The Deep

by Alma Katsu

  “Aha!” Les said, and swiveled around, with a bottle of what looked to be mighty fancy American whiskey—bourbon, he’d heard it called. “Vi?” he said familiarly, rummaging out a glass. “And don’t worry—we’ll just add water to the bottle. He’ll never know the difference.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t,” Violet said nervously, though Dai noticed she didn’t tell him to stop. No one ever told Les to stop.

  “Well then, just the gentlemen,” he said lavishly, pouring a drink for himself and handing one to Dai.

  Dai sipped on it—the stinging warmth felt good, loosened him up. He had a simultaneous rising of contradictory emotions, both wanting to get drunk with Les on rich men’s whiskey with not a care for the consequences, to laugh with abandon . . . and on the other side of it, a tiny current of dread. A voice that said, Brace yourself. Here we go again.

  Les poured a third, smaller serving, and set it on a side table. “In case you should change your mind,” he said to Violet with a wink. She blushed.

  He plopped into one of the cushy purple chairs by the porthole and crossed his legs, leaning back. “I know we shouldn’t,” Les said, with that wicked grin again, “but rich just feels so right.” He was rubbing the side of the chair as if petting an exotic animal. Then he produced a pack of cards. “Let’s have that hand of poker, shall we?” Les had joked that he’d show Violet how to play a game called strip poker, a game he’d learned in the gin halls of Pontypridd. “It’s nothing an upstanding young woman like yourself would know about,” he’d said, teasing her, but she’d scoffed. If she wanted to pretend she was tough and wild, that was her choice. She had no idea what she’d be getting into with Les, but Dai knew why girls like Violet were attracted to boys like him and Les: they made her feel wild and free. They made her reckless.

  They made her feel as if her life were different than it was.

  Kind of the way Les made him feel.

  So they all sat at the table where the Astors took their tea. Les dealt, cards gliding over the shiny, polished table like birds over a lake.

  The girl either could not play cards worth a lick or was deliberately throwing the game. She lost three hands in a row. She started timidly, arguing that jewelry should count and surrendering her White Star Line service pin and a comb, but then on the last hand, shed her apron with abandon. Her hands lingered over the buttons at the front of her blouse, too, a promise of things to come. Les’s eyes settled on those breasts with a big smile, making Dai’s stomach go tight.

  Dai lost two hands, taking off his necktie and his signet ring. When Leslie finally lost at last, he magnanimously took off his waistcoat and—for extra measure—his shirt. He rolled his neck until it cracked, and Dai noticed the way his biceps pumped, just subtly enough that Dai knew he’d done it on purpose. By this point, Violet was giggling hard, her face flushed, and even Dai had to bust out a laugh or two at Les’s jokes.

  He felt hot, and needed to move. He got up to stretch and poured another round of drinks. As he topped off the bottle with a splash from the water decanter, he looked over his shoulder and noticed Violet batting her lashes at Les. She seemed to recognize that Les was the one paying attention to her, and had begun to respond. Adaptive, women were.

  Eventually, Dai began to relax, to imagine they were at any old pub back in Pontypridd or perhaps one in New York, where they were headed. As long as they neatened up and sneaked out of here before eleven, they’d be fine. He looked at the fancy brass clock on the mantel—it was only half past eight. The Astors would only just be getting served their entrées.

  The whole time they played cards, Leslie looked about the room, remarking on this item or that. The room was chockablock with the Astors’ possessions, as though they needed to put their mark on even temporary surroundings. Trunks of Mr. Astor’s suits and Mrs. Astor’s dresses stood open for perusal. Books were piled messily on a side table, along with stationery, an inkwell, and an assortment of pens. Jewelry was scattered across the dressing table, as though Madeleine Astor had changed her mind several times before heading out that evening.

  Leslie rose to his feet. “Let’s switch games,” he announced all of a sudden. “I have too much respect for your mutual prudishness to continue in this way.” At that, Violet laughed again.

  He wandered the room, and Violet swiveled in her chair to watch. “You can tell so much by a man’s possessions, don’t you think?” Leslie’s fingers danced in the air above the stack of books but settled on a leather-bound journal left open to an ink-smudged page. “What’s this?”

  “Don’t be messing with his things,” Violet said. “You’re a naughty one, Leslie.”

  “I’ll be careful. These hands,” he said, waggling his fingers at her, “are ever gentle, I assure you.” At this, she blushed and laughed again. “He’ll never know.” Les lifted the book for examination. He skimmed a page, then flipped to the next. “Your Mr. Astor is quite the thinker. Not one to let his brain sit idle, is he? There’s all kinds of notes here for a piece of equipment. Something to do with a bicycle.” He flipped another page. “This actually looks like . . . an invention.” He dug into the earlier portion of the book, brows furrowed like a terrier catching the scent of vermin.

  Violet swept the cards up. “I overheard Mr. Guggenheim say something to Mr. Astor once, congratulating him on a patent he’d just got or some such thing. He must be very clever.”

  Leslie was flipping pages furiously now. “There’s more here. Bits of prose . . . Maybe he fancies himself a poet, too.” He returned the journal to the table, careful to leave it open to the correct page. Next, he went to the clothing trunk. At least he wasn’t rough with Astor’s things, Dai noted with relief. He treated them respectfully, like he owned them himself. “Very flashy clothing for a society swell, wouldn’t you say? Here’s a man who likes to be looked at, admired. A man who likes the limelight. Who acts like he’s on stage.”

  As he did his little performance for Violet—because that’s certainly what this was—Dai felt himself spooling away from the scene, floating above it, just him and the whiskey heat and the watching. Les was always like this, seemingly able to read a person from a glance, like a fortune-teller. As much as he exuded—warmth, energy, danger—he absorbed, too, took you in, made you feel seen and lit up and alive. He saw things—details, opportunities, hopes, and wishes—that others overlooked.

  It was part of what had drawn Dai to him in the first place. Their trainer, George Cundick, had introduced them. They were just boys hanging around the boxing gym, though Dai occupied a higher rung than Les because Cundick had seen early promise in him. Les was just a street urchin who had gotten it into his head that he could be a boxer, with his broomstick arms and concave chest. Dai had given him wide berth at first, being prone to mistrust posers and opportunists, but over time they became friends, mostly because he’d come to see Les’s love and admiration of Cundick was real. And if Cundick saw something in the skinny, blond kid, then maybe Dai should, too.

  They’d become roommates after that—until, one day, it had become something altogether different. Somehow, Les had known something about Dai that Dai hadn’t—at least not really, not in words—known about himself.

  It made Dai feel exposed around Les, made him feel like Les knew . . . knew and yet never made any effort to say if it was the same for him, or if Dai was just a passing interest among Les’s myriad sources of entertainment.

  A sound of clattering down the hall broke the spell Les had woven over the Astors’ room, and Dai remembered again the kind of disaster it would be if they got caught. He and Violet, both drunker now, it seemed, than Les was, frantically moved about neatening up the room, and the three of them slipped out the door with stifled laughter, waiting until they hit the back stairwell before sprinting down it, Violet giggling between her hands.

  But the fun wasn’t over. “Come on, this way,” Les said with a glint in his eye
as he pushed open a narrower door at the end of the passageway that cut through the first-class suites, leading them down to steerage. Les led them, guileless and obedient, through crowded corridors like enchanted children following the Pied Piper. Dai could tell by the way she kept leaping out of the way of people, startled, that this was the first time Violet had been down here, so different from first class, where she normally spent her day. The air was thick with the smells of sweat and beer and homemade sausage carried in luggage. Children ran by in a string like feral puppies giving chase. They had to step around card games played on the floor in the passageway. The sound of a concertina drifted down the hall, behind it the rhythmic stump of a jig.

  They ducked into a deserted passageway at last, not far from the boilers. Dai could hear the murmur of the coal men up ahead, the sound of coal being shoveled into furnaces, but did not see anyone. They were alone.

  “Have you got another game for us, then, Leslie?” Violet was asking, catching her breath.

  “Do I.” Les leaned into her, hips nearly touching hers, eyes not far from the well of her cleavage. “You’re my kind of girl, Violet.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “Smart. You’re not fooled by those rich toffs upstairs, are you? I mean, they think nothing of the likes of us. So, it’s not like we owe them anything.”

  He had slipped his hands around her waist. Dai knew the magic in those hands. Les was a man who knew what he wanted. She squirmed in his grip, but she didn’t run, not yet.

  Dai’s heart began to sink. This was it, Les’s plan.

  “What are you getting at, sir?” she asked playfully, throwing a quick, cautious glance at Dai. Dai was the reliable one. Dai wouldn’t let anything too crazy happen. That’s what her expression seemed to say.

  Les gave her a brilliant smile. “I’ve got a proposition for you, Miss Jessop. Say! I just noticed your name sounds like julep. Mint julep, that’s what we should call you. Anyway, this idea of mine, it will make you a bit of money, much better than the tips you get from those rich swells.”

  “What are you talking about?” Another glance at Dai. Dai did his best to smile and shrug. He really didn’t know. At least, not exactly, though he had a feeling . . .

  “All you have to do is let me into their cabins—”

  “No, Leslie. If anything goes missing, I’ll be the first person they’d suspect. This is my job, Leslie,” she said. “You don’t know how hard it was to get an interview. They didn’t want me because they said I’d be a distraction to the male passengers traveling alone.” There was pain in her voice. The injustice hurt her still.

  Les leaned in closer, so they were practically touching. “And aren’t there times when you’re afraid it will all be taken away from you? That some woman will complain about you because she doesn’t like the way her husband looks at you? Or when some fussy old matron misplaces her cheap paste brooch and blames you rather than admit she’s starting to forget things?”

  Violet sniffed and that’s when Dai knew Les had her.

  “Nothing is going to go missing. Trust me,” Les said, his lips inches from her cheek. “What I have in mind, it’s as safe as houses.”

  “Hmm,” she said, but didn’t nudge him away this time. There was a faint smile twitching at her lips. When she let out a little sigh, Dai knew it was time to slip away. He had no idea what Les was planning and was pretty sure he didn’t want to find out. Whatever the con was, he didn’t want to witness Les sealing the deal.

  He was in no mood for company as he climbed the stairs all the way to the top deck. Les would be kissing that stewardess right now. He almost felt sorry for her. Violet was an innocent, probably never kissed by a man like Les. Probably only had dry, chaste ones from boy cousins and a belowdecks engineer who kept promising that he’d marry her. Passion was unknown to her, was something she’d only imagined, but Leslie’s kisses would stir it in her. There was something about the way Leslie Williams kissed that made you want more—want all of him, and more than that even.

  He made you want whole, impossible worlds.

  As though wanting Les Williams wasn’t impossible enough.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It had been a long second day of the journey—the sun had already sunk beneath the sea, leaving a bloodstain that finally turned into the black of night—but Annie knew she wouldn’t sleep just yet. Something was very wrong. First the boy’s death, then the mysterious brooch. Annie felt dizzy with the weight of it; she had to tell someone. If only to alleviate her own worries. But her schedule was overwhelming and left her numb from racing about the ship’s many decks.

  Now, she was on her way back to the first-class cabins for one last check-in before bedtime. She’d been carrying the heart-and-arrow brooch, wrapped in a handkerchief, in her pocket all day long, and the suspicion stirring in her own heart had only grown. It was time to return the piece to Caroline Fletcher and, if she found the courage, to ask her what the Astors’ boy had been doing with it last night before he died.

  Annie paused at the top of the stairway. It was a long climb to the boat deck, the ship’s top level. She stood outside the first-class passengers’ lounge to catch her breath. Here, women walked in pairs and threesomes along the promenade in their smart dresses, most with a fur stole wrapped around their shoulders to keep off the chill. You could see the lounge through the windows, the Verandah Café made up with a tropical motif, wicker tables and chairs, groups sitting together drinking their after-dinner coffee or playing cards—those who hadn’t attended tonight’s concert in the reception room, that is.

  As she passed the door to the lounge, her gaze fell on a figure sitting in a corner. It was Mark. She recognized him through the window. He was curled around a book, alone toward the back of the room. Annie took a quick scan of the crowd, but Caroline was nowhere to be seen.

  Annie had of course resolved to avoid Mark, not to let herself get into trouble—the Lord favors good girls, Annie—but this seemed like fate. She found herself curiously drawn to him. She had turned this attraction over in her mind since they’d first met—Why was she so fascinated with this stranger?—and the best she could come up with was that he reminded her of a man back home, the only man she’d allowed herself to fall in love with. They didn’t look much alike, aside from the kindness in their eyes and their shy, easy smiles. There was something about the way he spoke to her, however, so gently and warmly, and the way he treated her that she couldn’t help but feel close to him. To feel as though they already knew each other. And no matter how many times she silently reminded herself that Mark was not Desmond, and not allow herself to get too familiar, it was all forgotten as soon as she looked into his blue eyes.

  He might know about his wife’s brooch, anyway, she reasoned. Surely it couldn’t hurt to go talk to him.

  She shivered, and out of habit, felt for the crucifix just below her throat before remembering that she had lost it. She felt naked without it, undone somehow.

  As she slipped through the door, moving through the crowded lounge toward where Mark sat, a story swirled into her head: an old tale of a girl with a green ribbon tied permanently around her neck. No matter what, the girl was forever warning people, never untie the ribbon. To untie her ribbon would be the end of everything: it held her head in place, you see, and without it, she was but a walking corpse. The tale had always chilled Annie—its taunting nature, the embedded warning; and yet she could never decide what its warning meant. Was it that girls were fragile—fragile as a single-knotted bow—and must be protected at all costs? Or was it that the only way they may prove their story true was to die for it?

  Or was it that they were a pretty package and tied up with a bow, but once the wrapping had been undone, their magic would be released and they were no longer valuable?

  Across the crowd, Mark looked up just then and smiled at her—and it was as if the moon had shifted through a porthole and flooded the room in warmth
and light, the memory of the green ribbon fluttering away on the night breeze.

  She curtsied when she reached his side. “Good evening, Mar— Mr. Fletcher. I’m sorry to interrupt your reading.”

  “Don’t be. I was looking for a distraction,” he said.

  “Surely there are plenty of distractions on this ship.” One thousand books in the first-class library. A swimming pool, one shilling a visit.

  “I need to take my mind off something, not merely fill my time.” His eyes twinkled, but she felt something shifting and restless behind them. “Actually, I wonder, Miss Hebbley—might you have a moment? There’s something specific I’d like to discuss with you. It must be highly unusual for a passenger to seek your confidences so readily”—his cheeks went pink—“but I feel I can trust you, and I hope you feel the same way.”

  She took a breath. He felt the bond between them, too; it wasn’t just in her head. “Of course,” she found herself saying. He started off through the crowded room and she followed as though there were an invisible thread pulling her. They pushed through the door at the end of the hall and stepped back out onto the promenade. It had gotten quieter out here, and darker. It had to be past 10 p.m. Passengers would be retiring soon; many already had.

  Outside, in a quiet corner away from the hubbub, he turned to her. They were alone together, only the ship’s gentle sway beneath their feet—something you normally couldn’t notice, except in moments of perfect stillness. “I witnessed something I can’t explain, and I was wondering if perhaps you had seen anything similar. It’s to do with Ondine. This morning when I first woke up, I could swear that I saw what looked like scratch marks on the baby’s face. But then . . . they disappeared. Right before my eyes. Went from pink, bloodied grooves to fine white lines to . . . nothing. Just smooth skin.” He held his breath, obviously bracing for ridicule.