Titanic

O.3

Roses point of view:

It was dinner time and I really didn't want to be here. I sit, flanked by people in heated
conversation. Cal and Ruth are laughing together, while on the other side
Lady Duff Gordon is holding forth animatedly. I stare at her plate, barely listening to the
inconsequential babble around me.

I saw my whole life as if I'd already lived it... an endless parade of
parties and cotillions, yachts and polo matches... always the same narrow
people, the same mindless chatter. I felt like I was standing at a great
precipice, with no one to pull me back, no one who cared... or even Noticed.

Under the table, I poke the crab-fork into the skin of my arm, harder and harder
until it draws blood.

"Excuse me," I say to my mother. She didn't even hear me, she just kept talking. I stand up and walk away.

I walk along the corridor of B deck. A steward coming the other way greets me,
and I nod with a slight smile. I am perfectly composed.

I enter my bedroom. Standing in the middle, I stare at my reflection in the
large vanity mirror. Just standing there, then--

With a primal, anguished cry I claw at my throat, ripping off my pearl
necklace, which explodes across the room. In a frenzy I tear at myself ,
My clothes, my hair... then attack the room. I fling everything off
the dresser and it flies clattering against the wall. I hurl a
handmirror against the vanity, cracking it.
I can't take it anymore.

I run along B deck, my hair flying.
I began to cry. My cheeks streaked with tears. But also angry, furious!
Shaking with emotions I don't understand... hatred, self-hatred,
desperation. A strolling couple watch me pass. Shocked at the emotional
display in public.

______________

Jacks point of view:

I'm kicked back on one of the benches gazing at the stars blazing
gloriously overhead. Thinking artist thoughts and smoking a cigarette. I start to remember the women I saw today. Would I ever see her again? I flick my ashes into the cool breeze.

Hearing something, I turn to see someone running up the stairs from the well deck. I don't think whoever it was saw me.

I track the mysterious person as they runs across the deserted fantail. Her breath
hitches in an occasional sob, which sounds like she's trying to suppresses. She slams against the
base of the stern flagpole and clings there, panting. She stares out at the
black water.

Then starts to climb over the railing. She has to hitch her long dress way
up, and climbing is clumsy. Moving methodically she turns her body and gets
her heels on the white-painted gunwale, her back to the railing, facing out
toward blackness. 60 feet below her, the massive propellers are churning
the atlantin into white foam, and a ghostly wake trails off toward the
horizon.

What was this women doing? I get closer, but easy not to startle her.

"Don't do it," I quietly say.

She whips her head around and focuses on my eyes.

It was the girl. But how could she be doing this? She was first class. First class people didn't do this.