At the interview, you’re fixated on the manager’s eyebrows, which look like gerbils hanging on his face. The eyebrows seem animated as if they might do flips or wave their little paws. You expend a lot of energy and concentration on not looking at his eyebrows yet still looking into his eyes. This explains why, only as you stand to shake his hand goodbye, do you notice the tiny replica of the Titanic, a sinking Titanic, sitting on his desk. While all the other interviewees viewed this as a sign they shouldn’t take the job, it reminds you of when you saw the movie Titanic on your first date with your wife.

At dinner that night your wife agrees that the little Titanic was a good sign. She laughs when you say his eyebrows looked like the fur coat Kate Winslet wears into the freezing ocean. Your wife’s pregnant and you really need the job.

The job starts off okay. Your manager holds long meetings about sales productivity, and you, Brandon, and Jana joke about how his advice “to get out there and sell, sell, sell” is so helpful and so non-intuitive. After a few meetings you get so used to his eyebrows that they no longer seem strange.

It isn’t until the Chinese company that manufactures your product stops manufacturing your product and starts manufacturing the same product under their name that the proverbial iceberg hits. Now, you have to sell an inferior product manufactured by another Chinese company at a higher cost while your manager blames you for the drop in sales. Brandon jokes that when the new Chinese company can finally manufacture a decent product, they will sell it under their name. It seems less like a joke and more like a prophecy.

Your wife gives birth to a little girl, and you name her Rose after the Kate Winslet character. While work may be a mess, your marriage is smooth sailing.

You start meeting your coworkers Brandon and Jana after work. They are the only ones who are willing to make jokes about the little Titanic, your nickname for the manager, for hours. Brandon doesn’t want to hear about it but Jana listens when you talk about how overwhelming it is to go home to a crying baby. She pats your hand and tells you how rough you have it and how strong you are.

Brandon leaves the company. Sales quotas are raised; commission rates lowered. Your wife needs you to either be home more or get a full-time sitter. You tell your wife you hate your job, you want to quit. She tells you that you can’t quit unless you have another job. You track down Brandon and he’s working retail for minimum wage. You can’t live on that, and even if you could, Brandon tells you his store isn’t hiring. Only Jana understands your pain.

Your manager extends your territory and raises your quotas. You tell Jana, “The gerbils are in control,” and she laughs. When you tell the same joke to your wife, she says, “Gerbils? What are you talking about?” and when you try to explain about the eyebrows, she says, “I’m really too tired for this. You take Rose for a while.” As you hold the baby, you remember that old saying: Women and children first.

After Jana and you have a couple of drinks after work, you end up in her apartment. It feels so right and then you climax, and then it seems so wrong. You love your wife and don’t want to ruin your marriage. You don’t want to hurt Jana either. She’s been such a good friend. So you don’t break it off. At least not right away. In a couple of weeks, when you can’t stand the pull in two directions anymore, you tell Jana it’s over. “You bastard!” Jana says and stomps away. That went better than you expected. You buy roses to take home to your wife. When you get home, your wife tells you that Jana called her. Jana has also sent her photos.

If you had paid close attention to the little Titanic replica, you would have seen an iceberg, the hull of the big ship towering out of the ocean, and a teeny empty lifeboat. What you wouldn’t have seen in the replica were any little people. There are no survivors.

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Kit Irwin lives on Cape Cod. She has been bitten by an orangutan, skied the slopes of Massachusetts, and plays pickleball with gusto and mediocrity. For links to her short stories, humor pieces, and illustrations, see https://linktr.ee/kitirwin