I eyed the painting I held in front of me, a Monet of water lilies, pondering where to put it in the already ornately decorated sitting room. I stared a bit longer before placing it on a lavish arm chair and returning to the boxes, looking for my personal favorite. "Do you want them all out, Liam?" Wedy, my nurse-maid from birth asks me, "Yes. We need a little bit of colour in this room." I answer quietly, still rummaging thru the many pieces of art. "Are you looking for one in particular?" she asks, used to my detachment by now. "Yes, it had a lot of faces on it…" I trailed off, finding the one I was looking for. "Here it is." I announce, examining the familiar painting lovingly.
"Oh god, not those finger paintings again…" I hear Aiber say from behind me, and opt to ignore him, "they were certainly a waste of money." He continues, and I finally respond, "The difference between Aiber's taste in art and mine is that I have some." I say, still looking at my Picasso. "They're interesting. Like being in a dream." I explain to anyone listening. "There's truth, but no logic." I say as I place the painting reverently upon the mantle. "What's the artists' name?" Wedy asks me. "Hmm… Something Picasso." I say, the full name evading me. "'Something Picasso'?" Aiber says, leaning on the door leading to the covered deck, "He won't amount to a thing. Trust me." He walks away, muttering to his manservant, Mikami, "At least they were cheap."
"It smells so new, doesn't it?" Wedy asks, folding sheets in the bedroom while I stare at my reflection in the mirror as I am preparing for bed, my too-thin form and porcelain skin makes me look sickly. I barely hear as Wedy continues her small-talk, "Just to think that when I crawl in bed tonight I'll be the first-"
"and when I crawl in bed tonight, I'll still be the first" Aiber interrupts, gazing at me wearing nothing but underclothes. Wedy blushes at his innuendo, and excuses herself. "The first and only. Forever." He says, placing his hands on my naked shoulders in an act of pure possession. I school my expression, trying not to show how bleak a prospect this is for me.
...
"At Cherbourg, a woman came aboard named Misami Amane. We all called her Misa, but history would come to call her the Unsinkable Misa Amane. Her husband had struck gold somewhere out west, and she was what mother called 'new money'.
By the next afternoon we were steaming west, off the coast of Ireland, nothing out ahead of us but ocean…"
...
The ship glows with the warm creamy light of late afternoon. Light and Matsu stand right at the bow, gripping the curving railing as they stare out to sea. "I can see the Statue of Liberty already." Matsuda says and Light laughs, "very small of course." He admonishes, describing with his thumb and fore-finger exactly how small.
Light smiles, enjoying the breeze in his hair and the salty smell of the ocean, and leans over, looking down fifty feet to where the prow cuts the surface of the cold, north Atlantic water like a knife, sending up two glassy sheets of water.
...
"She is the largest moving object ever made by the hand of man in all history." Mr. Ruvie brags in his English accent, his voice grating on my already frayed nerves. We had been invited to have an elite tour of the ship by the engineer himself, and brunch as well, because of Aiber's incredible inability to understand that money does not impress me.
"…And our master shipbuilder here, Mr. Wammy, designed her from the keel plates, up." He indicates a greying man in his late forties with a humble smile on his face. My attention is drawn to him as he turns the compliment away.
"Well, I may have knocked her together, but the idea was Mr. Ruvie's." he says, with light Irish inflection, trying to divert attention from himself. "He envisioned a steamer so grand in scale, and so luxurious in its appointments, that its supremacy would never be surpassed. And here she is," he slaps the table, "willed into solid reality."
"Why are ships always being called 'she'?" Misa asks "Is it because men believe half the women around have big sterns and should be weighed in tonnage?" she reasons, looking to Mr. Ruvie. The table erupts in a giggle, though I can tell by looking she had meant it in a serious manner. She looks directly at me and says quietly, "Just another example of these power-hungry men setting rules their way." I give her a small, but genuine, smile as the waiter arrives for our orders. I pull a cigarette and filter from my coat pocket when my mother and Aiber are distracted, and light up as I listen to Aiber order for me.
"L, you know I don't like that..." My mother admonishes quietly. I look at her dully and exhale in her face, reveling in her absoloutly scandalized expression.
"He knows." Aiber says, taking the cylinder from the filter and putting it in my water. How rude.
"We'll have the lamb." He says dismissively, not even polite enough to look at the man, "Rare. With very little mint sauce." And looks to me after he departs, asking, "You like lamb, right L?"
Misa, who had been observing the dynamic between us, says "Will you be cutting his meat for him too, Aiber?" in an irritated tone, then turns her attention before he can respond, "So," she continues, "who thought of the name 'Titanic'?" she asks, looking around the table, "Was it you, Roger?" she asks with a nod to Mr. Ruvie.
"Yes, actually," he answers, covering his mouth to swallow his food before continuing, "I wanted to convey sheer size, and size means: stability, luxury, and, above all, strength." He goes to continue, but I interrupt him.
"Do you know of Dr. Freud, Mr. Ruvie?" I ask, looking directly at him, my amusement not apparent in my monotone and blank expression, "His ideas about the male preoccupation with size may be of particular interest to you."
Misa nods her head, laughing loudly and Mr. Wammy covers his mouth with a napkin to hide his ammusement.
"My God!" my mother gasps at me with a disbelieving look on her face, "Liam! What's gotten into—?"
"Excuse me." I say before she can continue, and rise to go to the outside viewing decks.
"I do apologize…" I hear my mother say.
"He's a pistol, Aiber," Misa quips, "Sure you can handle him?"
"Well, I may have to start minding what he reads after all." I hear Aiber say rudely before they are out of earshot and I can get the fresh air I wanted. I walk out onto the promenade and lean against the railings, pondering my cosmic unimportance.
...
I sit on a bench in the sun on the great ship, my leather-bound sketching pad, my most valuable possession, out on my lap as I draw a man holding his young daughter up at the railing of the ship with one of my conte crayons. She leans back against her father's beer-belly as he points out seagulls flying about the ship to her, and my eyes focus on the scene before me as my hand makes sure strokes against the rough paper of the sketch pad.
"That's typical," an angry voice breaks my concentration and I look up to see the speaker, a scowling Asian man with a fluffy head of black hair, watching as a crewmember walks three small dogs. "First class dogs come down here to take a shit." His scowl worsens and I offer my opinion.
"Ah, shows us where we rank in the scheme of things." I point out, "Like we could forget?" he asks, offering his hand, "Aizawa Shuichi" he says gruffly, "Light Yagami," I reply, accepting the strangely western gesture. I glance over his shoulder as the sun glints off something on the upper deck and my eyes are drawn to the most exotically beautiful person I have ever seen.
I find myself completely unable to take my eyes off him, he reminds me so much of a character in a tragic romantic novel, sad and isolated, and all I want to do is comfort him. We are across from each other, about sixty feet apart, but I feel as if I am right next to an angel.
I examine the first-class boys' interesting features. Pristine clothing, a light yellow waistcoat over a white long-sleeved dress shirt and light beige trousers, all of which made his mussed black hair, slightly bohemian in its longer style, like my own, stand out all the more, his pale skin absolutely glowing in the still-rising sun.
"Beautiful." I say aloud without realizing as he turns to look at me, glancing only for a second before looking away, then turning back and staring at me just as unabashedly when I refuse to look away. Our eyes meet across the space of the wall deck, across the gulf between our worlds, and I get lost in the depths of those dark eyes.
He tilts his head in an adorable show of curiosity, and his eyes move, only for a second, to the sketch pad in my lap as a tall blonde man comes from behind and turns him forcibly, red in the face with anger. He grabs the angels arm and attempts to force him back inside, but the raven pulls away. They argue shortly in pantomime before the beautiful raven storms away, disappearing inside. I stare after him as the violent man follows in irritation.
"Ah, forget it, boy-o." I hear Aizawa say, "You're more likely to have angels fly out your ass than get next to the likes of him." He says, obviously having noticed my preoccupation. I still stare at the place he disappeared to, hoping to see him again, and I completely miss the sad, pitying smile Aizawa sends my way.