare at it, or drink it already?”
    “You know Galileo?” Carlos asked.
    Tony continued to glare at him.
    Carlos pretended not to notice. “He said ‘Wine is sunlight, held together by water.’ This you drink slowly.” Carlos raised his glass higher in the air and swirled it again.
    “Knock yourself out, man.” Tony filled a wine glass to the top and chugged it. He challenged Carlos with a sneer as he emptied the glass. A bartender drinking on the job is strictly prohibited. It would be a fireable offense on the cruise ship. My girlfriends used to say that Carlos was a lover not a fighter. I think it was due to his Spanish roots, and his passion for food. Like most executive chefs, Carlos could be a bit of a snob when it came to food and wine. Not that I blamed him. Chefs are supposed to have superior palates, but Carlos’s dedication to his craft had gotten him into disagreements with guests in the past.
    I remember one incident when a passenger complained that his hamburger was too pink. Carlos was having a particularly bad day. He stormed out of the kitchen with a charred hunk of beef. The overweight sunburned guest didn’t have time to blink when Carlos dropped the blackened burger that looked more like a hockey puck on his plate and said, “Is this too pink?” He stormed away before the poor guest had a chance to respond.
    Carlos was so well loved by all the staff, and the vast majority of passengers, that he barely got reprimanded for the event. He tossed and turned that night. I remember him sitting up in bed at four o’clock in the morning. “Julieta, why do I let these things get under my skin?”
    “Because you love what you do. That’s a good thing.” I massaged his back.
    He rested his head on my chest. “Yes, and it also makes me do stupid things sometimes. It is time for us to leave this life, and build our own dream, don’t you think?”
    I did. Carlos and I had been planning to leave the vast ocean behind for dry land. We’d been tucking away extra cash, which was easy to do since life on the ship included everything we needed from our meals to our tiny cabin. We didn’t partake of extravagant adventures while docked. We preferred to find hidden local gems off the beaten path, like a little cottage on the Irish coast where the owner served us eight courses on her great-grandmother’s china. Or the bistro we discovered in a French alleyway where the chef brought up four bottles of wine from his private cellar. We noshed on small plates and drank so much wine that Carlos and I both stumbled back to the ship.
    Those plans were distant memories now.
    Tony’s burly voice shook me back into the present. “So, hot chef, how’s the wine?”
    Hot chef. That was a new one. “It’s nice,” I replied.
    Carlos stepped in front of me. “That is no way to address Julieta.”
    “Hoo-lee-what-a?” Tony walked around the front of the bar. “Come find me later. We’ll go someplace quiet, if you know what I mean.” He pinched my waist.
    I smacked his hand away.
    Carlos jumped between us and held his arm in front of me. “You do not speak to my wife like that.” He poked Tony in the chest.
    Tony arched his back. “You wanna go,