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“It’s midnight. We’re the only two passengers not seasick in their cabins. I see no wicker hamper. Though for some reason you’re carrying a camera.”
“It only appears to be a camera. Take my arm so we don’t fall down the stairs.”
The seas were heavy. The broad grand staircase swayed as the ship rose and fell with stately precision, but after twenty-four hours in a North Atlantic gale, they were getting the hang of it. Bell gripped the banister and they climbed together, gauging the pitch, compensating for the roll. At the top of the stairs, Bell led Marion through the vestibule into the First Class music room, a domed lounge with a thick floral carpet and brocaded furniture in hues of pink, blue, red, and yellow. The lights were low and it was empty of people but for a sleepy saloon steward standing by with a bucket of champagne anchored between a couch and a pillar. Bell tipped him, lavishly. “I’ll open it, thank you. Good night.”
The man left, smiling.
Marion said, “Now you’ll try to make me tipsy.”
“Would you dance with me?”
“Delighted. As soon as the orchestra arrives.”
Bell opened his camera case and wedged it in a corner of the couch. Marion leaned in close. Wisps of her golden champagne hair brushed his cheek. “What is that? Oh my gosh, a little gramophone. Where’s the horn?”
Bell unfolded a flat piece of cardboard and formed it into a horn, which he attached to the cylinder player. He turned a tiny crank, winding the mechanism, put on a two-minute cylinder, and started it.
“Remember this? We saw the show on Broadway.”
“‘Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl,’” Marion answered when the first notes emerged thinly from the horn. The latest musical comedy sensation was a satire of the old 1890s romantic ballads.
Isaac Bell sang along in a credible baritone.
He treated her respectful as those villains always do,
And she supposed he was a perfect gent.
But she found diff’rent when one night she went with him to dine
Into a table d’hôte so blithe and gay.
And he says to her: After this we’ll have a demitasse!”
Marion sang,
Then to him these brave words the girl did say:
and took up the chorus:
Stand back, villain, go your way!
You may tempt the upper classes
With your villainous demitasses,
But Heaven will protect the working girl.”
Bell opened the bottle of Mumm and poured two glasses. “To what?” asked Marion.
“Love?”
“Love it is.”
They locked eyes, kissed, and drank. Bell changed cylinders, and strains of another new song, the romantic hit “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” played through the cardboard horn.
“May I have this dance?”
He took Marion in his arms and wove a waltz through the furniture as if the rolling, carpeted deck were a crowded dance floor. “Do you recall the first time I asked you to marry me?”
