"I beg your pardon, miss?"
It was so puzzling an answer that he must have misheard it.
"Haha, really funny, the whole restroom playing dead thing," she remarked, unimpressed. "Look, it's late, and I got enough to do without you jerks making things weird around here. Don't make me spell it for you. Get. Out."
"Well, that's manners for you, that is!"
"I don't care. I'm working. Unlike you lazy bumslices next door-I won't say any names, because if I do, you'll never leave," she informed him. "But since you're here though, you might as well grab the damn mop bucket and dump it on your way back over there. Make yourself useful."
His jaw hung slightly open.
Confused.
Flabbergasted.
Feverish.
"Quite vulgar for a woman, that language is," he insisted. "Certainly, as an officer, I've earned more rank than this, and I'll be damned to be ordered about by a sour-appled stewardess."
"Did you just...call me an apple?" Her brow arced.
"Suppose I bloody did?" he dared.
"Well then the feeling's 'bloody' mutual," she threw back her answer. "Leave the bucket at the back door when you're done with it. And you have a nice day."
"Ah, so you're ordering my day about now? What authority you think you have in such matters, I do not know," he objected. "But with all due respect, miss, I'm having a rather grim day indeed."
"Ah. There, there, darling. Were you assigned any restroom check duties?" she challenged him. "Then shut up."
"How dare you speak to-"
But he was abruptly cut off when Kora swooped the rolling mop bucket his way, making him catch the handle of the mop before it crashed into his chest.
"Oh and the register trash needs dumping too, so you better hurry up," she reminded him. "I clock out in 10 minutes."
And then she promenaded on around him, leaving him standing there dumfounded and perplexed with the mop handle still poised in his hands.
Bloody hell...
What had he walked in on?
She was a cracked kettle pot, if ever he saw one.
And how had anyone trusted her with the duty of running this office, being a woman so disturbingly delusional about even the barest keel of things?
There wasn't a flyspeck of logic about her!
And if there be some apparent misunderstanding between them, he wasn't sure how to negotiate it.
Not with his own memory cut to pieces like Swiss cheese.
Where should he even start in explaining to her how he came about here, when he hardly remembered?
But for the love of God, he had to try.
"I don't believe you and I understand each other," he said very carefully, so she could not mistake him this time. "What I mean to say is, I have Greenwich time on me. Though judging by the celestial fixes I can observe, that time is no longer appropriate here. After mentally figuring some rough coordinates, my dead reckoning is that I've reached the eastern coastline of America, perhaps, though I can't be sure of what city exactly without a proper map. Pray can you tell me which house this is, so that I might know where to post a telegram?"
Kora sighed deeply.
Indeed, the heart does go on and on.
But how much longer would he take this?
This office prank had long since lost its flavor back at the trash bin.
"I'll tell you the secret to that problem of yours, if you promise to get out of my shop," she bargained with him, standing on tip-toe until her fingers barely reached the top shelf behind her register. "Your world-class day is about to get classier."
And setting a miniature, Titanic grand staircase clock in front of him, with two winged female figures facing each other on either side, Kora leaned toward him with a smile, elbows to counter, palms to chin.
Making it impossible for him to overlook how much those green eyes of hers reminded him so much of the hills rolling through his own country.
'Hiraeth,' he thought bittersweetly.
The Welsh word for a soul-deep longing for home.
Perhaps she might've even been quite a belle à croquer, if she wasn't such a damned blessing to meet.
That any 'pot of bliss' such as herself could take on fine eyes like that was plain and simple a wicked twist of fate.
And for a basket full of this-and-that reasons, he was rather vexed to wonder how a boatswain with an even keel like himself, could in a matter of minutes, let a stewardess like her fire him up so Melton hot?
"This, sir," she lowered her smoky voice to an almost-whisper that unwittingly dragged a prickling rush across the back of his neck. "Is a clock."
His eyes fell away from the shamrock emerald in hers to the quiet tick-tock between them.
Did she mean to make a ratbag out of him?
"Yes, is right, miss," he answered. "I can see that a clock it is."
"And seeing that you're obviously in need of one," she tempted him. "This happens to be on sale today for an unbeatable price of 10 percent off...But for you?"
Her sparky eyes scanned him up and down, and back again.
Slower, the second time around.
Taking in that something gutsy in the way he carried himself. Upright and fearless. From the neat line up of his polished dress shoes, to his commanding shoulders, to the tip of his long broadened nose, and finding home in his dark and heavy brows.
But that was the hidden contradiction of it all.
Even as everything in his stoic posture was orderly and symmetrical, his eyes told a different story.
Something daring and playfully mischievous, waiting to rebel the second he let himself give into it.
If there was any softness in such an angular man, it was probably there.
At the point in his soul where his hard-lined sense of duty was seduced by his red-hot love affair for adventure.
If there was a game to be won, he'd be the one to brag that he was hot for beating the odds.
And she lingered in the starlight of his steady gaze for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary.
A gaze as dark and deep as a moonless night at sea.
And the strength in them made love to a hidden paramour living secretly in his eyes.
Kora couldn't name what that fiery secret about him was. At least not in just the brief 5 minutes of meeting him.
But if she knew that secret, she'd never again have anything to fear of the cold.
"I'll give it to you for 15," she went on haggling him. "A whole two extra dollars you get to keep. Because let's be real, for what they pay us an hour, nothing beats that employee discount."
"Miss," he said ever patiently. "I've not come here to buy a clock."
"Might I tempt you with a pair of our state-of-the-art porthole sunglasses then?" she tried her next pitch, modeling the googlely eyed frames against her own nose. "Very trendy."
"Some other time, miss," he stubbornly persisted. "I've only come to take an urgent message to the White Star head house. I wish to inform the superintendent of an incident at sea."
"As in...the HR department?" she asked, confused, looking ever daffier with those portholes on her eyes. "Well, did you try emailing them?"
Email?
What the dickens was a blasted 'email'?
Could that just be her peculiar way of speaking, when she actually meant the post?
"I reckon the post might take several weeks," he muttered, lost for why she'd even mention it. "Surely, you don't mean to suggest I..."
But what was the point of even trying?
This whole undertaking with her was rather hopeless.
"It seems we're a bet mixed, and there's no help for it," he said to her. "But then again, you are American, I suppose, and that says everything, doesn't it?"
"Says the guy who thinks he can tell the time by the stars."
"Well, I don't tell you how to do the mopping, stewardess," he remarked. "And you won't tell me how to do my navigating."
And being a modern, post-suffrage woman of the 21st century, that remark sat disastrously out of context between them.
"Funny how that fake English accent somehow makes you more of an asshole."
But in Lowe's book, being called an "asshole" scarcely compared to the unforgivable insult of being called 'English'.
And being a Welshman of the 20th century, repeatedly told that his home nation was "irrelevant" next to England, Kora's remark tumbled tastelessly out of context into a centuries' old cow-pie of hellish mutiny between two very distinct countries.
"That's not a damned English you're hearing, love, but it's not my business to learn you," he said. "Is there anyone else I might have a word with? Anyone but a dodgy stewardess, that is."
"This 'dodgy stewardess' is as good as you're ever gonna get, love," she mimicked his word saucily. "And you have a nice day."
But there was no way he could reckon seriously with her anymore.
Not while those blasted porthole spectacles sat on her face.
He bit the inside of his cheek to restrain a smile, reminding himself that she looked rather peevish indeed, and that it was not at all funny in the very least, so help him God.
Now was not the time for these cockamine harlequinades!
"Hear me, woman, pray you, for God's sake? I came upon the White Star Line flag outside your door," he said, her absurd spectacles dragging him to the brink of his own wits. "Please-nay, I implore you-would you tell me which company house this is?"
"This is the Titanic Shop, where every customer is treated First Class," she stated in bright sarcasm with a smile to match, fed up with his shameless and unapologetical sexism. "Our key chains and refrigerator magnets are buy 3, get 1 free, mix and match. Everything else in the store is 10% off. And just so you know, our restrooms are out of order and we now close in approximately," She glanced at the grand staircase clock next to them. "3 minutes."
"I might pride myself in being master of the English language, but I can not at all make any sense of you," he said. "Would you repeat that first bit again?"
"Key chains," she reiterated through gritted teeth. "Refrigerator magnets. Buy 3, get 1-"
"Yes, I know. Get 3 for the price of 1, and pay only 75 percent of the sum. I figured so much," he said impatiently. "But what the bloody hell is a refrigerator and why would I be in need of one at a time like this?"
"And it's 5 o'clock," she said in relief, slapping her Windex and paper towels back on the counter as she came from behind the register.
Making him do a double take of her eccentric choice of footwear, her Converse peeking out from underneath her skirts.
"What the devil is going on around here?" he whispered to himself, staggered.
"I'm clocking out now, so I suggest you leave before you set the alarm off. Have a nice day."
His stomach knotted up at that last bit.
"Without a doubt, you are the worst sort of stewardess I can ever imagine."
"Thank you," she answered. "And who the hell are you?"
"Mr. Harold Godfrey Lowe, that's who I bloody am," he answered back. "5th Ship Officer of the RMS Titanic, master mariner. And I demand to know your name and that of your superior, so that I may report your loutish conduct straight away."
"Koralie Rose Amberflaw," she snatched the sunglasses off, her Converse now toe-to-toe with his shiny dress shoes, as she air-stabbed his chest with her glasses in emphasis of every letter. "A.M.B.E.R.F.L.A.W. Amberflaw. There's the number to customer complaints. If that's what it takes to get you out of my shop, knock yourself out."
But this so-called "5th Officer Harold Godfrey Lowe" wouldn't budge an inch.
"Until I've a word with the superintendent, duty would have me stay. And so, I much fear you'll have to bear the brunt of my company a bit longer, as I've ineludible questions that require immediate answers," he told her stoutly. "Albion House. Can you reach the White Star head office from here or not?"
"You're in a gift shop! What part of 'gift shop' don't you understand?" she demanded. "White Star Line doesn't even exist anymore!"
"You're making a bad joke of this, and I won't stand for it," he declared. "Don't you understand that something' bloody terrible has happened-"
He sighed again.
Beyond all hope.
There was just no use.
Nothing he said could get past the perpetually confused look she gave him. And being a man of chivalry, he felt his manners a bit chopsy for any lady in the room. Even for a despicable one such as her.
Taking a deep breath, he proceeded more calmly.
"Right...I know it seems I can't tell you who's which from when's what, but I assure you what I'm telling you is the truth," he explained to her.. "As I remember it, I was onboard the Titanic when she struck ice somewhere in the North Atlantic. I can't be sure of her exact coordinates when she hit, as I had stood down from my watch duties at 8 o'clock. I slumbered deeply and heard nought of a collision. We don't get any too much sleep, we officers. And when we do sleep, we die. I lay half-awake when I heard passengers near the officers' quarters, where they never wander. And when my feet touched the floor, I felt that the ship was tipping down by the head. I knew then something was wrong, and walked out to find the passengers running about in lifebelts and the crew getting the lifeboats away...But that is all my memory of it. The last thing I remember is waking up in the ocean, clinging to driftwood. I swam to shore only to find that nothing of the world is how I left it. Though I fear the worst has happened to the ship. Have you any news of Titanic since yesterevening?"
"Titanic?" Her concerned gaze glistened with skepticism. "As in the Titanic?"
"You must know of her by name, surely," he said, lost for why she seemed so surprised. "The White Star house flag is upon your very door."
"This...is...a shop," she broke it down for him, using her hands to illustrate the point. "That sells gifts."
"Yes...I...am...well acquainted with...what...a...shop...is," he doubled her tone and hand demonstrations. "But I fail to see what that's got to do with anything."
"Well, I can't help you there."
"It goes without saying," he remarked, setting her knitted cardigan with care on the counter before her and placing his cap back on his head. "I will take my leave now. Many thanks for your time."
Kora snatched her Windex bottle off the glass case again to go about her business.
"You too, and I hope you have a nice-"
"Please, woman, I beg you, don't say it!"
And then he stopped in the midst of his turn.
Making Kora stop too, following his gaze to the jewelry case underneath his fingertips. His eyes drawn to the blue heart-shaped necklaces dazzling on display within the glass.
"Just a moment," he said, removing his cap again as he absently sat it on the jewelry counter. "What is all this?"
"The Heart of the Ocean," Kora answered, stunned that out of all the things she'd tried to sell him thus far, it was this that caught his interest almost instantly. "You've never seen one of these things online before?"
Lowe studied the row of necklaces closely.
"They are imitations?"
"Just Swarovski crystal. Nothing close to the real thing...Some people think the real Hope Diamond is cursed," Kora said. "Weird things seem to happen wherever it is. The theory goes, anybody who owns it dies in some tragic and mysterious way. And it seems to like disappearing on its own. First, after the beheading of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, and then again when the Titanic sank. They say it went down with the ship, but it's just a movie, right? The necklace itself didn't really exist back then. Still, who doesn't love a good ghost story?"
And for a moment, Lowe seemed to freeze there in time, his dark eyes haunted and lost to a faraway sea.
As the only thing stranger than her implausible otherworldly tale were the images and voices invoked by it, echoing through his mind.
"And lower away! Easy! Watch that trim! Steady now! And lower away evenly, lads!"
"Rose! What are you doing?"
"Stop her! You stop her!"
By happenstance, Lowe happened to be running by, on his way to assist with the launch of Collapsible A on the officer's quarters.
With only a split second to act.
The white glow of a sea rocket lit up the promenade A-deck, as Lowe fell on the railing, throwing his arms out to pull a female passenger back over while she hung off the side of the ship. Just after she'd jumped recklessly onto the railing out of Lifeboat Collapsible D.
But Lowe never even got a chance to take in her face properly, before the hysterical woman ripped free of his grasp and bolted away down A-deck toward the first class dining saloon.
Seemingly oblivious or untroubled by her belonging that had fallen out of her coat pocket at Lowe's feet in the mayhem of her jump.
Lowe scooped the sapphire blue diamond necklace off the planked deck.
"Miss, I believe you dropped your..."
But when he looked up again to search for her in the crowd, the merlot-haired woman was gone.
Lowe reached into his waistcoat pocket.
His fingers brushing up against the cold smooth object that he'd up until now assumed was an extra casing of bullets for his revolver.
His stomach turned, as he realized the horrors he had only a vague memory of, were undeniably true.
"A gift shop, you say?" he murmured, as the realization slowly hit him.
Had he only just taken a wrong turn through her shop door...or could there be something more sinister going on here? Something "mysterious", as she put it?
"If this is a ghost story, Ms. Amberflaw, then I wonder which of us is haunting the other?" he asked her. "You...or I?"
But that would wreck everything they mutually understood about the universe.
Even as Lowe stood there with irrefutable proof that no story was ever so much the truth as the blue diamond caged in his hand.
It's contour less of a heart-shaped piece, and more of a trilliant cut, giving it a soft roundedness that distinguished it from the ones in her jewelry case. It had a clarity unlike the others. While Kora could often spot a rainbow reflecting in the ones sold by the store, this one only reflected indigo in the light. A sapphire as blue as a bottomless ocean.
If it were the actual Heart of the Ocean, it'd be valued at over $250 million.
A price that would've costed him dearly for the sake of a stupid office prank.
That's when Kora knew something about this was off.
Something about him seemed completely out of this world.
"Do you really, honestly think," Kora could hardly believe she was entertaining such an idea. "that you really are an officer literally from the Titanic?"
"Forgive me," Lowe said, knowing how absurd he must already sound to her. "But if our misunderstanding of each other until now has been the fault of extraordinary forces, I hope you will at least place your confidence in my tale, if only just to call it hypothetical."
"But how can you be here and from there at the same time? That's not possible."
"In earnest, I don't know for certain what 'here' is anymore."
"Here is 2022," she insisted. "So, hypothetically, if you actually were on the Titanic, that would've been...1912?"
"And so, you're telling me...1912 isn't the year it is now?"
Kora shook her head. "No."
"Can you by chance..." the words were soft on his lips as he hesitated, appearing almost afraid to finish his request. "Can you to me prove somehow that what you say is the truth?"
"Look around you," Kora urged him. "It's a Titanic museum. All of it is proof that you can't possibly be the real Officer Harold Lowe from 1912."
"But I am who I say I am," Lowe insisted. "If this truly is April of 2022, as you say it is, then there must be some record here, or some photograph of me. In Belfast for the sea trials, perhaps, or Southampton. If you've any at hand, perhaps we can set the record straight on who's telling the truth."
Kora turned to her right, her eyes scanning a shelf stocked with dozens of historical volumes about the Titanic and its fatal sinking.
After carefully considering each book on each shelf, she reached for a title reading, On A Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic.
Setting the book on the glass counter between her and Lowe, she flipped through the pages until she paused at a chapter titled, "Titanic's Ship Officers".
Then her finger dragged across the row until it froze on the astute portrait of 5th Junior Officer Harold Godfrey Lowe.
Her heart dropped into her stomach.
Through the graininess of the photo, she immediately picked out the strong brows and dark honest eyes of the man standing in front of her.
Bearing an uncanny identical resemblance to the officer in the portrait.
Leaving both he and Kora suddenly chilled.
The photograph confirming what they knew to be impossible; That they were both actually telling the truth.
"It says that you..."
"Yes?"
Kora slid the book across the counter to him, giving Lowe a better look to read it himself.
Harold Lowe was the only junior officer to die on the Titanic on April 15th, 1912. Lowe was reported to be assisting with the launch of Collapsible D, the last lifeboat to leave the ship. At some point, it is believed that he may have left the deck to an unknown location within the ship. He was last seen at the entrance of the First-Class Dining Saloon, directing passengers to Collapsible A on the officers' quarters, before it was swept underwater as the bow sank. Based on testimony given by 6th Officer James Moody during the U.S. inquiry, Lowe had originally intended to board Lifeboat 16, after insisting Moody take Lifeboat 14. However, for reasons unknown, Lowe never made it off the ship. He died in the performance of his duty, keeping the deck calm in order to save as many passengers as he could with the limited lifeboats remaining. Lowe's reasons for not leaving Titanic when he had the chance remain a mystery. His body was never recovered following the sinking. A memorial was shortly erected in Barmouth, Wales, his place of...
Lowe quickly closed the book shut.
"It couldn't have happened that way," he insisted. "Because I stand before you now alive and well. How could anyone invent such a perverse fantasy about me being..."
And then his eyes shifted around him to the ship memorabilia he never really took in before. The haunting image of the ship, the RMS Titanic, painted on everything within reach of him. Coffee mugs reading 1912, wall canvases, key trinkets, tartan fleece blankets, miniature display models, odd garments with hoods he couldn't find a name for, blankets, bags, socks, board games, decorative coins...
"This is absolutely irrational," he whispered dazedly. "How can I be dead when I'm surely breathing?"
And what was this so-called "gift shop" that it was allowed to sell such tasteless souvenirs, worshipping a shipwreck as if it were the next best thing to St. David's Day?
How had the night of April 14th-his supposed "death" at sea among the hundreds of drowning and freezing passengers-become the morbid fetish of this perverted alien world?
The dizzying reminders of the ship around him haunting him with so many impossible questions.
Had Titanic, the "unsinkable ship", as they called it, truly foundered after she hit that iceberg?
Was that truly the way of history, as his own time had known it?
Or was it only so in the history of this parallel reality he found himself trapped in?
And if this scenario existed in this version of reality, did that mean there were others? That, in some sister reality, Titanic remained afloat in 1912, safely ported in New York on Wednesday morning as she was always meant to be?
How could he be certain which one was fact, when he'd never remembered a sinking nor ever made it to port with Titanic?
Was this only a nightmare then?
Was he still sound asleep in his cabin aboard the ship, after wishing Moody a goodnight as he ended his watch?
Perhaps he was in asylum, after being taken by a sudden fit of psychosis?
Or maybe some other probable reason had got him here, like being thrown overboard or lost at sea, which brought him to this unimaginable afterlife?
Even so, how could he have no memory of dying?
"If that's the honest truth," he said. "Then how does one forget a shipwreck entirely? Whatever this is, it can't happen this way. You can't exist, and neither can your demented perspective of history. It's all a mistake, I tell you."
"No, you can't exist," Kora insisted. "Because then that would mean you were born over 100 years ago."
"1882...the 21st of November," Lowe reported. "Caernarvonshire, Wales"
"Not possible," Kora disagreed.
"Then one of us is a lie, because as it turns out, we're both standing here, Ms. Amberflaw," Lowe countered. "If history is logically chronological-which we both know it is-then you and I can not exist at the same time on the same continuum. It just wouldn't happen. None of this should ever happen."
"I know," Kora whispered gently back to him. "I'm sorry...I wish I understood what you're going through and I don't...But I'm sorry that it's happening to you."
And when Lowe gazed back at the softer look of compassion in her eyes, he felt deeply ashamed.
How could he, a man and a veteran sailor, ever put such a burden on a young girl's shoulders?
It wasn't hers to carry.
Whatever the nature of this nightmare he was living, it was his own to sort out.
"Though strangers to each other, we are, I am even stranger to this world. Knowing now that my own world crumbled from underneath me without a reason, I can not rest without an answer," he told her. "If there is a way to undo this, I must find it. If by some bit of luck, going back is the same way I came in, then I've naught to lose by trying it."
And reaching into his pocket again, he slid Le Cœur de la Mer across the counter to her.
"This should count for all your troubles," he said to her. "No doubt its worth a small fortune now. If you take me back to the sea, I will ensure you are paid well."
"I'm sorry," she rejected the token. "I can't take this from you."
"Please, I've not a farthing to offer you," he regretted. "I give you my word that I'll repay your kindness when I've the chance. If you assist me, I shall gladly find my own way from the shore and leave you in peace. I beg you kindly to oblige me this once."
And Kora stood at a stalemate between him and the diamond on the counter.
He was crazy.
Beyond a doubt, he literally believed he sailed on the Titanic.
But because he was crazy, she felt it was exactly the reason why she couldn't look away.
Because it was clear to her that he was only as crazy as the trauma he had endured.
It may not have been Titanic.
She was absolutely 110 percent sure it wasn't the Titanic.
But it was something.
She could see it all in his eyes, and she felt so deeply his agony over the old world he'd left behind.
And in that moment of empathy, she believed him.
"There's a trail at Bitter Tears Cross by the bay," she told him. "I can give you a ride up there, but I'll only be able to help you that far. The rest is up to you."
"I am truly indebted to you, Ms. Amberflaw."
"Wait here," she told him. "I'll grab my keys."
But just as Kora entered the back hallway to grab her stuff from the breakroom and clock out, the front door bell of the shop went ding-ding again, admitting yet another customer.
She sighed.
Damn...Forgot to lock the door.