Passage

would have to reschedule. Mr. Mandrake again, trying to convince her to go see Mrs. Davenport, who had “overwhelming proof of psychic powers she was granted by the Angel of—machine full. No more messages can be recorded.”

He called the hospital switchboard. All pages were confidential, the operator told him, which under other circumstances would have struck him as funny, and, anyway, no permanent record was kept of the pages.

He hung up and started through the transcripts piled on the desk.

Phrases and words were highlighted in yellow. “I felt happy and peaceful,” a Mr. Sanderson had said, “as though I had come to the end of a long voyage and was finally home.” The word “voyage” was highlighted, and elsewhere in the transcript, “water” and “cold,” which both made sense, and “glory,” which didn’t. In the next transcript, “cold” was highlighted again, and “passage” and “a sound like something ripping.” In the next, “darkness” and “smoke” and one entire sentence: “I was standing at the bottom of a beautiful stairway going up as far as I could see, and I knew it led to heaven.”

Or the Boat Deck, Richard thought. Joanna had clearly been pursuing a connection with the Titanic. Every word and phrase she’d marked, with the exception’ of “glory,” was Titanic-related. And “smoke.” No, “smoke” could relate to possible fires on the Titanic. Had she seen one? But she hadn’t mentioned a fire in any of her accounts. Or had she? The last two times she’d gone under he’d scarcely listened to her accounts, he’d been so wrapped up in why she’d kicked out. Could there be something in one of them that had triggered the discovery, whatever it was? And made her go tearing off in such a hurry that she’d left the computer on and forgotten her minirecorder?

But she’d had her last session four days before she died. And gone tearing off somewhere in a taxi, looking upset, had showed up at Kit’s an hour later without her coat and then left abruptly.

That’s it, he thought, there was something in that NDE, and began going through the stack of transcripts, looking for Joanna’s. They weren’t there, and when he called up her files, neither of her last two accounts were on it. They must still be on the tapes.

He started sorting through them, but a third of them weren’t labeled, and those that were, were in some kind of code. He would have to take them home and play them. He dumped all the tapes back into the shoe box and carried them, Joanna’s minirecorder, and the computer disks down to the lab and then went back for the transcripts.

It took him two trips. He debated taking the plant, but it looked too far gone to be saved. He shut and locked the door, carried the transcripts down to the lab, stacked them on the examining table, and started down to see Mrs. Davenport. Halfway to the elevator, he turned around, walked back to the lab for a beaker of water, and went back to Joanna’s office to water the plant.

47

“Yes, lost.”

—Sholom Aleichem, after the last card game he played on his deathbed, on being told he lost

The first-class smoking room,” Mr. Briarley said and led Joanna into a wide, red-carpeted room. It was paneled in dark wood, with deep red leather chairs. At the far end, near a blazing fireplace, sat a group of people around a table, playing cards.

Joanna could not make out who they were because of the bluish haze of smoke that hung in the room, but she could see that they were all adults. Maisie’s not here, she thought, relieved, and then, these must be the first- class passengers who sat playing bridge as the Titanic was going down, Colonel Butt and Arthur Ryerson and—

But there were women at the table, too, and the people weren’t playing bridge. They were playing poker. She could see the red chips stacked in piles in front of the players and scattered in the middle. And the table wasn’t one of the oak ones of the smoking room. It was one of the cafeteria’s Formica-topped tables.

Mr. Briarley led her across the oak-paneled room toward them. The players looked up and saw them, and one of them laid down his cards and came to meet them. It was Greg Menotti, dressed in sweatpants and a white nylon jacket. “Where have you been?” he demanded. “There weren’t any lifeboats on the other side. Are there some in second-class?”

“You’ve met Mr. Menotti, of course,” Mr. Briarley said, leading Joanna past him and on over to the table.

“I call,” a man in a white waistcoat said, fanning his cards out in front of him, and Joanna saw it was the mustached man who had given her the note. He began raking in a quantity of red chips.

Mr. Briarley said, “Ms. Lander, may I introduce—,” and the man let go of the chips and stood up, pulling on a dinner jacket.

“J. H. Rogers,” Joanna said. “I put your message in a bottle and threw it over the side.”

He shook his head. He knows it didn’t reach his sister, she thought. “I’m sorry, Mr. Rogers,” she said, and he shook his head again.

“Not J. H. Rogers,” Mr. Briarley whispered in her ear. “Jay Yates. Professional gambler working the White Star liners under a variety of aliases.”

“You were the one who worked so hard loading the boats,” Joanna said. “You were a hero.”

“Loading the boats?” Greg Menotti said, pushing himself between Joanna and Yates. “Where are the others?”

“Others?” Yates said, bewildered.

“The other boats,” Greg insisted.

“There aren’t any others,” one of the women said, and Joanna saw it was the woman who’d been out on deck in her nightgown. She was wearing her red coat and the fox fur stole.

“Miss Edith Evans,” Mr. Briarley whispered to Joanna. “She gave up her place in the last lifeboat to a woman with two children.”

“It can’t have been the last one!” Greg said. “There have to be others!” He whirled to face Yates again. “You were loading the boats. What did they say about them? There were some down in second class, weren’t there? Weren’t there?”

Yates frowned. “I remember there was some mention of lowering the boats to the Promenade Deck and loading them from there,” he said.

“But when they got there, the windows were shut,” Mr. Briarley said, “and they had to send everyone back up to the Boat Deck,” but Greg had already run out, pushing his way through the door to the Promenade Deck.

“Greg!” Joanna called after him and turned to Mr. Briarley. “Shouldn’t we—?” but he was sitting down at the table, and Yates was pulling out a chair for her.

She sat down and looked around the table. W. T. Stead sat on her left, intent on his cards, which he had laid out in front of him on the table like a tarot hand and was turning over one by one. “You know Mr. Stead,” Mr. Briarley said.

Stead glanced impatiently at Joanna, nodded curtly, and went back to turning the cards. “And everyone else I think you know,” Mr. Briarley said, waving his hand around the table.

No, I don’t, Joanna thought, but as Mr. Briarley introduced them, she realized they were NDE patients she had interviewed: Mr. Funderburk, who had been so upset that he had not had an out-of-body experience, and bald, emaciated Ms. Grant, who had been so afraid. “And finally,” Mr. Briarley said, indicating a frail, white-haired woman, “Mrs. Woollam.” Oh, no, Joanna thought, not Mrs. Woollam. She didn’t deserve to be here. She was supposed to be in a beautiful, beautiful garden with Jesus. But the garden’s the Verandah Cafe, Joanna thought. “Oh, Mrs. Woollam,” she said.

“ ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ ” Mrs. Woollam said, “ ‘I will fear no evil,’ ” but as she spoke, she pressed her Bible to her thin chest fearfully.