I wondered if Shirley realized it was Andy who'd just dropped the line. I stared at the plate of food in front of me. Mashed potatoes. Cauliflower smothered in cream sauce. White meat smothered in white sauce. The brochure had said the hotel cuisine was superb. It didn't necessarily say it would be colorful. I poked at the meat with my fork. "What is this?" I whispered to Jane.

She scraped away some of the sauce. "Uff da. I think it's whitefish." Uff da is a common expression among Norwegians in Iowa. From what I can figure, it means, 'Holy crap!'"

"What's this under all the white sauce?" boomed Dick Rassmuson.

"It's chicken," said his wife.

Dick Teig shook his head. "Tastes like pork to me. But it's not as good as Iowa pork."

"Well, it looks like Seashells and Snow to me," said Shirley. "That shade was a really big seller last Christmas. Part of the Pearlized collection."

"I think it looks more like shit on a shingle," Andy offered, sending the Dicks into gales of loud, hysterical laughter and table pounding.

I shook my head. Nana had a point about being punctual. If you were on time, you had a choice about whom you wanted to eat with. Tomorrow night, I planned on being really early and sitting as far away from these guys as possible.

"What did you think of the food?" I asked Nana, when we returned to the room after dinner.

"There's probably children starvin' in China who would've loved that meal, but frankly, I found the white sauce on the veal a little lumpy."

"You had veal? We had chicken. Or pork. Or maybe whitefish."

"You had veal, dear. The entire dinin' room was served veal."

"How do you know that? You must have asked. I tried to ask, but our waiter didn't speak English."

"I read the menu. It was in a plastic holder in the middle of the table. And since you were so late, you missed the announcement Wally made before dinner."

I didn't want to hear. He'd probably warned us not to eat any food we couldn't identify.

"He said to remember the faces of the people you were eatin' with tonight because you're supposed to eat at the same table with the same people for the rest a the trip. I guess that works out better with the waiters and tippin'."

"The same people? No. NO!" I flopped onto the bed and buried my face in the crook of my elbow. I considered my options. I supposed I could give up eating in the dining room and subsist on Swiss chocolate for the next nine days. This would require my having to walk back to Iowa to get rid of all the fat calories, but I didn't have a job to rush back to, so I had the time. And chocolate releases serotonin into the brain, so I'd be happy.

"Did you see our waiter, Emily? We all agreed he looks like a young Sean Connery. He wears a little gold hoop in his right ear, though. Does that mean somethin'?"