Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine #6

she pivoted and said in a half whisper, “Perhaps again in Tokyo.” She said nothing more, and he listened to her footfalls fade across the wooden deck.

He would stay in Tokyo, delay his trip north. He would find her. Peter bubbled with determination; but, while he foraged about for practical ways to assist her, he found none. Was he in love with her? He’d barely met her. But, if the answer was not yes, it soon would be. Perhaps again in Tokyo.

----Peter slept fitfully and awoke disoriented. He regretted he had not called a porter. In the passageway he struggled with a heavy leather bag in one hand. The smaller Boston Bag he clutched in the other hand failed to provide balance as he maneuvered his way toward the gangway. And he had to stop to adjust his straw boater that tilted precariously to one side. He had been watching for Maria, but had been unable to catch sight of her. He worried he had missed her. Her story, what little he knew of it, seemed heart-wrenching. Even if it had only been a shipboard dalliance, she had seemed interested in him. It could not end so easily. He was determined to locate her once in Japan.

Just his luck. The line of departing passengers had backed up, and Peter found himself standing immediately behind his dinner companions from the previous evening.

“I suppose you heard about it,” Evelyn Mortinson said.

“Heard about what? Did something happen?” Peter said. “I’m afraid I’m a heavy sleeper.”

“What? I thought everyone knew. I’m talking about that girl.”

“That girl?”

“He doesn’t know what you mean, Evelyn,” Ted said. “She means the girl who jumped off the boat.”

Peter experienced a dreadful unease, but he spoke evenly. “No. I heard nothing. I skipped breakfast.”

“I’m sure it was the girl at our table,” Evelyn said, her voice rife with a sense of knowing something others did not. “They say she was young and said something about nothing to live for. Then jumped right into the drink.”

“Had a foreign accent too,” Ted added. “Old woman says she saw her do it.”