Eleven Twenty

Amos's hands would not stop shaking around the canvas bag.

Ten-thirty came and went and nobody walked me out. Gwen had been pulled away to a medical call on the far dock, and in the hall of rolling suitcases I was, for a while, forgotten. Dorian did not forget. At 10:52 I saw him cross the floor with his radio raised, and I saw his smile settle on Amos.

"Pier police to the general hall," he said into it, and then, to the room: "Two individuals attempting to board with counterfeit documents."

Ellis Boone stood between us, staring at his shoes.

"Sir," Dorian said to Amos, "what's in the bag?"

"My wife," Amos said.

"Open it."

The zipper was stiff. It stuck twice. When it finally opened, a small brass urn sat inside, wrapped in a blue dish towel with a fringe. Someone in the queue gasped. A woman put her hand over her mouth.

"An unmarked container of powder," Dorian said, "in a secure area, from a man with a fake voucher. Take it from him, Ellis."

Ellis didn't move.

"She died in March three years ago," Amos said. His voice cracked on the last word. "Her name was Nan. She asked me for a rail and a sunset. That's all she asked."

Forty feet of rope line and a hundred strangers, and not one person spoke. I saw a young mother look at her daughter and then away from Dorian. I saw the golf visor man study the ceiling.

I have kept a lot of silences in my life. This was the first one I could not afford.

"Bring them both to my desk," Dorian said, loud enough for the lounge to hear. "Let the passengers see what we protect them from. Then the officers can take them out the front."

The gangway clock on the wall behind the general line read 10:52. At 11:20 the Wrenfield Dawn would close its doors to new passengers and begin its sailing.

Twenty-eight minutes.

I smoothed the blue towel back over the urn with both hands and zipped the bag halfway, the way Nan would have wanted it. Then I walked toward that white desk on my own.