"Well, I must say that a relief, it is."
And by that, James Moody meant his restored portrait, as he watched the janitorial gents make a fuss at each other, grappling under the weight of the bloody frame in yet another attempt to hang it back up in the museum exhibit gallery.
As it so happened that, not long after James's arrival in the future, a pack of rascals on a school tour thought it great fun to draw a knob of epic proportions, fully extended at the fly of James's trousers.
"Spent all my goddamn shift scrubbing alcohol over this big ass fucking dong," one of the janitors was telling his fellow custodian, as he demonstrated the exact cut of it with his hands. "About yeigh long and yeigh big."
James nodded, pursing his lips, as he was inclined to admit that he was mildly impressed with the guesstimation.
There or thereabouts, I suppose.
"Yeah, a real goddamn Picasso," the other janitor shook his head. "They ever catch that little shit?"
"Took him out right before he started screwing over these other two. I fucking hate kids."
Leaving James chuffing as he watched them continue to wrestle with his portrait. His photograph a perfect reflection of himself, as he waited in the photo exhibit for Millie to finish working. Having followed the cashier girl's advice and paid a visit to the costume closet to blend in with the museum staff. Feeling like his old self again, on trend as an officer in his old fashionable best of a White Star Line uniform with his cap cocked ever so slightly to the right side, the way he'd always liked to wear it when the senior officers weren't looking.
"So," thought he to himself. "I wasn't ever erasable after all."
Finding out at last that time travel had no effect on altering history or the troubling absence of his character from James Cameron's entire moving picture.
And as James studied his officer's portrait intently, trying to find in it the exact caliber of "hot" Miss Millie had meant while looking at it, his eyes dropped to the glass display case on a raised pedastool between his and Officer Lowe's portraits.
Locked inside of it was a Browning 1910 revolver, which, as Moody remembered it, shot the 32 centerfire pistol cartridge. The same pistol Lowe had carried on him, on the night Titanic sank.
And next to the antique firearm were 5 semi-rimmed, straight-walled brass bullets lined up at the butt of the pistol.
Three of which, James gradually remembered, Officer Lowe had fired that night alongside the hull of the ship to deter the passengers from rushing Lifeboat 14, as it lowered into the water.
Stay back, you lot! Just stay back! Stay back, the lot of you! Stay back!
BANG, BANG, BANG!
James was again shaken out of the memory of the building panic that night when the sound of 3 hard knocks on the locked museum entrance brought him back to the present.
"Alright! Jesus, we heard you!"
The museum security guard dragged himself lazily out of his seat as he fumbled with his keys to confront the impatient customer, whose reflection from James's view was distorted by the rain on the windowglass.
"Sorry, pal, we're not selling anymore tickets. We'll be closing down the place in 15 minutes," the security guard told him at the door.
"As if I'd ever be interested in purchasing one," the man stated, in a lordly sort of way with words that made James feel suddenly cold all over. "I have come here looking for something quite different. Where is your gift shop, might I ask?"
"Back out and around that way toward the alley. Just follow the signs," the security guard carelessly waved him in the approximate direction. "The museum part is closed, so I can't let you cut through here. You'll have to walk around the building. But like I said, you got 15 minutes, then we close."
"You'll want to do it much sooner than that," the man coolly muttered his suggestion, as he inflated his dark umbrella again. "Phone your constables. I can't promise you I'll be tidy."
And leaving the security guard lost for what he could ever mean by a 'constable', the customer turned back to the rain, striding toward Millie's gift shop door on the other side.
Leaving James with an ominously unsettling feeling, as he watched the dark distorted figure of the man move along the window glass.
His mind racing to place the man's strikingly familiar voice in his foggy memory.
"It's like you said. We're not lads anymore. We're playing a very different game now. Cruelest in all our contests of war. You won't have any ground before I've taken it from you in the most devastating ways you can imagine. Should I destroy myself doing it, you will never call yours anything that belongs to me."
And piece by piece, the face belonging to those words became a sobering realization to James, taking him back to that night he was last confronted by that same lofty voice at Lifeboat 16.
"James, I beg you to help me. I can't tell now if I'm too late...if I have doomed her...I never intended for any of this to happen. How could I have known that the ship would sink?"