Tabloid Dreams Read Free

revise that somewhat. The first impression, however, was that she was young, and that was all. Perhaps rather pretty, too, but I don’t think I noticed that at the time. There were certain things that I suppose were beyond my powers of observation. When I realized to whom she was speaking, her words finally registered on me.
    â€œNot at all.” I spoke from whatever ignorance I had learned all my life. “Nothing that can’t be handled. This is a fine ship.”
    â€œI’m not in a panic,” she said. “You can hear that in my voice, can’t you?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œI just know this terrible thing to be true.”
    I leaned on the rail and looked at these sleeping cattle. I knew what they were. I understood what this woman had concluded. “It’s the ice you fear,” I said.
    â€œThe deed is done, don’t you think?” she said.
    Her breath puffed out, white in the moonlight, and I felt suddenly responsible for her. There was nothing personal in it. But this was a lady in some peril, I realized. At least in peril from her own fears. I felt a familiar stiffening in me, and I was glad of it. Dissipated now were the effects of the cigar smoke and the comfort of a chair in a place where men gathered in their complacent ease. But I still felt I only needed to dispel some groundless fears of a woman too much given to her intuition.
    â€œWhat deed might that be?” I asked her, trying to gentle my voice.
    â€œWe’ve struck an iceberg.”
    I was surprised to find that this seemed entirely plausible. “And suppose we have,” I said. “This ship is the very most modern afloat. The watertight compartments make it quite unsinkable. We would, perhaps, at worst, be delayed.”
    She turned her face to me, though she did not respond.
    â€œAre you traveling alone?” I asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œPerhaps that accounts for your anxiety.”
    â€œNo. It was the deep and distant sound of the collision. And the vibration I felt in my feet. And the speed with which we were hurtling among these things.” She nodded to the shapes in the dark. I looked and felt a chill from the night air. “And the dead stop we instantly made,” she said. “And it’s a thing in the air. I can smell it. A thing that I smelled once before, when I was a little girl. A coal mine collapsed in my hometown. Many men were trapped and would die within a few hours. I smell that again . . . These are the things that account for my anxiety.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t be traveling alone,” I said. “If I might say so.”
    â€œNo, you might not say so,” she said, and she turned her face sharply to the sea.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. Though I felt I was right. A woman alone could be subject to torments of the sensibility such as this and have no one to comfort her. I wanted to comfort this woman beside me.
    Is this an eddy through what once was my mind? A stirring of the water in which I’m held? I ripple and suddenly I see this clearly: my wish to comfort her came from an impulse stronger than duty would strictly require. I see this now, dissolved as I have been for countless years in the thing that frightened her that night. But standing with her at the rail, I simply wished for a companion to comfort her on a troubling night, a father or a brother perhaps.
    â€œYou no doubt mean well,” she said.
    â€œYes. Of course.”
    â€œI believe a woman should vote too,” she said.
    â€œQuite,” I said. This was a notion I’d heard before and normally it seemed, in the voice of a woman, a hard and angry thing. But now this woman’s voice was very small. She was arguing her right to travel alone and vote when, in fact, she feared she would soon die in the North Atlantic Ocean. I understood this much and her words did not seem provocative to me. Only sad.
    â€œI’m certain you’ll have a