Passage

“He died?”

“No, he’s fine,” Vielle said. “It would have been a case of natural selection if he’d died, though. He electrocuted himself taking down his Christmas lights.”

“His Christmas lights?” Joanna said. “It’s February.”

“He said it was the first day it hadn’t snowed.”

“I thought Christmas lights were shielded.”

“They are. Except when you walk your ladder straight into a power line. Your metal ladder.” She grinned at Joanna. “He’s up in CICU — a little fried, but able to talk. You better get up there fast, though. Maurice Mandrake was just down here, looking for you, and I saw him talking to Christmas Lights Guy’s doctor.”

“Mr. Mandrake was looking for me?” Joanna asked. That was all she needed.

“Yeah. He said if I saw you, I was to tell you he was going up to your office. That was before Christmas Lights Guy, though, but if he did go up to your office, you might be able to beat him to the CICU.” She walked away.

Joanna followed her. “I didn’t come down to see if anyone’d coded,” she said. “Vielle, you remember the movie Titanic. Was there a scene in it where people were standing on deck trying to find out what had happened?”

“All I remember about Titanic was the two of them wading around in ice-cold water for two hours and not getting hypothermia. Do you know how long they really would have lasted in water that cold? About five minutes.”

“I know, I know,” Joanna said. “Try to remember. People standing out on deck, wondering what’s happened.”

“There’s that scene where the iceberg scrapes by, and people are out on the deck, throwing snowballs—”

“No, no,” Joanna said impatiently. “These people didn’t know they’d been hit by an iceberg. They were just standing there, some of them still in their nightclothes. The engines’ stopping woke them up, and they went out on deck to see what had happened. Do you remember a scene like that?”

Vielle shook her head. “Sorry.”

“I’ve got a favor to ask,” Joanna said. “Could you rent the video and see if there’s a scene like that in it?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to rent it yourself? You’re the one who knows what you’re looking for. If you want, we can watch it at Dish Night, so long as you fast-forward through that stupid ‘king of the world’ scene.”

“No,” Joanna said. “Look, I’ll pay for the rental and your gas. I just need you to see if the scene’s in there.” She fumbled in her cardigan pocket.

“You can pay for the videos on Dish Night,” Vielle said, eyes narrowing. “What’s this all about? It has something to do with your project, doesn’t it? Don’t tell me one of your subjects found themselves on the Titanic.”

“Shh,” Joanna said, glancing anxiously around. She had had no business asking Vielle where people could hear her.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Vielle said, dropping her voice. “One of your NDE subjects saw the Titanic when he went through the tunnel.”

“No, of course not,” Joanna said. “This is something Richard and I were talking about.” Well, it’s true, she thought defensively. We did talk about it, and Vielle asked me if my subjects had seen it, not if I’d seen it. And besides, it wasn’t the Titanic.

“Something you and Richard were talking about, huh?” Vielle said, her whole manner changing. “Well, at least you’re discussing something other than RIPT scans and endorphin levels, though why you picked Titanic, I don’t know.”

Joanna forced herself to smile and not look around to see if anyone else had heard them.

“Surely there are better movies you two could fight over,” Vielle said. “I thought you hated the movie. When I wanted to rent it, you had a fit about how some officer hadn’t shot himself—”

“Officer Murdoch,” Joanna said. Vielle was right. She had had a fit. The movie was full of historical inaccuracies. Not only was there no proof that Officer Murdoch had shot a passenger and then killed himself, but the movie had made Officer Lightoller look like a coward instead of the hero he’d been, unlashing the collapsible lifeboats on top of the officers’ quarters, keeping overturned Collapsible B afloat all night—

The memory can’t have come from the movie, she thought, because I already knew about the Titanic when I saw the movie. “Everyone knows about the Titanic,” Richard had said, but he was talking about the basic facts. Everyone knew it had sunk, they knew about the iceberg and the lack of lifeboats, and the band playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” as the ship went down. Not about Murdoch. Or Collapsible B.

“Why don’t you just rent the movie, invite him over, and make some of my special deviled ham dip — ?”

“It involves our memories of the movie,” Joanna said evasively. “So if you could rent it and see if there’s a scene like that in it, I’d appreciate it. You don’t have to watch the whole movie, just the part right after the iceberg.”

“Anything to help this romance along. Tell me again what I’m looking for.”