She didn’t see Adam till the end of lunch. Her parents had opted for the buffet instead of the sit-down dining room, which suited salad-loving Sarah, and she was excusing herself from their table when she saw Adam at the beverage dispenser. She felt daring; she walked up to him and murmured something about an afternoon nap. He glanced at her with a look that cycled from surprise to glee. “Of course,” he nodded.

He had to finish his laundry first. That should have shot the mood or at least provoked an agreement to meet a little later, but it was like they’d found one another by accident, latched on in an eddy, and neither was willing to let go. Each was amused, beguiled, aboard. They folded his stretched white briefs and his thin white undershirts together.

So began the strangest happiest affair either ever had. Passengers assumed they were an established couple. They often walked around the Promenade Deck together, and they were compatibly sociable. After each evening’s show they went to the bar above the bridge, where Adam sat at the piano and played whatever the drinking passengers requested. Sarah drank countless cups of ship’s coffee. She didn’t mind the time at all. That was unusual for her, but she felt easy. She enjoyed the music and waited for Adam to close the piano, shake down his unbuttoned white cuffs, say his goodnights and walk her out of there, hand confidently cupped under her elbow, to his cabin and good-humored affection.

Neither was bothered about the time spent with others – in fact they basked in the social approval, their eyes and smiles meeting across the conversation with whichever passengers accosted them – but they giggled like kids out of school when they got alone. And they agreed that the nights were too precious to waste in sleep, so they kept drinking coffee and talking. They traded nightmares.

Both of them had recurring dreams about architecture. These weren’t horrific, but they were disturbing enough to be described. Adam thought his was triggered by his recent move. After a lifetime in Manhattan he had tried to be a husband and father in a New Jersey suburb. He bought a car and even got somewhat comfortable driving it, before he acquired the divorce. And since then, wanting to be close to his daughter, he had remained in the suburban neighborhood. He hated the place. He was starting to consider a move back to the city. He was trying to justify an arrangement where he’d only be able to see Ellen on some weekend afternoons. His recurring dream had him lost in the floorplan of a ranch house in his despicable neighborhood, under extreme pressure to find his way out (and his jacket) in order to make it to an important gig. He interpreted it as combining geographical incompatibility with a dose of performance anxiety. He noticed that the closer he got to deciding to return to a small space in the big city, the more creative his brain became. He was finally composing again, late nights on this very trip, and he hoped that signified a return to some better version of his former self.

Sarah’s dream was more recurrent. She been having it as long as she could remember. Every time it played it seemed familiar and ancient.

It was set in a house. She could have drawn the floorplan, she’d been there so often. It was built on a slope and was taller at its back end than its front. The property was dotted with tall deciduous trees: birch or maybe aspen.

The dream always had her moving through the house for some natural reason. And it always ended with her discovery of the unused room. Off the kitchen – an interior space with no windows. Sarah’s progress through the house seemed to spiral inward like a nautilus shell, to the forgotten room. She always experienced a moment of recognition as she entered it (“Oh yeah, this place”), and then the anxiety started (“This time I won’t forget. How how how shall I use this room?”) as the dream ended.

That was serious talk for Adam and Sarah. Most of the time they were telling jokes or stories. And always they were touching.

Adam sold recordings of himself playing and of course he gave Sarah one the night before the cruise ended. He refused to sign it (“What would I write? best wishes?” he joked with a significant look). He insisted, to Sarah and her parents, that he would see them all soon.

It was odd how Sarah went from well-adjusted appreciative six-day lover to passionate wreck, but that’s what happened. She was okay when she said goodnight to Adam alone for the last time, at 4:30 that final morning. Instead of sleeping a few hours, she turned from that embrace and assumed a prone position diagonally on her narrow bed, where she began writing an erotic sonnet that she viewed as the lyrics to whatever melody Adam was then composing. Every night when he’d left her it was to work in his lined composition book, but only on that last one did she mimic him.

She was okay then, but at disembarkation time she surprised herself, startled her parents, and alarmed Adam. She broke down saying goodbye to him. Her face swelled, her eyes filled, her voice choked. The emotions were sudden and uncontrollable. She managed to board the bus and hunker up against a window. She continued quietly crying all the way from the dock to downtown Anchorage.

Her sobs upset him. He tried to put them out of his mind but her grief seemed too extreme to disregard. He called her once, from San Juan while working on a Puerto Rican run, but the connection was bad and half of their sentences were garbled. And although he had given her his P.O. box and invited whatever, the love poems she sent didn’t charm him.