Passage (57 page)

It was some sort of gymnasium. There were Indian clubs and medicine balls stacked against the inside wall and pieces of exercise equipment scattered around the red-and-white tile floor: a mechanical horse and a rowing machine and a tall black weight-lifting apparatus, the same shape and size as a guillotine. A punching bag hung from the ceiling.

Against the right-hand wall stood a line of stationary bicycles. A young man in a T-shirt and gray sweatpants was riding the middle bicycle, pedaling furiously. On the wall in front of him was a large clock face with numbers and red and blue arrows pointing to them.

The young man had pedaled till both arrows were on the final number. He gave a final burst of effort, bent forward over the handlebars. The red-and-blue numbers swung up to zero, and he stopped pedaling and raised his fists, like a runner after a race. He dismounted and bent to pick up a towel, and she saw his face. “Oh,” she said and sucked in her breath.

It was Greg Menotti.

I
KNOW YOU
,” Greg Menotti said, dabbing at his face with a towel. He walked over to where she was standing. “Don’t I?”

“I’m . . . ” Joanna said, and for one horrible moment could not think of her name, “ . . . Joanna Lander,” and then remembered he had known her as Dr. Lander. “Dr. Lander.”

“Dr. Lander?” he said, clearly still trying to place her. “You look so familiar . . . oh, wait, I remember you. You were the one who asked me all those questions that day I got hit on the head. You wouldn’t give me your phone number. So what are you doing here? Did you change your mind?”

“Hit on the head?”

“Yeah, by a piece of ice a semi threw off. I was shoveling my car out of a ditch, and it knocked me unconscious, and they took me to the ER, and then you came and asked me a lot of questions about tunnels and lights and angels,” he said. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

“No,” Joanna said slowly. “I remember.”

“I kept trying to tell that to the ER people, but they insisted I’d had a heart attack.” He shook his head, amused. “So is that why you came back? You decided you’d give me your phone number after all?”

“No,” Joanna said, thinking, He doesn’t know he’s dead. “I came to find out the name of this ship.”

“Ship?” he said blankly. “What do you mean, ship? This is a health club. I work out here three times a week. Haven’t you been here before? Here, let me show you around.” He took her arm and led her over to the stationary bicycles. “See this dial?
This blue arrow measures distance traveled and this red one measures your speed.”

He led her over to what looked like one of those mechanical bulls they had in bars, only with an uncomfortable-looking hump. “This is a mechanical camel, and over there’s the rowing machine. Excellent cardiovascular exercise. There’s also a squash court, a swimming pool, a massage room—”

Joanna was looking at the stack of Indian clubs and medicine balls. They should have “Property” of and the name of the ship on them. She disengaged her arm from Greg’s grip and went over to look at them. She picked up a medicine ball. It was almost too heavy to lift, but Greg took it easily out of her hands and tossed it against the wall. It rebounded with a loud thud.

Joanna bent and looked at the other medicine ball and then the Indian clubs, but there was no name on any of them. And Greg doesn’t even know he’s on a ship, let alone which ship, she thought. “Greg,” she said. “Have you heard anything?”

He tossed the medicine ball again. “Heard anything?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Like what?” Thud.

“Like engines stopping?” she said. “Or a collision?” Leading, she thought, waiting for his answer.

“A collision? No, thank goodness. Especially since it was one of those Ford Explorers. They’re huge.” He tossed the medicine ball again. “No, just a bump on the head, but it must have really knocked me out cold because the paramedics thought I’d had a heart attack. I told them, ‘I can’t have had a heart attack—’ ”

“I work out three times a week at my health club,” Joanna said and then was sorry because Greg stopped, clutching the heavy medicine ball to his chest, and looked at her fearfully. He went over to the rowing machine, sat down, and began pulling the oars toward him with strong, steady strokes.

“Greg—” Joanna said, and caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. She ran over to the door. The steward. He was walking toward the bridge with a folded note in his hand.

Joanna hurried after him. He walked past the officers’ quarters and turned into an unlit corridor. Joanna followed him, around a corner, down a short, narrow passage, around another corner. Like a maze, Joanna thought. Down another passage, and out onto the other side of the deck. There were boats on this side, too. Was that where the officer was going, to uncover the boats?

No. He knocked on a door and opened it. Golden light spilled out onto the deck, and she could hear the murmur of voices. “You may never get another chance,” the officer said, and reemerged, laughing, and walked down the deck toward the stern, obviously headed for the stairs. Joanna followed him, stopping as she passed to look in the still-open door.

A blond man in a white shirt sat with his back to the door, hunched over a table, tapping steadily on a telegraph key. His coat was slung over the back of his chair and he was wearing headphones, old-fashioned ones with a band around the back of his head as well as over the top. Above his head, a blue spark jumped the gap between two metal struts, flickering and snapping as he tapped the key.

This is the wireless room, Joanna thought, forgetting all about the officer. And the man was Jack Phillips, busily sending out messages. Not SOSs yet, Joanna thought, looking at the blue spark, dancing merrily above the wireless operator’s head, and remembering the officer’s laughter. And Jack wasn’t wearing his lifejacket yet.

These must be passenger messages he was sending, the backlog that had built up over the weekend. Joanna remembered Mr. Briarley telling the class that the wireless was such a novelty the passengers all wanted to send one, and Jack Phillips had been so busy the night of the collision that, when the
Californian
had tried to cut in with an ice message, he had cut them off, he had told them to shut up, that he was working the relay station, Cape Race.

And SOSs were simple. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. She remembered Mr. Briarley telling them that was why SOS had been chosen for the distress call, because it was so simple, anyone could send it. These messages weren’t simple.
“Having wonderful time,” Joanna thought, listening to the complicated tapping. “Wish you were here.”

She leaned forward, trying to hear the pattern, trying to decipher the message, but he was tapping too fast for her to be able to separate out the dots from the dashes, and the buzzing from the spark overhead interrupted her concentration.

She walked up closer behind him, and as she did, she could hear a low murmur. He’s saying the letters as he taps them out, she thought. “C,” he said, making a rapid series of taps, “Q . . . D . . . C . . . Q . . . D.” Not a word. A code? The call letters of the
Titanic?

There was a thud from somewhere out on deck. Greg Menotti, Joanna thought, throwing the medicine ball against the wall of the gymnasium, and glanced behind her. Jack Phillips didn’t look up or pause in his sending.

He can’t hear with his headphones on, Joanna thought, any more than I can hear Richard or Tish with my headphones on, and when the
Titanic
was sinking, he had been so intent on sending he hadn’t even noticed the stoker sneaking up behind him, attempting to steal his lifejacket. Joanna took another step closer, trying to hear his murmurings over the heavy thuds. “Q . . . D . . . ”

Thud. It was impossible to hear the tapping with this thudding going on. She went outside on deck to tell Greg to stop, but the sound wasn’t coming from the gymnasium, it was coming from the stairway.

Joanna opened the door to the stairwell and went in. Thud. The sound was coming from below. She leaned over the railing and looked down but she couldn’t see past the first turning of the stairs. “Hang on!” a man’s voice said. Joanna recognized it as the voice of the officer who had ordered the sailor to use the Morse lamp. “What do you think you’re doing?”

There was no answer except a thud and then another one. Joanna went down to the first landing. A man in a dark blue uniform was dragging something heavy up the stairs. It looked like a body.

The officer was at the bottom of the flight and climbing up toward the man, looking angry. “You can’t bring that up here.”

“It’s the only way up that’s not flooded,” the man in the uniform said, and dragged the body up one step, then another, till he was only five steps below Joanna. It wasn’t a body. It was a big canvas sack with a crest stenciled on it. A mailbag, Joanna thought.

“There’s water all over the mail room,” the man, who must be a postal clerk, said. He opened the neck of the bag, reached in, and pulled out a handful of sodden letters. “Look at that!” he said, waving them in the face of the officer. “Ruined!” He brandished them at Joanna. She flinched back. “How’m I supposed to deliver that?” he demanded. He jammed it back in the bag, cinched the neck shut, humped the mailbag up over another step.

“Then you’ll have to bring it up some other way,” the officer said, stepping in front of him. “You’ll ruin the floors.” He pointed down at the carpet. Where the bag had rested, the rose carpet was wet.

“Can’t be helped,” the postal clerk said, heaving the bag up another step. “It’s got to get through. I have to get it into the boats. Give me a hand here,” he said to Joanna, but she was looking down at the wet carpet. The water had soaked into it, staining its rose a dark, disturbing red, like blood.

“How bad is it?” the officer asked.

“All the way up to the saloon deck,” the postal clerk said. “She doesn’t have much longer.”

“What does he mean, she doesn’t have much longer?” Greg Menotti said from behind her. She turned around. He was on the step above her, watching the postal clerk hoist the mailbag up another step. “Why is he doing that?”

“Because she’s sinking,” the postal clerk said, and to Joanna, “You’d better get into a boat, miss.”

“Which deck is the saloon deck?” Joanna asked him. “Is it C Deck?”

“What does he mean, sinking?” Greg said. “This isn’t a ship. It’s a health club.” He took hold of Joanna’s arm. “I thought you wanted to see the rest of the facilities.”

“There isn’t time,” Joanna said, trying to free her arm. “Is the saloon deck C Deck?”

“You have to make time,” Greg said, pulling her up the
stairs. “Your health is the most important thing there is. We’ve got a full program of squash, racquetball, tennis—”

He was going too fast. She lost her balance and nearly fell. “Steady, looks like you could use some stair-walking exercise,” he said, pulling her to her feet, but she couldn’t get her balance. The stair was angled oddly, her foot kept sliding off it—

Oh, God, she thought, it’s beginning to list. “I have to go,” she said, tugging frantically to free her arm from Greg’s hand. “The saloon deck—”

“I work out here three times a week,” he said, remorselessly gripping her arm. “A regular exercise regimen is essential to—”

Joanna wrenched free and ran toward the stairs, stumbling, her arms out for balance, and pushed open the door to the stairway. The mail clerk had dragged the mailbag nearly all the way to the top of the stairs. Joanna ran past him down the steps, skirting the dark, wet stain where the mailbag had lain.

“You shouldn’t run without warming up first,” Greg called after her. “You’ll get a charley—” The door closed on his voice and she fled down the stairs, around the landings, her hand skimming the polished oak railings as she ran. Down and down, not counting landings or decks or doors, running blindly, blindly, out the door, down the deck, yanking the door open and plunging into the passage, into the dark and the dark—

And the dark. I’m still in the passage, Joanna thought desperately, and heard Richard say, “You need to remove the sleep mask.”

She opened her eyes and blinked in surprise at a total stranger. It took her another panicked minute to remember that Tish was out with the flu and this was the sub nurse. “Just rest. Don’t try to talk,” Richard said, and began explaining the post-session procedures to the nurse. He doesn’t want me to say it’s the
Titanic
in front of her, she thought.

But it wasn’t the
Titanic.
The staircase was all wrong and so was the gymnasium. The
Titanic
had had one. She remembered Mr. Briarley talking about it, telling them how opulent the ship had been, but it would hardly have been up on the Boat Deck. And, even though the
Titanic
had been a royal
mail ship, they wouldn’t have dragged sacks of mail up from the mail room. Fifteen hundred people had drowned that night. They would hardly have been worried about the mail. And Greg Menotti obviously wasn’t on the
Titanic
, Joanna thought, frustrated.