In the snack kitchen, Aneirin ran into the Mcilwane brothers. All three of them, in good spirits as ever.
“Hey, Aneirin! Come by for a beer?” He thought that was John, the older one. He nodded and sat down.
“Well my friend, have I got a treat for you. My own recipe. The new batch just finished last night, me and the boys slaved over it all month, you’ll love it.”
That was a joke. On the Argo, there was one kind of beer. Eventually it would run out. John, if that was he and not Jack or James, set in front of him the same can of Miller that was all they’d had for years.
One of the other ones piped up. “Actually, I put some love potion in that one. I thought something pretty might walk through the door. No offense, general.”
“Offense?” said the third, “he assumed you meant him, and was flattered about it till ye had to go on and keep talking, as always, you thick thug like.”
Aneirin smiled.
John, (slightly) bigger than his brothers, peered in at him over his massive forearms and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper that more or less shook the room. “Now level with me, Englishman. I haven’t heard a Zooms score in about a month.”
Aneirin shook his head. “Zooms?”
“The Zooms, man! The Dublin Zooms?” He leaned in and a shadow fell across the table. “The phone is broken, isn’t it?”
Aneirin looked at him for a minute, then nodded. John laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, in a way that would probably bruise soon. “Ah, sure, it’s a machine isn’t it? Well, they’ll have it up again. Who knows? Maybe it’ll even perk old Wendell up to have something to do, do ye think?”
Aneirin smiled. “I’m sure it will.”
“Ah, leave him alone, John,” said one of the other ones, “there’s things to do on a ship besides indulge your obsession with Irish bam-ball.”
“Name me just one other thing, and I’ll consider not clouting ye across the room.”
As Aneirin walked back to his room, feeling good for the first time in what seemed like weeks something pricked the back of his neck. He stood before the closed door of his room knowing something was wrong. Something had happened….he opened the door.
Elizabeth was sitting on his bed, looking up at him with eyes that didn’t let him, even for a moment, think this was a good thing. “Wendell is dead,” she said. “He hung himself. I’ve told the captain.”
He sat down next to her. She put her arms around him. After a while, they tried, fitfully, to sleep.