Page 58 - Titanic: The Untold Tale of Gay Passengers and Crew

44 Jack Fritscher

“There is no moon,” Molly said wistfully.
“But the stars,” I said, “shine brightly.”
“Not as brightly as my dia mond Hapsburg tiara,” Molly
said. She leaned her bosom close to me. “I hope you’ve stored
it safely in the ship’s vault.”
“Actually,” I said, “it’s in our suite.”
“You’re as careless as me,” she said. “No wonder I like
you.”
At 11:40, half our table looked up. The other half kept
laughing, talking animatedly above the lustrous eight-man
or chestra directed by bandmaster Hartley.
“What was that?” Molly asked.
“It sounded,” Madame Ouspenskaya intoned, “as if a
fin ger were drawn against the side of the ship.”
The look on her face made my temperature drop faster
than the evening air. At 21 knots, Ti tanic sped through the
water at 300 feet in less than 10 seconds. “It has to be noth-
ing,” I said. “Look. Nothing has changed. The dancers. The
music. The ballroom.”
Molly agreed. “You fellas and gals should feel the earth-
quakes in Colorado.”
In the Grand Ballroom there was absolutely no sense of
shock. Below decks, deep inside the ship, in Boiler Room 6,
on the star board side, the Stoker heard the impact’s crunch-
ing, and then a sound like thunder rolling toward him. A
line of water was pouring through a thin gash in the ship’s
side two feet above the stokehole floor. He ordered his coal
gang fast up the boiler room’s emergen cy ladder.
Edward, pounding his pud, locked solitary two decks
above in the brig cell, felt nothing but the shuddering of his
own passion.
Below decks, watertight doors slammed closed amid the