SPITTING

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Rose, Emma, and Jack stroll aft, past people lounging on deck chairs in the slanting late-afternoon light

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Rose, Emma, and Jack stroll aft, past people lounging on deck chairs in the slanting late-afternoon light. Stewards scurry to serve tea or hot cocoa. Rose skips and exclaims" You know, my dream has always been to just chuck it all and become an artist... living in a garret, poor but free!" Jack laughs, "You wouldn't last two days. There's no hot water, and hardly ever any caviar."

"Listen, buster... I hate caviar! And I'm tired of people dismissing my dreams with a chuckle and a pat on the head." Rose replied angrily. "Jack didn't mean it like that, simply we have never met someone that has anything to throw away, they just do." Emma states and Jack nods along," Yes and i'm sorry. Really... I am."

"Well, alright. There's something in me, Jack. I feel it. I don't know what it is, whether I should be an artist, or, I don't know... a dancer. Like Isadora Duncan.... Or a wild spirit like you Emma...." Rose leaps forward, lands deftly and whirls like a dervish. Then she sees something ahead and her face lights up. "...or a moving picture actress!" She takes both their hands and runs, pulling them along the deck toward Daniel who is cranking the big wooden movie camera at his wife who is posing stiffly at the rail.

"You're sad. Sad, sad, sad. You've left your lover on the shore. You may never see him again. Try to be sadder, darling." Rose and Emma shoot into the shot and strike a theatrical pose at the rail next to Mary. Mary bursts out laughing. Rose pulls Jack into the picture and makes him pose. Marvin grins and starts yelling and gesturing.

Rose poses tragically at the rail, the back of her hand to her forehead. Jack, on his knees, pleading with his hands clasped while Rose, standing, turns her head in bored disdain. The camera turns to Emma who is dead on the floor with a paper on her chest that says, "I am not alive". She has her tongue hanging from her mouth and her eyes closed, body unmoving. Rose cranks the camera, while Daniel and Jack have a western shoot-out. Jack wins and leers into the lens, twirling an air mustache like Snidely Whiplash. Emma suddenly comes back to life and shoots him from behind twirling her hair innocently when Jack turns and glares.

Painted with orange light, Emma and Rose lean on the A-deck rail aft, shoulder to shoulder while Jack stands next to them with his elbows resting on the rail. The ship's lights come on.

It is a magical moment... perfect. "So then what, Mr. and Mrs. Wandering Jack?" Rose asks.

"Well, then logging got to be too much like work, so we went down to Los Angeles to the pier in Santa Monica. That's a swell place, they even have a rollercoaster. We sketched portraits there for ten cents a piece." "A whole ten cents?!" Emma nods not getting it, "Yeah; it was great money... I could make a dollar a day, sometimes. But only in summer. When it got cold, I decided to go to Paris and see what the real artists were doing and Jack came with."

Rose looks at the dusk sky, "Why can't I be like you Jack? Just head out for the horizon whenever I feel like it." She turns to Emma, "Say all three of us go there, sometime... to that pier... even if we only ever just talk about it." "Alright, we're going. We'll drink cheap beer and go on the rollercoaster until we throw up and we'll ride horses on the beach... right in the surf... but you have to ride like a cowboy, none of that side-saddle stuff." Jack says and

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