The captain’s radio crackled somewhere near the helm.

A deckhand glanced up too fast and then away.

Theodora’s champagne friends went still with their glasses halfway to their mouths, caught in that strange rich-person freeze where no one wants to be the first to admit they heard something ugly.

Ice clicked in a silver bucket.

The jazz kept playing, absurdly, sweetly.

A napkin slid across the deck and caught against my wet ankle, and nobody moved to pick it up.