Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
brUNO
Something is off by eleven microns.
I’ve spent three weeks on this tourbillon, a rotating cage of springs and jewels designed to defeat the effect of gravity on the movement.
Four people on earth could build it.
I lift my loupe from my eye and stretch out my hands.
How long was I working? Sometimes I lose time, which is ironic, considering I’m making watches.
But the work requires total absorption. Concentration so keen I must narrate what I’m doing, whispering to the watch parts, putting everything into it.
To a fly on the wall, I’d look like a madman, whisper-raging at tiny bits of metal.
But no fly could ever get in here.
My workshop occupies the forward section of the ship: Engineered silence, climate-controlled air, regulated humidity, and dust minimized to the greatest extent possible.
Natural light enters through the forward windows, but only in the form of a diffuse northern glow that will illuminate metal without glare.
I stretch out my hands and settle my loupe over my left eye. It was made in Switzerland, and it magnifies the movement tenfold, rendering it the size of a dinner plate. The problem is plain. The pivot is off-center.
The solution is not so plain.
I reseat the component and check again.
Everything in this workshop is perfectly controlled: humidity, lighting, temperature, all calibrated to my specifications. Tools arranged in the order I use them. I know this room like I know my own hands.
It’s what I need.
I give everything that is in me to the work, and the work gives back.
I adjust the piece a third time.
Still off.
My phone is on the bench, face-down. I turn it over.
McGillicuddy’s report was timestamped two hours ago: Guest is settled in stateroom. Dietary requirements noted. No issues.
A second message, thirty minutes later: Update: Guest attempted to engage a crew member in personal conversation. I have reinforced the standard.
A third, nine minutes after that: Guest is requesting that crew be permitted to engage in conversation with her. I have declined per standard protocol. She was...persistent.
I put the phone face-down and pick up the tweezers.
It is just like Kelsey to attempt to engage the crew in conversation.
McGillicuddy handled it. The standard is the standard.
I rub my eyes. I should examine the problem under higher magnification. The issue might be the plate itself. I don’t get up.
Instead I sit here, hands flat on the bench, looking at a piece that should be perfect and isn’t, and the memory arrives.
The veranda. Her weight in my lap. She’s saying something, laughing about things being ill-advised, and her skin smells like lilacs, and I’m working her out, learning her.
Something shifted. I don’t know what triggered it—her laugh, or the way she moved against me—and suddenly I’m carrying her into the bedroom like something out of a fever dream, not a thought in my head.
It’s not that I was unaware of wanting her. I’d wanted her for days. But this was not wanting. This was my entire being going dark with hunger. This was me becoming the person I have spent my entire adult life engineering myself not to be, and I let it happen anyway.
I pick up the tweezers.
Eleven microns.
I will solve this tomorrow. The piece will run perfectly.
My phone buzzes. More dispatches from the front.
It wasn’t my plan to dine with her. It had been my plan to dine in my private dining area as I always do and then request her presence on the deck for a photograph or two, but I can see that this situation needs attending to. There are rules, and she needs to hear them from me.
I remove the loupe and set it on the bench, then I pick up my phone and instruct McGillicuddy that the passenger and I will dine in the main dining room at six. She can order what she wants. Today is Monday, which means I will be having roasted chicken with vegetables.
I work straight through until the last minute, and then it’s time to change for dinner. I put on my jacket, trying not to think about the weight of her in my arms when I stood—or the look she gave me afterward. As if, for a moment, she’d forgotten everything else and seen only me.
I arrive at 5:59. The table is set, water poured. There’s a charcuterie board right in the middle, based on the Hamptons Royale charcuterie board, minus the garlic sausage, which she wrapped in plastic and treated like nuclear waste.
She seemed so surprised by the appearance of sausage.
I notice a small vase of white flowers that I did not request. Annoyance bolts through me. Where did flowers come from? I did not request flowers.
Kelsey is an employee; best not blur those lines.
She strolls in six minutes late wearing an orangey-pink dress with a low back. Sunlight skims across the bare line of her spine, and my train of thought quietly derails.
“Mr. Bond, I presume.”
“Excuse me?”
She sits, or more precisely, she drops into the chair across from me in a pose of dramatic leisure.
“Don’t you think this is peak James Bond?
Or more like the perfect parody of a James Bond supervillain, and I’m sort of forced on this yacht and you got me pretty dresses to wear, and you’re making me dine with you while your plan is executed somewhere in the Pacific. ”
“You don’t like the terms of our agreement now?”
“You know what I mean. God, there’s even a long table. You know who has those? Bond villains. On the upside...wow!” She inspects the charcuterie board. “This is a good one.”
She seems less angry, which pleases me perhaps a little too much.
Her hair is loose and still damp at the ends, as if she’s just showered, and the dress...
I think back to the instruction I gave Margot: vintage French Riviera, unexpected purple, that wallpaper, champagne bubbles, faded glamour, no structure.
I decide that this is probably a vintage Riviera-inspired dress.
She makes a cracker tower from cheeses and a spicy jam, takes a bite, and dissolves into bliss.
I saw that expression last night. It seems like a year ago.
Her expression now is softer. Less desperate. But there’s the same lack of restraint to it, the same way she experiences things fully, as though she’s incapable of holding anything back. She’s like a watch without a casing—all movement and no protection.
I pour us wine. “So, a few things about how this yacht operates.”
“Oh, I have a few things too, like, what is up with the obsessive silence?”
“This is a quiet space. This yacht is my sanctuary.”
“Right, but I feel like I almost got poor Annie fired just from making her tell me her name.”
“You shouldn’t do that.”
“She’s serving me food. It’s customary to greet a person in that circumstance and thank them and have some little interaction.”
“Not on this boat. Your steward was simply following rules.”
“But you were nowhere within earshot. What does it matter?”
“That’s the nature of rules. You don’t ignore them whenever it suits you.”
“But it seems a bit extreme that an employee would be in mortal terror from a normal human question like that.”
“Now it’s mortal terror? Not only getting fired, but you also feel that she was in fear for her life?”
“You know what I mean. It’s so extreme.”
“Each and every one of my crew members knew the rules coming into their positions. Everybody who is here wants to be here.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about the amazing pay, but can’t you provide amazing pay while at the same time thinking about what would make their life a bit nicer? Why would you even want it like that? This gorgeous yacht and everybody has to act like they’re in a straitjacket?”
“This is the job. Everybody here is free to leave.”
“But not really, on an economic level. Also, why do you not want anyone to talk?”
“It’s called a preference. My boat, my rules.”
“I get it, but something McGillicuddy said seemed to imply that even socializing below deck is forbidden. Like everything has to be about the yacht. I don’t see why the concept of somebody talking and laughing somewhere where you wouldn’t even know about it would be so abhorrent. Do you know how not-normal that is?”
“Well, apparently I’m a supervillain who just does those things.”
The look she gives me now is a mixture of outrage and fascination, and it’s delicious. “Would it be possible to relax those rules for their interactions with me?”
“No.”
She stiffens. “Even if you were none the wiser?”
“My sanctuary, my rules.”
“Your sanctuary.” She narrows her eyes. “From what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sanctuary implies you’re trying to escape something. Like something is threatening you or encroaching on you or whatever. My question is, what?”
“Sometimes a sanctuary is simply a place of peace.”
“Like it’s a noise issue?” She gives me her skeptical narrowed eyes, now with a head tilt.
“As I said, it’s a preference issue.”
“You have a watchmaking operation on a yacht. I don’t know much about watches, but I’m guessing it’s not easy to do all that tiny work when your entire home is being buffeted around by waves.
Is it just all human interaction? I suppose that would make sense, considering the vow of silence your employees must make. ”
“Since you’re so concerned about the crew, I would ask you to stop putting them in the difficult position of having to choose between their job security and being polite to you. And playing music? That needs to stop.”
“Aye aye, Captain Clockwork.”
“What was that?”
She’s building another of her creations, this one consisting of an apple slice, a bit of soft cheese, and three candied nuts pressed into it. “Oh, I think you heard me.”
“I don’t have anything against clocks, but I have nothing to do with clocks.”
“But aren’t watches just clocks that you wear?”
“Not on any level,” I say, perhaps too quickly.
I can feel her smile radiating across the table. “You hate clocks. Clocks and all their clock-ish clockiness. You so hate ‘em!”
“I don’t so hate clocks. It’s that clocks and watches are entirely different animals.”
She presses some candied nuts into the soft cheese.