Cable took a cigarette with a nod of the head. I leaned back and realized at once I’d forgotten to offer a match. But before I could, he started patting his pockets and found a box right away. If he had matches in the tux, he also had cigarettes. I didn’t let my smile show. I would’ve bet that at least half the moneyed swells in first class had that same reflex, to save a few pennies at every chance. I lit my cigarette and shifted to Brauer.
He looked at me while he took a drag, but then he turned his face away and watched his own plume of smoke dissipate in the thickening air. He was still trying to effectively revise his opinion of me as simply a rube.
My next move with Brauer and Cable would have to be covert anyway, so tonight I figured I’d keep playing the nosy rube card till they got wise that something was up.
“Where are you staying in London, Mr. Cable?”
“The Waldorf,” he said, without hesitation, one of the poshest places in the city.
“Those must be some pretty rare books,” I said. The man wasn’t traveling solely on German money. He had family dough as well, I bet.
Cable laughed at this. A full, spontaneous laugh. Not quite what I expected.
I went back to Brauer while his confederate was still keeping the mood light. I said, “The Waldorf’s on Aldwych. That’s right near your college, isn’t it?”
“Purely coincidental,” Brauer said. Two things struck me about this. It came out quickly and unemphasized, bearing the timbre of truth, to my ear. He was anxious to stress the casualness of their association. The latter I expected. I’d have to think about the former.
I stayed with Brauer. “It’s a nice neighborhood. Do you have rooms nearby?”
Brauer turned his face away, toward Cable. He didn’t want to talk about himself. Naturally not. But it was worth my trying.
It all happened quickly, but Brauer’s eyes narrowed a bit in looking toward his companion and I got the feeling he was afraid the man was about to answer for him.
Brauer turned back to me and he used his acidic tone to let me know that this meant no: “The neighborhood is full of theaters.”
“That’s bad?” I said. “Prima facie?”
“Of course.”
I thought to mention Mother, just to keep provoking him. He took a long drag on his dwindling cigarette and clearly had no more to say about his residence.
But before I could speak, Cable piped up. “He lives near Buckingham Palace.”
Brauer shot Cable a look, not quite irritated but not quite satisfied with their coordination.
“So he says,” Cable added, with a playful little twirl of the words. I figured he was suddenly aware that his statement seemed to contradict their just having met.
Brauer said, “Merely a small bachelor flat in a building full of them. Not typical Saint James’s.”
They were an odd sort of vaudeville team, these two, in their public roles. It made me wonder if I’d gotten one or the other or both of them wrong. But Trask had no doubt about Brauer. And these two were fast and seemingly exclusive companions three days into the voyage. Which was why Brauer was here. Trask wanted more from me than Cable’s name, but that wasn’t going to come in casual conversation.
I wanted to read Brauer’s face once more. I’d found in the ward rooms and courthouse corridors of Chicago that the most boldly direct question sometimes actually got an answer, or at least a revealing evasion.
So I turned back to Cable and said, “Rare books must be pretty good money, but Dr. Brauer and I are living way over our heads traveling Cunard Saloon.” I came back to Brauer and looked him straight in the eyes. “Forget hod carriers and dirt farmers. Underpaid teachers and newswriters are the ones ripe for the Bolsheviks. I got a whole syndicate footing my bill to the war. How’d you wangle first class, Doc?”
His eyes did not shift away from mine. The pause in him was minute. He said, “It was God’s will.”
6
This sank the conversation.
Brauer grew even less willing to speak. Cable grew thoughtful. I understood I had to take other measures to learn anything more about these two.
I stubbed my cigarette and excused myself and went out of the Smoking Room at the promenade door.
The night was bright with stars.
I walked forward a ways, in the direction of the entrance door to the stateroom corridor.
I could take the most obvious of the next measures right now. I had a small leather roll of picks, rakes, and miniature torque wrenches and a few weeks of intensive training and rehearsal in their use. I’d pick Brauer’s cabin lock and go in.
But I didn’t know how long the boys would linger in the Smoking Room. They weren’t having a swell experience there so far. I didn’t want Brauer walking in on me. Better to wait till the dinner hour tomorrow so I had a substantial and predictable block of time.
A couple approached, leaning into each other and talking low, and they straightened abruptly as they saw me. I passed. They were, I was willing to bet, a shipboard romance just beginning, from their new ardor risking a public show of their feelings but not wanting anyone to actually notice. A little farther along, the canvas cover of Lifeboat 10 was in place but undone at the prow. I listened as I went by. I could hear rustlings inside. Still another couple. They’d been careful to put the tarp back into place, but of course they couldn’t refasten it from the inside. These two were young. Each of them traveling with parents or siblings, sharing their staterooms, stealing some privacy.
I liked the nascent romances. Liked it professionally. I thought a good activity tonight would be to go to my Corona Portable Number 3—which was a swell companion who never failed to take me by the fingertips and lead me to my newswriter self — and work on the lead paragraphs of my feature story. Young love blooming, ragtime playing, and the swells of London and New York dolling up as we rushed toward the War Zone.
I reached the aft doorway into the A Deck stateroom corridors. I stopped. Before me in the deck wall were the portholes — rectangular, with iron flower filigrees crowning them — proper windows at sea. I counted them along: one for the first small stateroom and then a gap for the vent and for, I suspected, the en suite bathroom, and then the two windows of the suite. Selene’s suite. They were lit. I stepped toward the railing and I could see that the curtains were drawn in both. She was inside. She was awake.
I was grinding a bit now in places on my body I did not want to think about. I’d exchanged words with her. One could even consider that we’d flirted ever so slightly, ever so preliminarily. But what took no consideration at all was that she’d vanished. She’d known where to find me, if she’d been so inclined, but she’d vanished.
I entered at the door and turned down the immediate forward-leading corridor — which, however, led straight past her suite — and I started to stride along, conscious of my first two footfalls, hearing the clear squinch of them on the rubberized floor tiles, wondering if she heard them, and I stopped abruptly, as if to quiet the racket I was making. Not incidentally, however, I was standing now before her door. But I did not knock. I did not make a further sound, except perhaps for a quick intake of air. And perhaps a brief clearing of the throat. Loud enough, I supposed. But I strode on, forgetting to walk softly — I was beyond her suite anyway now — and then I was at the turning of the corridor. I stopped again. Without a plan. Intending — sincerely — simply to take another buck-up-boy big breath or two and then vanish into my stateroom.
And I heard the click of an opening door behind me.
I turned.
Selene was standing just outside her suite, her crimson kimono wrapped around her, her golden dragons plunging down her chest. Her hair was up. Her legs and feet were bare. She saw it was me. She’d suspected it was me. She’d come out because it was me.