After dinner, which was only slightly better than breakfast, Warren restlessly paced his cabin. His head down with his jaw nearly on his chest, he tried to put things together. He had just spent the last two hours sitting with the countess as she regaled him about her younger years. After realizing her intoxicated state, Warren initially rejected the idea of dining with her. Nonplussed, the woman took him by the arm and steered him back to his table. As the woman directed the young waiter to take their orders, Warren decided it was an opportunity. Helene might have information about the Andes and her passengers.

It was an instinctual move on his part, which he nearly regretted. The woman gave out her thoughts and suppositions concerning his social class in Boston and their related social circles. In short, she was nothing more than a rumor mill. Aggravated he could not guide the conversation where he wanted, Warren nevertheless remained cordial.

Getting brief glimpses into his character and background as Helene spoke about his family, Warren doubled down on the initial plan. He ordered glasses of champagne for the old girl, and she sucked them down like water. Diligently interrupting his victim with innocuous questions about the passengers on the ship, the countess replied with rumors and innuendo. Unfortunately, her tales flowed faster than he could keep up. He wasn’t sure what might be accurate, but he tried to remember everything.

Upon returning to his cabin, he made notes on what he had learned from Helene. One thing was evident in his conversations; she refused to give any detailed knowledge concerning Warren’s family, specifically his mother. The lack of detail from the woman was frustrating, leaving him with more questions than answers. His character must have done something unseemly in the way Helene acted, and she seemed determined to obscure the answers. Either she didn’t know as much as she showed or there was a dark secret, not fit for a decent society.

Still, the information was more than Warren had at the start of the day. He knew he had limited options. He remained a puppet mostly tied to the strings of long-dead writers. In his netherworld existence, Warren tried to survive in a world of make-believe tied together with bits and pieces of truth, lies, and guesses. He felt alone on an open raft in the endless sea as he leaned back in his chair.

Deep inside, Warren wondered about the notion he was getting deserved justice for his treatment of others. When he stopped to think of it, he was never close to anyone. In his first life, Warren had no real friends and only stayed married because there was nothing better to look forward to. He sometimes wondered how his family reacted to his death.

Were they relieved more than upset at his passing?

Warren realized it was a sad commentary on his life. He wasn’t a good husband or even a sufficient father, despite some of the halfhearted attempts he made. In a heated argument, Victoria, his wife, once described him as a person filled with charisma and confidence which he carried around in the soul of a snake.

The funny thing about purgatory was the recollections. At first, Warren didn’t remember the past. Instead, he just played the role as if he had the script embedded inside his head. Gradually, he discovered his memories returned to him in bits and pieces. Now, he held the images, people, and words in minute detail.

Like when Warren wore up the first time in this purgatory. It was a hot, stinking place. Lying on an uncomfortable bed in a small hut, he found himself drenched in sweat in Panama. Thoroughly confused in this new place, Warren quickly found himself in the middle of a murder mystery set on a banana plantation in a no-name jungle. His character was engaged to a frigid woman he did not know. However, he found out that he had plenty of enemies in the men who worked for him.

As the day progressed, Warren could only gain a brief background of his purgatory character. Everyone in the small village knew and loathed his character, so they weren’t sociable. By the end of the first day, the man was back in bed, painfully dying from ingesting poison given by his dear wife. As he listened to his fiancée and her lover plotting their alibis, his last memory of that script was hearing the lovers making plans to leave for America.

When Warren awoke following that death, he found an entirely different setting. Instead of a bed, he was lying on the sand at a river’s edge. Dressed in the black-and-white striped uniform of an escaped convict, his new character found he had one ankle shackled to a ball and chain. While he tried to get his bearings, the man suddenly heard the baying bloodhounds on his trail.

Instantly horrified at his situation, Warren stumbled to his feet. The prisoner ran along the water’s edge while awkwardly hanging on to a heavy iron ball; the baying dogs were getting closer. He struggled across the shallow water to a sandbar near the middle of the fast-moving river. Then, he saw the first dogs relentlessly heading in his direction. Trapped between a watery grave and his capture, Warren fell to his knees to pray for the first time in a long time. After making his atonement for a terrible life, Warren stood, holding his hands above his head. The condemned man suddenly felt something slam into his back and he tumbled into the water. While he struggled to pull himself up using a tree limb over the water, he heard one of the prison guards hollering congratulations to another. They shot him in the back. From their accents, he realized he was somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. His prayers continued aloud while a small crowd gathered to watch the struggling man vainly trying to pull his body from the water.

“Darn shame. He only had a couple of more years left for killin’ that girl.”

Warren overheard one trustee state as his strength abandoned him. He fell under the water. Then, the blackness enveloped him. Instead of harps and angels, his cycle of existence within this celluloid world continued.

Warren stopped his pacing inside the cabin. He took a deep breath, still affected by the drowning sensation he recalled. As the air rushed into his lungs, Warren forced himself to forget the intense agony of each death.

He turned on a light as the darkness of the evening finally filled his room. When Warren sat at his desk, the light revealed the edge of a red piece of paper in his notebook. Pulling out the luggage ticket, he sat down while carefully looking at the stub of the cardstock. The number 460 AA printed on the back reminded him of something from his conversation with Krupin. It nagged at him.

He was supposed to deliver an item, but he did not know what it was. Harry mentioned it as well. When he leaned back in the chair, Warren’s thoughts turned to the sound of footsteps going past. The battered wooden entry reminded him of something Harry said about a crate. Instantly, a plan was formulated in his head.

A man of his means would carry full wardrobes of clothes and possessions in travel trunks. Traveling on a ship meant more than a few suits and one leather travel bag in his room. Perhaps what he stored something in the hold where the cargo would be. Finding out what he carried for Krupin held might help him understand what he needed to do.

At least it’s better than sitting here speculating.

Quickly searching through the small drawers of the desk, he found the pen-style flashlight he noticed during his hunt for his gun. Neatly clipping the item into his inside suit pocket, he headed to the door.

Outside, the darkness revealed a vast expanse of stars. The ship’s lights shining down on the deck were few and far between. The dim rays created a path for Warren to navigate his way to the bow. He stopped at one point, pulling himself into the shadows near the ladder, when he heard footsteps above him. The clicking tap of leather soles on the steel steps passed him as one of the ship’s crew came down the ladder, walking by while the sailor went toward the stern. Silently, Warren came out of the shadows, observing the uniformed man disappear into the darkness. He followed the sailor’s path. At the end of the passenger deck, he found the ladder down to the cargo deck. There was a light next to the ladder, so he waited for a moment. He surveyed the area. At first, Warren thought someone was behind him, but he dismissed the feeling after glancing back.

It’s now or never, he thought.