Standard Legal Crapola:
Lawyers… Nobody likes them.
As a very wise man once observed, they're a lot like nuclear weapons: The only reason you have them is because they have them, and if you use them, then they screw up everything in f***ing sight!
But unfortunately, much like long lines, cell phones and Paris Hilton, they're a fact of life in our modern world. Therefore, it's time for yet another visit from everyone's favorite literary device: The Legal Disclaimer!
Rose, Jack, and all other fictional characters contained here within are the sole property of James Cameron, Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. Any and all historical figures are the property of … well… nobody in particular, really. That's the great thing about history, I suppose: It belongs to everybody!
This story is written as a public service for entertainment purposes only, and nobody is making any money off of this whatsoever. Any attempts to do otherwise will be met with malicious action of a litigious nature, and any other big, scary-sounding legal words that I can think of. Prosecutors will be violated.
Side effects of reading this story may include flushing, blushing, running of the mouth, high stool, shortness of pants, emphysema, pyorrhea, diarrhea, gonorrhea, pneumonia, oldmonia, ammonia, short-term memory loss, short-term memory loss, shin splints, fallen arches, lower back pain, black death and a swarm of locusts descending on your head.
Do not read this story unless you have consulted a doctor, two pharmacists, your local apothecary and the entrails of a goat.
Pregnant women should not even be reading this disclaimer.
No purchase necessary, void where prohibited, see store for details, employees are ineligible, write for full contest rules, your mileage may vary, copyright two-thousand-whatever, blah blah blahbity blah, SO THERE!
(On with the show!)
Foreword:
I made a big decision, a little while ago…
I can't remember what it was, which probably goes to show…
That often times a simple choice can prove to be essential…
Even though it, at the time, may seem inconsequential.
I must've been distracted when I left my home because…
Left or right, I'm sure I went. (I wonder which it was…)
In any case, I never veered, I walked in that direction…
Utterly absorbed, it seems, in quiet introspection.
For reasons I can't fathom, I've wandered far astray…
And that is how I got to where I find myself today.
~ Bill Watterson
It has been observed on many an occasion that life is a series of choices. And it is these choices that not only define our life, but determine its course of events. For the choices you make today will forever and irrevocably decide what choices you will be faced with tomorrow. And those choices will determine the next day's options, and so on… and so forth… and such as.
For example, suppose you're out driving and come to a fork in the road. You have two clear choices before you: Left or right? A simple decision if there ever was one.
Now suppose you go left, and after a span of several miles you encounter a swollen stream that has unfortunately flooded the path before you. You suspect that your vehicle can power through it, provided that it doesn't stall, but you cant be sure that it won't. Furthermore, you've already come a fair distance in this direction and you don't relish the prospect of backtracking all that way, squandering all of the progress that you've made so far.
The decision you now face is far more complicated than your previous choice, with implications far deeper and more consequential in nature. But you wouldn't be faced with this decision if you had decided to turn right instead of left back at that intersection. One choice led to another, even though you were thoroughly unaware of such repercussions at the time.
But decisions alone do not decide what choices we will ultimately be faced with. Time has a role to play as well. For as the temporal stream flows ever forward at its eternally steady pace, it carries with it an ever shifting tide of events and circumstances. And it is into this unstable and eternally changeable quagmire that we wade, every time we make a choice. It's not just what we choose that decides our future: It's what transpires around us at the fateful moment when we make that choice.
To wit, this story serves as something of a thought experiment, I suppose: A casual exploration of an intriguing "what if" scenario, based around our favorite apocryphal tale of love lost aboard a doomed ocean liner.
The basic premise: What if Rose hadn't waited until she was standing at the life boats to turn her back on her family and return to Jack? What if she had made that decision sooner, perhaps no more than a few minutes prior? How might that simple matter of timing have changed things? What obstacles among the course of events would our heroes have avoided by simply being a few precious minutes ahead of history? And what new ones might they have encountered in their stead? In the end, it's all just an academic exercise, of course. But still, how intriguing it is to simply sit back and imagine…
~ Chapter One ~
"I saw the iceberg, Mister Andrews. And I see it in your eyes. Please tell me the truth."
"The ship will sink."
"You're certain?"
"Yes. In an hour or so, all this… will be at the bottom of the Atlantic. Please tell only who you must, I don't want to be responsible for a panic. And get to a boat quickly. Don't wait. You remember what I told you about the boats?"
"Yes. I understand."
The conversation still hung heavy in her ears, it's every syllable echoing through her mind in a hazy fog of memory that made it seem so distant… so unreal. So unlike something she had experienced first hand just a few moments before.
It didn't seem real… It couldn't be real… All this majesty… All this grandeur… All of it less than a week old, and now utterly doomed to oblivion beneath the waves of an icy sea. It was the stuff of poorly written novels or over-produced movies that counted for little more than a wasted nickel in some stuffy theater house. It wasn't the stuff of reality.
But then again, nothing about her life of the last few days seemed all that grounded in reality.
Over the course of just three days she had gone from despondent and suicidal to the edge of intrigue before a dark and mysterious stranger who had seemingly materialized out of thin air and deposited himself squarely into her life. That intrigue had in turn become infatuation, then promptly blossomed into full-blown love, only to be shattered by the trauma of betrayal and pitched headlong into the pit of despair once again: The very same dark and bottomless pit that Jack had so nobly pulled her from that night back on the stern.
She must have looked like a sleepwalker, or perhaps some sort of Zombie to passers by as she blindly followed Cal and his entourage up the grand staircase, always keeping to the right, maintaining the stiff rules of upper-class decorum even in the face of eminent catastrophe. The elegance of Titanic was all around her, but she saw nothing… she heard nothing… she felt nothing. She was numb. Numb to all feelings and stimuli. All her consciousness was directed inward, trying desperately to make sense of the world that was crashing down all around her. And through it all, the words of another person… words spoken not that far in the past, came echoing back to her in haunting refrain:
"Rose! Don't listen to them! I didn't do this! You know I didn't! You know it!"
If only she could believe him. She wanted to, after all… She desperately wanted to. But she had seen it. Seen it with her own eyes. She had seen Lovejoy pull the diamond from the pocket of Jack's coat.
Of course, that was all she had seen.
Through the trauma and confusion that clouded her mind, a sort of curious detachment from her circumstances suddenly occurred: As if she were reading a story about herself, analyzing her own character's thoughts and motivations through the impartial lens of some uninvolved third-party observer.
She smirked inwardly at herself with the revelation, as if laughing in derision at her own consciousness for not seeing it before. She hadn't seen Jack pocket the jewel. She hadn't seen him do anything for that matter. Granted, it didn't prove his innocence in the matter. Absence of evidence was, after all, by no means evidence of absence. But without any real proof one way or another, it was just as possible that either Cal or that loathsome henchman of his had simply planted the jewel when neither she nor Jack were looking. Ultimately, it was just a simple matter of hearsay.
As the party continued its ascent through the ship, the disorganized cacophony of thoughts running through her mind only increased its intensity. By the time they reached A-Deck she had fallen a good three steps behind the rest of the group and was in a veritable trance as she began her ascent of the final flights that would take her to the organized chaos of the Boat Deck… and safety.
And that's when she saw it.
Looking up past the gilded cherub that stood silent guard at the foot of the stairs, her green eyes fell upon the ornamental clock that graced the landing between the decks. Ismay had been particularly fond of this piece, she silently recalled, boastfully describing it one night during dinner. He referred to it as "Honor and Glory Crowning Time:" A title meant to instill a sense of permanence and excellence through the ages. How laughable and hollow it all sounded now.
Time…
That's what it all came down to. Time. That most precious of commodities… The one thing that no amount of money could buy… And that no matter how wisely one invested it, they would never have more than when they started.
Time that so many aboard this doomed vessel didn't have, whether they currently realized it or not.
Time was running out for the Titanic.
It was running out for her.
She glanced to Cal and his swarm of buzzing subordinates, who were by now making a right turn upon the landing and climbing the final steps toward the boats, but her gaze quickly fell back to the elegant timepiece before her. Time was indeed precious… She understood that fact now perhaps better than she ever had before. But more importantly, she understood that what she did within the span of the next few minutes, would almost certainly determine the course of her entire life, from this very moment until the day she stood face-to-face with her creator.
Suddenly, the fog that she had been climbing through for three decks was lifted. In the blink of an eye, disjointed memories and half-completed thoughts swirled and coalesced into clear and concise ideas and assertions. A moment of serene clairvoyance was miraculously achieved, and in that moment, she saw an equally clear choice laid out before her. The choice of who she trusted more: Cal… or Jack.
Well when one put it that way, it was really no choice at all.
Achieving the landing, she reached out with her left hand and grabbed the banister, and where Cal and his cronies had turned right, she turned left, swinging herself around through an abrupt U-turn and heading back the way she had come. The salvation of the lifeboats would simply have to wait. There was unfinished business to attend to.
Having fallen so far behind the balance of the group, her absence went unnoticed at first. It wasn't until the pack had reached the vestibule leading to Boat Deck and the ship's gymnasium that Ruth looked back and saw that their party was one member short.
"Rose?" she perplexedly asked of the suddenly empty space behind her. Her confusion didn't last long however, as she quickly spotted a familiar mane of auburn locks whipping around the base of the stairs.
"Rose! Come back!" she shouted to no avail. "Somebody, do something!" she pleaded, turning the rest of the group.
"Stop… help… police… murder?" one of the valets shrugged in confusion. Honestly, he wasn't getting paid enough to deal with all of this hysteria right now.
"Son of a bitch! What fresh new hell is this?" Cal growled, turning to pursue the fleeing form down the stairs. "The rest of you, stay right there 'till I get back!" he shouted over his shoulder.
"Well where the hell else are we gonna go?" The frustrated valet muttered under his breath, drawing a resigned headshake from one of his peers.
Bolting around the corner to the back side of the staircase, Rose fairly skidded to a stop on the polished marble floor and darted into one of the three elevators, thoroughly startling its operator.
"Quick! Where would the Master at Arms take someone whose been arrested?" she fairly shouted at the man who wore a look of pure bewilderment on his face.
"I… ah… well… that is…" he stammered.
"Dammit man, spit it out!" she barked. "I don't have the time nor the patience for your dawdling!"
"F-deck." The operator finally managed to get out. "Left then right."
"Then let's go already!" She demanded, reaching across the car and slamming the safety gate herself. It latched securely into place barely a second before Cal's enraged grimace became pressed between its ornate bars.
"I said go!" Rose shouted at the terrified operator whose focus was now solely fixed on the enraged man before him. Almost out of reflex, he pulled the control lever and sent the car descending into the bowels of the great steel beast. Whether it was in response to her command or part of some instinctive desire to escape Cal's wrath, she really didn't care. She was now squarely in a strange sort of mission mode: Results were the only thing that mattered.
As the car descended ever deeper into the ship, she slowly began counting off the decks in her head. It was somewhere between D and E decks, she reckoned, that a stray thought crossed her mind. Cal must have guessed where she was headed, and probably what her intentions were as well. (The fact that even she wasn't quite sure what her intentions were at that moment was immaterial.) Given how notoriously slow the elevators were, and how for a debutante, Cal was actually a rather athletic specimen, it was a near certainty that he had guessed what deck she was descending to, and would most likely get there ahead of her. Visions of the elevator doors opening only to deposit her directly into his waiting clutches suddenly filled her mind. Her quest, however ill conceived and fool hearty it may have been was in danger of ending before it had ever truly begun.
"Wait! Here! Stop here!" she suddenly shouted.
"But this is only E deck, ma'am." The operator informed her. "You said you wanted…"
"Yes, I know what I said!" she spat, becoming highly annoyed with this man's habit of stating the obvious. "And now I'm saying to let me out here!"
With a shrug, the operator dutifully complied and unlatched the gate, depositing Rose into a second-class corridor of white walls and walnut trim. She didn't even bother turning to thank her unwitting accomplice before she was off like a shot, racing down the empty passage looking for a stairway that would lead her to the deck below, and at the same time, out-flank her waiting fiancé.
With muttered curses toward her garments and their utter unsuitability for the act of running, she dashed headlong down the hallway for several yards before cutting left into a cross-corridor and pulling up short at the next intersection. Another empty hall greeted her arrival, its bleach-white walls and varnished floor stretching off into near-infinity in either direction.
In her mind's eye, the world flashed back to a moment on D-Deck, in the first-class dining saloon, the very day they had boarded in Southampton. There, she had first met Mister Andrews… the man who would become the closest thing to a father figure she had experienced in years… and had briefly glimpsed the plans he had held spread across one of the tables. An image of a long corridor raced through her memory, running nearly the length of the entire ship, its impressive span labeled with the Irishman's own neatly-scrawled penmanship: "Scotland Road."
"At least I have some idea of where I am." She contemplated, pausing a moment to catch the breath that was now coming to her in ragged gasps. Once satisfied that her stamina had returned, she plunged forward once more into the bowels of the dying ship, moving forward until she finally located a descending staircase. Two quick flights later and she was standing on F-Deck: The first objective in her quest.
"Now for the tricky part." She sighed inwardly. "Following that lift man's directions in reverse."
Fortunately, that particular task proved less complicated than anticipated. As it turned out, all she had to do was follow the booming echo of Cal's enraged voice as he ranted at Lovejoy, having apparently abandoned his post at the base of the elevator.
"What do you mean she hasn't been here? The little tart obviously gave me the slip, and she has to be coming here, so where is she?"
"All I can say is what I know, sir," Lovejoy responded with all the coolness under fire of a veteran law enforcement officer, "and she hasn't been down this way. Nobody has, in fact."
"Well keep your eyes peeled!" Cal growled in utter frustration. "I'm going to go make a sweep of the area. If she shows that pretty little head of hers, you holler! Understood?"
"Clearly." Lovejoy flatly responded as Cal turned and stalked out of the room. Rose barely managed to duck into an adjoining corridor a split second before Cal emerged into the hallway, looked both ways, and stalked off in a huff, thankfully in a direction that took him away from her position.
As soon as she thought it was safe, she emerged from her hiding place and crept up the corridor toward the compartment that Cal had just vacated. She could hear voices, and stayed low to the floor as she approached the open doorway.
A quick peek around the corner confirmed her suspicions. Both Lovejoy and Jack were present, with Jack handcuffed to a large section of pipe. Lovejoy was reclining casually back in a simple chair, bemusedly rolling a single bullet across the top of a table, his back to the door: Clearly a man who wasn't expecting the unexpected.
Big mistake.
Retreating slowly and silently from the door, Rose searched her surroundings for something… anything… that could potentially give her a drop on the sorry excuse for a human being that was currently holding her lover hostage. Admittedly, she didn't have much experience with being resourceful in a pinch. That was the sort of thing that seemed to be far more Jack's forte. The life of a drifter is a story of adaptation, after all.
But Jack wasn't there with her. She was alone… on her own… left to her own devices… and she needed to come up with something… fast.
"C'mon Rose, think!" she silently prodded herself. "What would Jack do in a situation like this?" She began to survey her surroundings, trying to see the world through his eyes. She took careful note of everything she saw, examining each and every item and supposing how it might be used creatively by someone in her current circumstances. Furniture… light bulbs… a janitor's mop leaning haphazardly in the corner… All intriguing in their own way, but nothing that really jumped out at her.
Her blood ran cold however, when she spied the gleaming red fireman's axe hanging snugly in its bracket.
It was certainly a tool. And it would be more than adequate for subduing the unsuspecting henchman down the hall. But did she really have it in her? Could she kill a man at close range? In cold blood? Granted, being essentially one of the "help," Lovejoy's chances of survival weren't that great to begin with. But to willingly and with great prejudice reduce those odds to zero? To arbitrarily sacrifice one life for another?
She stood frozen in place, torn in two by the moral quandary. On one side, the respect for human life that had been bred into her since birth pulled at her with the might of a thousand draft horses. On the other, her love for Jack tugged with equal strength. She buried her face in her hands and silently sobbed at the prospect. How could she ever decide?
But then again, maybe she didn't have to.
And so it came to pass only moments later, that a shadowed and mysterious form crept up the corridor for the second time that night, leaving a well-sharpened axe still strapped into its bracket.
…Right next to the now empty bracket of a fire extinguisher.
Approaching the door once more, she grasped the copper cylinder firmly in both hands. It was heavy, but not so heavy that she couldn't do what she was planning, and that was something most certainly not on the manufacturer's list of recommended uses.
A quick peek around the corner confirmed that nothing had changed. Lovejoy was still leaning back in his chair like some hideous lounge lizard, and Jack was still eyeing him warily from his place of confinement in the corner of the room. With a deep breath to steady herself, she stood up and raised the extinguisher to shoulder height. It was time to put her plan into action. It was time to make some noise!
Stepping silently into the doorway, Jack was the first to notice her presence, and his devilishly quick mind, honed to a fine edge by months of surviving the urban jungles of Europe, immediately caught the gist of what she was getting toward. A lightning-fast assessment of the situation, and he knew what he had to do. It was time to play his part: Time to make Rose's job just a little bit easier.
"Hey! Since we seem to be spending so much quality time together right now, I wanna ask you a question." he said, drawing the balance of Lovejoy's attention squarely onto himself. "You were a cop once, right?"
"That's right." Was Lovejoy's terse reply.
"Well tell me then, with such a background in public service, how the heck did you ever wind up as a common lackey for a slime ball like Hockley?"
Inwardly incensed, but yet still outwardly calm, Lovejoy stood and wordlessly approached Jack, menacing intent burning behind his steely gray eyes.
"I mean, seriously." Jack continued taunting. "How far do a guy's standards have to sink for that kind of work to become acceptable?"
WHAP!
The fist across his jaw line literally made his ears ring, but he kept his composure. Having been in more than his fair share of street fights, he knew the importance of keeping a straight face… of never showing pain, or fear.
"Nice punch." He quipped once his jaw started working again. "What desk did the department have you assigned to?"
"Why you insolent little piece of…"
"Hey! Heads up, flatfoot!"
Thoroughly surprised by the sudden intrusion, Lovejoy spun on his heel toward the voice behind him, just in time to see a mass of polished copper come rushing up to fill his vision… Just in time to see the world go dark.
Like a true marksman, Rose found her target with scientific precision and ruthless efficiency, driving the base of the extinguisher squarely into Lovejoy's forehead with a resounding clang and sending the man sprawling onto the cold wooden floor. Then, with a heaving breath, she set her makeshift battering ram down heavily upon the table and struck a triumphant pose, smiling so wide that it threatened to split her porcelain features in two.
"Damn, Rose!" Jack gawked at the overpowering display of force he had just witnessed. "I didn't think you were gonna hit him that hard."
"He annoyed me." She nonchalantly replied, rolling her hapless victim over and rifling through his pockets. It wasn't but a few moments before she had located the keys and was removing the restraints from her lover's wrists.
"Man! Remind me never to tick you off." Jack remarked, rubbing the soreness from his wrists.
"First, let's get the hell off this tin tub." She replied matter-of-factly, grabbing his shirt and pulling him in for a chaste peck on the lips. "Then we can both spend the rest of our lives reminding each other of that fact."
"Come again?" Jack responded, not quite sure how to interpret what he had just heard.
"I'll explain later." Rose shot back. "Right now, we need to move! Follow me!"
"Yes ma'am. You're the boss." He grinned as he followed her out the door. He wasn't sure where this assertive side of his Rose had been hiding all this time, or what had transpired to bring it out with such ferocity. But what he was sure of was that he liked it, and he silently hoped that it would come out to play a little more often in the future.
But whatever bemused pride he may have felt for the fiery young woman before him was quickly replaced by confusion when she exited the compartment and turned right instead of left.
"Wait! Aren't the stairs down that-a-way?" he asked perplexedly.
"And so's Cal." Rose snapped back, grabbing his hand and practically dragging him down the corridor. "So unless you want a repeat of our last encounter…"
"No thanks!" he chuckled, reaching up to rub his throbbing jaw. "I think I've had quite enough of Mister Hockley's hospitality for one evening."
"That's too bad." Rose sarcastically quipped, turning and leading them down an adjoining passage. "His cocktail parties are usually quite the event."
"Really? Guess I'll let my social secretary know, then."
The remark was enough to break the tension, and the two of them both laughed for what seemed like the first time in days. It felt good to be distracted from the dire circumstances that surrounded them, even if it was only for a moment.
But that moment didn't last long, as the pair made a final turn and came face-to-face with a sickening sight. The corridor near the base of the stairs was beginning to flood, and a deck that only minutes before had been dry was now ankle deep in frigid water, its rippled surface reflecting a ghastly green hue across the walls and ceiling above.
"This can't be good." Jack breathlessly observed.
"C'mon! We have to hurry!" Rose commanded, dragging him forward into the deluge. "The ship is sinking. Mister Andrews told me so. And there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half!" She splashed her way down the passage at full speed to the foot of the stairs, still dragging Jack behind her. It was only once she had reached those stairs that she allowed herself the luxury of a few moments to catch her breath once more.
Sheer determination was now setting up inside of her with all the strength of solid concrete. There was steel in her spine and a burning determination within her heart that she had never known before this night, and she found that she liked the fit of it all. She'd find a way to get both of them off this ship alive… she just knew she would. Even if none of the other pompous, shallow, first-class socialites who knew her would ever think her capable of such a feat. After all, they probably wouldn't think her capable of bashing a man in the head with a fire extinguisher either. And look how wrong that assumption turned out to be.
"Now we have to get up on deck and get off this cursed wreck, so let's go!" she said, starting up the stairs. She stumbled awkwardly backward though when Jack's arm pulled taut, his feet seemingly glued to the deck below them.
"C'mon, Jack! Aren't you listening?" she shouted at him. "I said we need to escape, now!"
Jack stood transfixed, his blue eyes locked on something he spied at the far end of this nameless third-class thoroughfare. There, concealed amongst the lengthening shadows, a simple wooden chair floated serenely out of a nearby compartment and drifted across the hall. The scene was so peaceful that it was almost beautiful in its own morbid way, and it set the wheels of his mind to spinning.
For it turns out that here was something about living on the streets: The experience tended to instill a certain set of skills within people.
Not least among these was the ability to improvise: To be dropped into unfamiliar circumstances with meager resources, and to use those same resources creatively in solving whatever problems one may face. Whether it was building a makeshift shelter from a pair of old raincoats and some scrap metal, creating an effective prop for begging on a crowded street corner, or simply fashioning a weapon to defend one's self against the more unsavory elements of the city's seedy underbelly, creativity and innovation were the keys to surviving the perils of the urban jungle. It was the age-old art of adaptation… of rolling with the punches as they come, and never taking anything for granted. It served many a young man well when he was out on his own, and it allowed one to see potential and promise in what any normal person would see only as a pile of useless junk.
And in that single piece of forlorn furniture, he now saw that same glimmer of promise.
"Jack! Jack! Aren't you listening to me? We have to go!" Rose shouted, tugging mightily on his arm as if he was a stubborn pack mule refusing to obey. "I said the ship is going down and there aren't enough boats!"
"Or maybe there are." He cryptically whispered to no one in particular.
"What?" Rose asked confusedly, momentarily ceasing her relentless tugging.
"No time to explain! Let's move!" he suddenly shouted, gripping Rose's hand and charging up the stairs with her in tow.
"Wait! What's that supposed to mean, anyway?" she shouted as she struggled to keep up. "Hey! I thought you said I was the boss here!"
Author's Notes:
So here I sit, propped up in front of my PC, contemplating the words on the screen as the tune of Anne Murray's "Time Don't Run Out on Me" plays unceasingly on a loop through my head. (Gawd, I'm going to need surgery to get rid of this thing, aren't I?) Not exactly how I anticipated spending the morning of Easter Sunday by any stretch, but then again… Life's just full of surprises!
Now I realize that things may have gotten a little wordy in the foreword, so I'll spare everyone the elaborate speech back here on the tail end and be as brief as possible. In the interest of full disclosure, its worth noting that while this is my first attempt at fan fiction involving "Titanic," it isn't my first fan fiction overall. (Not by a long shot, in fact.) Previously, I've authored several stories over on the cartoon section of the site, all of them dealing with the Disney television program "Kim Possible." I'm not entirely certain why I felt drawn to this show initially, although I suspect the multi-layered writing and complex characters had something to do with it. In any case, I'm not exactly new to this dance, so make of it all what you will.
On another front, I tend to fancy myself an amateur historian of sorts, and have been enthralled with the Titanic since a very early age. By now, I find myself familiar with most aspects of the ship and its layout, and I promise you that I will do my darndest to realistically include such features in whatever stories I may write. Historical fiction has always appealed to me in this way, because by including real-world settings in such tales, the world of the characters becomes so much more real… almost tangible. And that's the sort of story one can truly get lost in.
So in any case, I hope you enjoy Chapter One in this little tale. For future reference, I'm a firm believer in the review/reply exchange policy, so if you care enough to drop a note, you will get one back. I'm just sayin' up front is all.
Take care, one and all… and happy Easter!
Peace out!
Nutzkie…