Jack 1939 by Francine Mathews

voyage.
    Jack crossed his arms and leaned on the rail, shoulders hunched, no particular party to attend. There was a telegram in his pocket from Frances Ann, deliberately gay; she’d signed it
Good-bye darling I love you
, but the words were meaningless now. She’d be relieved to put the Atlantic between them.
    He’d brought a fedora but he wasn’t wearing it. The rain settled in his hair, turning the careful pompadour to corkscrewed Irish. He debated the idea of the First Class lounge and a glass of Bourbon, which would wreak havoc with the ulcerated duodenum Taylor thought he had, but what the hell. The DOCA seemed to be working. He was able to keep some food down now and he thought he might have gained a pound or two. A shot of Bourbon wouldn’t hurt. He was lonely and the curtain that was either Boredom or Death was hovering just off the port side.
    And then she materialized beside him: cool and porcelain-faced, knees bound in a pencil skirt. Her fur was high-collared and ended abruptly at the waist. Her hat swept like a dove’s wing over one cheek. It made her seem sly and seductive and unreachable as she stared thoughtfully at the pier. Where was her farewell party? Like Jack, she did not bother to wave. Like Jack, she crossed her arms and leaned on the rail, one shoulder grazing his. Her mouth was painted crimson. An unlit cigarette dangled from her lip.
    He reached in his pocket. “Need a light?”
    She bent toward the flame. As the cigarette caught, her chin lifted and she stared over his head, exhaling through the perfectly stained mouth. He could see that her hair was jet black and chin length, with a heavy fringe on the forehead; her black eyes had not the slightest bit of expression in them.
French
, he thought. His pulse quickened and the lit match burned his fingertips. He tossed it over the rail.
    Only then did her gaze drift for an instant to his face.
    “I’m Jack,” he said, offering his hand.
    He thought perhaps her lips quirked. Then she moved past him without a word, her hips swinging in the pencil skirt.
    His head craned sideways to follow her.
    * * *
    THE MAN WHO HAD STUCK a knife into Katie O’Donohue’s heart was several decks below, eyeing the people who jostled one another in Tourist Class. A glass of rye whiskey had been pressed into his hand by a whirling party girl already three sheets to the wind, and he’d accepted it gratefully as a God-given prop that suggested he had a reason to be there. He was almost out of time.
    His gaze moved indifferently over the passing women. They had nothing he needed. He was searching for a man: one who looked like himself, one who was
not
going ashore when the shore whistle blew. He knew to the second when that whistle would sound, and what he must do under cover of its noise. But first he needed the mark.
    “Hey, handsome,” a girl crooned at his elbow. She rocked against him as though overbalanced by the motion of the boat. A redhead. She smelled unpleasantly of cigarettes and whiskey. “There’s a swell party going on in D-13. That’s my friend Darlene’s cabin. It’s got the sweetest little bunk imaginable.”
    “Excuse me.” He could utter those two words without the slightest trace of accent. He disengaged his arm and edged past the girl. The drunken throng closed around him.
    The first shore whistle blew.
    Panic rose in his throat. He
must find
somebody. Five foot ten, blond, and hovering on the edge of thirty—
    He raced through the crowd to the Tourist gangway, searching for one man who could be his savior.
    And there, unbelievably, he was: a mild-faced fellow gripping a briefcase, with a good felt hat pushed back on his head, a wool scarf tucked into the collar of his somewhat shabby camel’s hair coat.
    The man with the knife surged forward, a smile of welcome on his face. Smiling made the scar on his upper lip sting.
    “Here you are at last!” he cried. “I’d given up, my friend! Where is your berth? Allow me to help