“Why, Reg.”

This was a point you always got to with Reg. First time they met was on a cruise, if you think of “cruise” in maybe more of a specialized way. In the wake of her separation, back in what still isn’t quite The Day, from her then husband, Horst Loeffler, after too many hours indoors with the blinds drawn listening on endless repeat to Stevie Nicks singing “Landslide” on a compilation tape she ignored the rest of, drinking horrible Crown Royal Shirley Temples and chasing them with more grenadine directly from the bottle and going through a bushel per day of Kleenex, Maxine finally allowed her friend Heidi to convince her that a Caribbean cruise would somehow upgrade her mental prognosis. One day she went sniffling down the hall from her office and into the In ’n’ Out Travel Agency, where she found undusted surfaces, beat-up furniture, a disheveled model of an ocean liner that shared a number of design elements with RMS Titanic.

“You’re in luck. We’ve just had a . . .” Long pause, no eye contact.

“Cancellation,” suggested Maxine.

“You could say.” The price was irresistible. To anyone in their right mind, too much so.

Her parents were more than happy to look after the boys. Maxine, still runny-nosed, found herself in a taxi with Heidi, who’d come along to see her off, headed for a terminal in Newark or possibly Elizabeth, which seemed to handle mostly freighters, in fact Maxine’s “cruise” ship turned out to be the Hungarian tramp container vessel M/V Aristide Olt, sailing under a Marshallese flag of convenience. It wasn’t till her first night out at sea that she learned she’d actually been booked into “AMBOPEDIA Frolix ’98,” a yearly gathering of the American Borderline Personality Disorder Association. Great fun, who would have dreamt of canceling? Unless . . . aahhh! She gazed back at Heidi on the pier, possibly having some schadenfreude, diminishing into the industrial shoreline, which by now was too far away to swim to.

At the first seating for dinner that evening, she found a crowd in the mood to party, gathered beneath a banner reading WELCOME BORDERLINES! The captain appeared nervous and kept finding excuses to spend time under the tablecloth of his table. About every minute and a half, a deejay cued up the semiofficial AMBOPEDIA anthem, Madonna’s “Borderline” (1984), with everybody joining in on the part that goes “O-verthe bor-derlinnne!!!” with a peculiar emphasis on the final n sound. Some sort of tradition, Maxine imagined.

Later in the evening, she noticed a calmly drifting presence, eyeball stuck to a viewfinder, taping lensworthy targets of opportunity with a Sony VX2000, moving from guest to guest, allowing them to talk or not talk, whatever, and this turned out to be Reg Despard.

Thinking it might be a way out of this possibly horrible mistake she’d made, she tried to follow him on his pathway among the merrymakers. “Hey,” after a while, “a stalker, I’m finally in the big time.”

“Didn’t mean to—”

“No, actually you could help me distract them a little, not feel so self-conscious.”

“Wouldn’t want to compromise your cred, I’m weeks overdue at the colorist, this whole puttogether here ran me under a hundred bucks at Filene’s Basement—”

“Don’t think that’s what they’ll be checkin out.”

Well. When was the last time anybody suggested even this obliquely that she qualified as . . . maybe not arm candy, but arm popcorn maybe? Should she be offended? How little?

Tracking from one group of attendees to another, locating presently a normal-enough-looking citizen with an interest in migratory-bird hunting and conservation stamps, known to collectors as duck stamps, and his perhaps-less-involved wife, Gladys—

“ . . . and my dream is to become the Bill Gross of duck stamps.” Not only federal duck stamps, mind you, but every state issue as well—having wandered with the years into the seductive wetlands of philatelic zealotry, this by-now-shameless completist must have them all, hunters’ and collectors’ versions, artist-signed, remarques, varieties, freaks and errors, governors’ editions . . . “New Mexico! New Mexico issued duck stamps only from 1991 through 1994, ending with the crown jewel of all duck stamps, Robert Steiner’s supernaturally beautiful Green-Winged Teals in flight, of which I happen to own a plate block . . .”

“Which someday,” Gladys announces chirpily, “I am going to take out of its archival plastic, compromise the gum on the back with my slobbering tongue, and use to send in the gas bill.”

“Not valid for postage, honeybunch.”

“You staring at my ring?” A woman in a beige eighties power suit entering the shot.

“Attractive piece. Something . . . familiar . . .”

“I don’t know if you’re a Dynasty person, but that time Krystle had to pawn her ring? this is a cubic zirconia knockoff, $560, retail of course, Irwin always pays retail, being the 301 point 83 in the relationship, I’m just the supportive partner. He drags me to these things every year, and I end up pigging my way into a mid-two-figures dress size ’cause there’s never anybody to talk to.”

“Don’t listen to her, she’s the one who has all two hundred–whatever episodes on Betamax. Focused? you have no idea—sometime in the mid-eighties, she actually changed her name to Krystle. A less understanding husband might call this unnatural.”

Reg and Maxine find their way eventually to the onboard casino, where people in ill-fitting tuxedos and gowns are playing roulette and baccarat, chain-smoking, leering back and forth, and grimly waving fistfuls of make-believe money. “Jujubes,” they’re informed, “Generic Undiagnosed James Bond Syndrome, whole different support group. Hasn’t made it into the DSM yet, but they’re lobbying, maybe the fifth edition . . . always welcome here at convention time mostly for the stability, see what I’m saying.” Actually, Maxine didn’t, but bought a “five-dollar” chip and walked away from the table with enough, had it been real money, for a short trip to Saks if and when she was lucky enough to get back off of this.

At some point a face rosy with drink, fatefully belonging to one Joel Wiener, appears in the viewfinder. “Yeah, I get it, you recognize me from the news coverage, and now I’m just camera fodder, right? even though I was acquitted, in fact for the third time, on charges of that nature.” Proceeding to unstopper a lengthy epic of injustice, somehow related to Manhattan real estate, that Maxine has trouble following in all of its nuances. Maybe she should have, it could’ve saved her some trouble down the line.

Borderlines by the boatload. Eventually Maxine and Reg find a quiet few minutes out on deck watching the Caribbean glide by. Cargo containers tower everywhere, stacked up four or five high. Like being in certain parts of Queens. Not yet mentally all the way on board this cruise, she finds herself wondering how many of the containers are dummies and what the chances might be for some seagoing inventory fraud in progress here.

She notices Reg hasn’t made any attempt to get her on videotape. “I didn’t have you figured for a borper. Thought you might be staff, like a social director or something.” Surprised that it’s been, oh, maybe an hour or more since she last thought about the Horst situation, Maxine understands that if she gets so much as a toenail’s worth into that subject, Reg’s camera will come on again.

The long-standing practice at these AMBOPEDIA get-togethers is to visit literal geographical borderlines, a different one every year. Shopping tours at Mexican maquiladora outlets. Gambling-addiction indulgence at the casinos of Stateline, California. Pennsylvania Dutch pig-outs along the Mason-Dixon Line. This year the destination borderline is between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, uneasy with melancholy karma dating back to the days of the Perejil Massacre, little of which has found its way into the brochure. As the Aristide Olt sails into picturesque Manzanillo Bay, things rapidly grow unfocused. No sooner has the ship tied up to the pier at Pepillo Salcedo than passengers preoccupied with large fish are excitedly chartering boats to go out after tarpon. Others, like Joel Wiener, whom real estate has driven from curiosity into obsession, are soon cruising local agencies and being dragged into the fantasies of those from whose motives greed, not to mention fuck-the-yanqui, must not be ruled out.