Titanic: True Love Forever

Chapter 19: Getting Lost

Putting on my shoes I followed Lovejoy like an obedient white rabbit towards the stairs to the cargo hold, which, unlike the hatch I had passed through in the boiler room, was apparently a passageway set up specifically for the cargo hold staff. The old poodle stood so close to me that anyone else encountering us would just think that this old menopausal zombie was my butler or some such domestic servant.

Carl walks with me, he looks much better than he did a moment ago, at least he's no longer limping on his feet, it's the fact that his hand is still propped up on his back that's much less humiliating than covering his stomach. Every now and then he would look at me evilly, but when I glared back he immediately averted his eyes again.

I contemplated grabbing him as soon as I could as a hostage so the old poodle wouldn't dare wave his gun around. I watched the Carl guy with a calm demeanor for a moment, noting that the cuffs of his tuxedo were half rolled up, exposing part of his wrist, and that he wore a jewel-encrusted gold ring on his pinky finger that seemed to have a nice shine to it.

Then I have to admit, he's supposed to be good in the fitness department, stronger and firmer than the average male in the muscle department. That would mean that when I attacked him with my bare hands, I would be overwhelmed by his strength. I'm just a dancer, not a weightlifting or taekwondo Olympic champion, and there's no way to subdue a big man that easily without a weapon or when taken by surprise.

As if noticing me watching him, Calhokli wrinkled his brow in disgust, a certain hardness making his little gesture all the more pronounced. He reached out and placed a finger next to his lip, in passing to bite it gently. Of course he quickly realized the immaturity of such a gesture and pretended as if nothing had happened, tilting his head and letting his hand run over the silk bow on his collar.

Like a haughty, bald-furred peacock whose tail had been stepped on.

There was no elevator in the cargo area on the bottom deck, and we had to find the stairs of the passage we came from as we made our way up. It was probably late at night, so we passed through the ground floor corridors without seeing half a dozen attendants, and the old poodle occasionally stopped in his tracks because the corridors here were all over the place, and every now and then you could turn a corner and see three of them leading to different places, but the exterior white paneling was amazingly consistent with the exposed gas piping.

Calhokli finally couldn't help complaining impatiently as he passed the third fork in the road, "Did those damn workers in Northern Ireland, who can't move for independence, have to make this ship so complicated?"

Why didn't you complain when you came down with your old poodle just now, I sullenly bowed my head, knowing how to reach the upper decks but preferring to spend most of the night sleepwalking around the bottom deck.

"Miss Emily, you look like you know your way around here, I think you'll know how to get to the dining room on the D deck." The old poodle suddenly remembered that there was still a big living person like me, and he didn't look at all ashamed of the fact that the two of them, the master and the servant, had gotten lost and needed a woman to show them the way, so he asked even more shamelessly in a low, raspy voice, threatening me sinisterly in a mouthful of English-accented English.

Growing up in a society that honors the old and loves the young, I thought I was still kind-hearted, but for the first time, I wanted to beat up this old man so badly.

"You know? Then hurry up and say it, even if you apologize you'll still go to jail, you won't get away with it." Carl looked to be driven round and round by this labyrinthine and not half as gilded hellhole, and he was talking to me like I deserved to be chipped like I was a poor worker in his family's factory.

Bears. No wonder the two of them got along so well, it was like the most obnoxious two-bear combo of the twentieth century bar none.

"I'm not so sure, I was just running around on the way down, maybe we can stand here for a bit or we'll run into one of the attendants here." I flashed a peevish grin at Lovejoy and politely lifted my skirt to show how pathetic I looked as I was soft and cute and alone and persecuted by them to the point where I couldn't recognize my surroundings.

"Wait until when? Hmph, even if it's the Titanic, it doesn't prove that the workers on the ship won't be lazy, and it's possible that those waiters who smiled courteously but actually just wanted money are now huffing and puffing inside the third class cabins." Carl tugged his eyebrows together in boredom and stood with his feet in a bit of an outward eight step to stabilize his body. He didn't seem as breathless as he had a moment ago, at least, and moved his hands away from his waist, pursing his lips so tightly that his nasolabial folds were pursed out.

"Perhaps Mr. Hockley could take American currency and smash it against the corridor wall, and then the riveted steel plates behind the wall would adoringly pop out and tell you which way to go." I was bored with my comments from the sidelines and would very much like to see this money-wannabe guy actually take out money and smash the deck.

"What do you mean? Take American money and smash it against the corridor walls?" Carl seemed to have heard some strange call, and he forced a mocking sneer, "What an unoriginal joke, you should learn how to have a refined sense of humor. Or maybe you're reminding me that you have to be tipped for leading the way." He laughed at me in what he thought was a very elegant manner before reaching inside his tuxedo and pulling out a beautiful, regal cigarette case from his inside pocket, opening the box and pulling out a cigarette and holding it to his lips.

It looked like he had finally fully eased back from the two kicks I had given him and already had the strength to pollute the world by creating second-hand smoke.

With the unlit cigarette in his mouth, his hand felt his pocket and then the pocket of his pants, and for a moment his demeanor was bewildered, as if recalling where his lighter or matchbook had gone. Then he looked back and raised an eyebrow at Lovejoy, as if signaling him to come over and light his cigarette.

In looking down the corridor passage, having just turned his head over Lovejoy only heard Carl's words and didn't notice the cigarette on his lips. So Lovejoy, very much the dogged generosity of a tycoon's butler, reached out with his hand and pulled an American dollar bill out of the inside pocket of his own suit, snapped it in my hand, and then he cleanly ordered, "Lead the way." He assumed this was what Carl meant, and the movement was beautifully retracted.

I looked at the ten dollars in my hand a little sluggishly for a moment; what could ten dollars buy in this day and age? One could buy two suits of clothes at a department store, or one could buy a ten-dollar hand-crank telephone, and, by the way, the cheapest violin was only five or six dollars.

It seems that tips on the Titanic are really good, counting the thirty dollars that aren't on me, I've already made forty dollars for doing nothing, buy a ticket for a stateroom cabin on this ship, and still have money left over for a set of clothes.

Cal hollowed his cigarette and blinked with a puzzled look on his face, then he snapped back to his senses and lazily lifted his sagging eyelids, almost rolling his eyes and spitting out words like fool or i***t. Then he reached down and took the cigarette out of his mouth, tapping the back of his hand against the white paneling of the hallway and ordering in a tone similar to that of an old poodle, "Lead on, I don't want to be wandering around this hellhole all night, thieves aren't the best at observing their surroundings."

I ...... slowly closed my palm and pinched the ten dollar bill bit by bit, hard, with a soft force. Or I should go to buy the two cheapest violins, and then one person a hand will be in front of these two guys burst head. I've seen no one in sight, but no one in sight like this, is simply a rare animal.

I take one deep breath, followed by looking up with a slight tilt of my chin and a smile as I say to the old and young assholes in front of me, "Yes, sir."