During one wet spring when we were eleven, I saw men clearing trees in Cadogan Place Gardens, a few blocks from where we lived in Chelsea. I told Jamie we should bring home one of the evergreens to cheer up Ba, who hadn’t left our flat for twenty-eight days after being thrown out of a public tennis court, since “dogs and Chinese don’t need to play tennis.” If he couldn’t use the public courts, he couldn’t give lessons, and he’d already spent all our cracked-teapot money on rackets. Jamie refused to help me get the tree, saying it was a pigeon egg of an idea and that Ba should never have bought rackets in the first place. I told him he was a pigeon egg of a son for saying that. Eventually, he relented, but how could he share that story with a perfect stranger?
“Did you also order him not to tell that story?”
An indignant cloud of vapor blows past my lips.
“Do not get angry. It was funny.” A dimple appears next to his mouth, a tiny star emerging from behind a cloud. “Whose idea was the donkey?”
I snort. “Mine.”
Jamie broke his wrist when the donkey we borrowed tohaul the tree bolted, with the tree bumping along after it. Maybe he blames me all these years later for that tricky wrist.
“Half the branches had broken off by the time we got it home. Mum said, ‘You got daisies for brains if you think I’m letting that rottin’ piece of timber in here.’” I pour on Mum’s Cockney accent. Bo grunts out a laugh. “Ba chopped it up for firewood. At least it got him out of the house.”
The pod creaks as he shifts around. “Get in before you get a bad influenza.”
I’m glad for the dark that hides my reddening cheeks. But the warmth lifting out of the lifeboat nearly makes me swoon. “Fine, but don’t try anything.”
“Try what thing?”
I don’t bother explaining in Cantonese. Instead, I carefully haul my frozen limbs over the edge of the boat, sinking into the space he just occupied. It feels as nice as stepping into a bath, and the chilly bits of me are drawn even closer to his solid warmth. He covers us with the canvas, trapping the heat.
I try to hold on to some of my righteous indignation, but every part of me has begun to feel gooey, like butter melting across toast. “Look, Bo. We may not see eye to eye, but if you care for Jamie, you must want what’s best for him. He’s changed. Maybe you can’t see it because you didn’t know him before. But he used to be lighter, more carefree. Now he walks like he’s caught in a thicket.”
“What is ‘thicket’?”
I don’t know the Cantonese word. “A tangle of bushes. Like what rabbits live in.”
“Oh. Maybe thicket is just life.”
“Yeah, a miserable life full of muck, and thorns—”
Voices and footsteps sound from somewhere close by, cutting off my speech. We both fall still.
“Twenty-two knots at least,” says a man in the hearty voice of one accustomed to talking over the roar of the ocean. “Mr. Ismay’s breathing down Captain Smith’s collar from dawn till dusk to up the pace.” The leggy chairman steps into my mind. “Wants to take the Blue Riband from Cunard, those oily frigates. If we’re the fastest, we’ll get the Royal Mail contract. Then it’ll be raining silver. You’ll be able to get your girl a shiny stone for her finger.”
Closer they come, their boots falling as loudly as the pound of hammers in a forge.
“Shucks,” wheezes his companion. “She already said no.”
“That’s ’cause you’re poor as piss,” says the hearty man. “But our luck might be changing soon. Hold.” His boots stop right beside our lifeboat. Bo has gone corpse-like beside me, but my heart bangs as loud as a drum beating to quarters. “Looks like a couple of”—does he see us?—“eyelets came unhooked.”
My heart flattens against my rib cage, like a trapped mouse. Any second, they’ll discover us hiding and figure us for stowaways, which is half-true. Images of me walking the plank or being keel-hauled across barnacles—the way Jamie said theypunish sailors—bubble up in my mind. I’d be cut to ribbons, seasoning the ocean with blood and gore and brains—well, obviously lots of brains. Then we’d never get to perform for Mr. Stewart. At least Jamie would be sorry for making things so hard on me.
My breathing comes too shallow and fast, and I can’t stop my limbs from trembling.
A warm hand slides over mine. Calluses line Bo’s palm and fingers, interrupted by the smooth bump of his shell ring. Curled over mine, his hand feels like a safe harbor in a storm. His warmth spreads up my arm, interrupting the catastrophes reeling through my head.
The canvas jostles. I try to shrink further into my bones, the rush of blood in my ears sounding like a second ocean. But instead of peeling open, our ceiling stretches tight again as hands hook the fabric back in place.
A lifetime passes before we move. I’m not sure who lets go first. But when finally we open our nest to the cold air of reality, we can’t scramble away from each other fast enough.
Bo clears his throat. “After you, Stowaway.”
He shows me the staircase at the back of the deck where he snuck up. His plain peacoat hid his sea slops, and with few passengers afoot, no one stopped him.
He balls his hands into fists that disappear into his pockets, affecting a casual air. “Promised others I would meet them in the General Room.” His face looks sheepish, probably a reflection of my own. “You want to join?”
“No,” I say too quickly, still feeling the imprint of his hand in mine. “You go on.”
