Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
The locker closes.
SUNDAY. SECOND WEEK. I'm in the staff mess at lunch, alone at the end of the long table, eating rice and something with chicken that tastes like nothing, when Curtis sits down.
"Hey."
"Hey."
He eats. I eat. The staff mess clatters around us in its usual lunchtime chaos. Then he says, without preamble, without buildup, in the voice of a person who's been carrying something for twenty-four hours and can't carry it anymore:
"I got switched to the Almazov sessions."
My fork pauses over my plate.
"Green reassigned them yesterday. Tuesdays and Thursdays." Curtis doesn't glance at me while he says it. He's focused on his plate, pushing a piece of chicken around with his fork, and his voice is the same easy tone he uses for everything except it's not, quite. There's a care in it. A gentleness that's costing him his usual lightness, and I can see what it's doing to him, the effort of being the bearer of this particular news to this particular person, and I want to tell him it's fine but the word "fine" has been so overworked this week I'm afraid it'll disintegrate if I use it again. "I didn't ask for them."
"I know."
"He didn't say anything during the session. Not a word. Same as before. Brick wall." Curtis picks up his water. Drinks. Sets it down. "He asked about you, though. At the end."
My chest does something I refuse to name. It's not on the planner. It's not filed. It's not an approved sensation. It's a wild, animal thing that rises from somewhere below my ribs and lodges in my throat and I am NOT going to let it show on my face because I'm in the staff mess and people are eating and I'm a professional.
"Asked if you were all right. If you'd been reassigned to other clients." Curtis meets my eyes now, and his are careful, and kind, and sorry. "I told him you were fine. Professional as ever. Highest client ratings on the ship."
I pick up my fork. "That's accurate."
"Star."
"That's accurate, Curtis."
He holds my gaze for a beat. He's looking for the crack. He's looking for the place where the composure meets the grief and one of them gives way, and I don't give him the satisfaction because if I give it to Curtis I'll give it to everyone and if I give it to everyone it becomes real in a way I'm not prepared for it to be real.
He nods. Picks up his tray. And as he passes he squeezes my shoulder, his hand landing on the curve of muscle between my neck and my arm, the trapezius, and I know exactly how much pressure he's using because I've been trained to know, and it's kind. It's a kind touch from a kind person and it sits on my shoulder like a warm, uncomplicated thing and I let it be there because uncomplicated is something I need right now more than oxygen.
I finish my lunch. I bus my tray. I go back to work.
Artem
THE BOY'S HAND IS ON her shoulder.
I'm on the mezzanine above the staff mess, the maintenance walkway that runs along the Deck 3 bulkhead, a place I have no reason to be. I came here because the gallery felt like a coffin and the upper deck felt like a crime scene and the engine room sounds like her saying it sounds like a heartbeat and there is nowhere on this ship that isn't her. She's in every deck and every corridor and every frequency. She's in the cedarwood and the heated floors and the Tiffany glass and the sixty-two hertz, and I've been walking this ship for two weeks trying to find a room that doesn't contain her and I can't, because she didn't just walk through these rooms. She touched them. She pressed her palms to the surfaces and her fingerprints are on everything and I can feel them like she felt my scars.
The staff mess is below me, through the metal grating of the walkway floor. Loud, crowded, trays and conversation. And at the far end of the long table, two people. Star. Curtis. He's standing, his tray in one hand, and his other hand is on her shoulder, squeezing, and she doesn't flinch and she doesn't lean away.
She lets him touch her.
My hands close on the railing. The metal bites into my palms.
Curtis walks away. Star sits alone. She picks up her fork. She eats. She buses her tray. She stands and walks toward the corridor and I can see her face from above, through the grating, and her face is the thing that breaks me.
She isn't crying. She isn't angry. She's composed and professional and her chin is level and her shoulders are square and she's doing exactly what I told her to do. She's being a professional. She's being twenty years old on a ship that doesn't belong to her, eating alone at the end of a long table, letting a boy with a good heart touch her shoulder because a man with a ruined one closed a door in her face.