A Man Overboard (2 page)

Jack stood in the front doorway, watching mom-in-law whisper her farewell exchange. Despite all his teasing, she wasn’t completely unattractive. She was aged, and long, mysterious years of some unknown past had etched heavily into her features, but there was still a whisper of former beauty left clinging to her rusted frame. Tall and lean, she was also muscular and strong, and she carried herself like some kind of countess. That was probably the most disconcerting part, the strange sense of authority that seemed to demand fear and respect without any declaration as to why. And Stacey either didn’t notice it, or she pretended not to. But whenever Viktoriya cast her mighty gaze on him, he felt like Cinderella before her evil stepmother. He wondered what life in Russia had been like, what made her leave the Motherland.

Joseph walked over and stood beside him. “Come here, Joe.” Jack dropped to his knees and spread his arms wide, inviting his son into a reassuring embrace. “I love you so much,” he whispered into his ear. “No matter what, I’ll always love you.” He wasn’t sure why he had just said that. “Be really good for Grandma, okay? We’ll be back before you know it. And we’ll go to the Yankees game just like I promised.”

“Can I get cotton candy?”

“Sure you can.” He kissed him on the forehead and felt his eyes begin to water. It would be two weeks before they were together again, a span of time that all of a sudden felt endless. They squeezed each other tight, and Jack could tell that Joseph didn’t want to let go. “It’s okay, buddy. We’ll be back. Hey, I’ll find something cool to bring you, okay?” He felt Joseph nod against his shoulder.

When they separated, Jack standing to his full six feet two inches and Joseph his little three feet five inches, Joseph stated, “I love you, Daddy.”

Jack smiled, trying to keep the tears at bay. Not only would it be two weeks, but it would also be the first time they’d be apart from each other, period. He didn’t know how
he
would handle it, let alone Joseph. “Remember,” he teased, “if she tries running…” He winked, and Joseph grinned.

Stacey separated from her mother and came over to give her own sad goodbye. Jack didn’t want to witness this one. He took the luggage to the car where he would be spared the tear-filled display.

Jack started the Hyundai Sonata and looked in the rearview mirror, noting the absence of the car seat that had been at home in the reflection for the last four years. It would be transferred to Viktoriya’s car, God help them all.

Five minutes later, Stacey was sliding into the passenger seat beside him, wiping her eyes.

“You’re sure he’ll be okay with her?” Jack asked once more.

She nodded, and they backed down the driveway.

Jack beeped the horn, and they both waved to Joseph who was waving from the front door, Grandma standing behind him.

Stacey blew them a kiss.

2

The TSA hadn’t raped them or shipped them off to some black site where the CIA could freely torture them under Rendition laws supposedly spawned to protect their liberties…no water boarding, no electrocuting Jack’s genitals, and no sleep deprivation tactics. In fact, the TSA agents hadn’t even pulled them out of line. And perhaps Jack had pushed his luck a bit by singing out, “For the land of the freeeeee…” while walking through the radiation belts of the see-you-naked machines, but such luck had held fast. So far.
Jack recalled a story in Miami where an employee was made fun of after the scanners showed off his small genitalia during a practice session with the publically funded machines. He later beat the crap out of the instigator and was arrested the next day when he showed up for work. That was Miami, their destination. And of course, there were the countless official complaints by women who believed they were sexually harassed, being made to go through the damn machines three and four times while men congregated in the viewing room to ogle. If there was any of that in Miami, then the odds were good that he wouldn’t be making the boat, after all.

Jack put down the Koontz novel and squeezed Stacey’s hand while looking out the window beside him. The clouds were large and puffy, and his eyes were inadvertently picking out cotton images. He could make out Colonel Sanders smiling at them, his head fixed atop a tall ladder that was being scaled by an octopus that had the head of a Pterodactyl. Dennis Rodman was strapped to the back of a walrus, and a naked mermaid with cow udders stood poised at home plate with a spiked mace in hand. Closing his eyes to erase the scene, Jack wondered if it was a testament to how warped his mind was. Upon opening them again, he was unsure as to whether or not it was a relief to see that only Dennis Rodman remained. About to test the authenticity of the likeness (along with his psychological state), he went to ask Stacey what it was that she saw. But she was asleep. His lips pulled adoringly, and he leaned his head back against the headrest, staring at her.

Stacey Arsov, daughter of the Russian widow, Viktoriya… How the heck did they end up together? It was like one of those teen movies where the class loser ends up with the prom queen and then beats up the captain of the football team for added measure. Ridiculous. Yet here he was. Not that he had been the class loser, but a salesman from northeast Philly was close enough when held in comparison with her supermodel looks and brilliant wit. She was from another planet of status, but for some reason had traded her citizenship for a life with him. Why? What did he have to offer her? Could it really just be love…or fate? Had Cupid sneezed while loosing his arrow? Or had Jack stumbled clumsily into his line of fire, intercepting adoration meant for the captain of the football team? He shrugged. Who cared? She was his, and he would never let her go. No matter what.

No matter what.

A tear formed in the corner of his eye, and he forced the ensuing thoughts away. Instead, he chose to revisit the story of them, five years in the making and the best yet to come. He had to think that way. To do anything else would be to surrender, to give up. And that wasn’t going to happen. They would fight until the last morsel of willpower was forcibly extracted from their collective soul.

It was a pleasant story, the story of them, beginning almost six years ago with a single glance. Like destiny just set its crosshairs over his heart and pulled the trigger. That was it. No going back. She, on the other hand, needed a bit more than a single shot from an intergalactic sniper love-gun. Not much more, but enough to make him sweat it out all the way to the altar. When they met, just three months before being married, Jack was working the same job he’d been working since graduating from Temple University, and Stacey had just moved into Philadelphia to take a job as an event organizer for a new outfit down town. They’d met at a bar on a Friday night, and everything took off from there. Once they decided on marriage, there was nothing but Viktoriya standing in the way. He had no brothers or sisters, his father had been an only child, and his mother’s sister lived in Florida. As for his parents themselves…they’d died in a tragic car accident on Roosevelt Boulevard when he was just six years old, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother from his father’s side. She had died his first year in college. The only family that he had left was his aunt in Florida and some cousins in California. All Stacey had was her mother—the Russian countess. So after her eminence finally surrendered to fate’s chorus of wedding bells, there was nothing to hinder them from “till death do us part.”

Joseph was conceived shortly after, and upon his birth, their fairytale pact had been stamped with the eternal seal of shared responsibility…with a creation that had been perfectly orchestrated from two genetic make-ups destined to be one. They had become more than lovers, more than husband and wife…they had become a family.

“I want a drink.”

Jack opened his eyes, not realizing they’d fallen shut, and saw Stacey looking down the aisle for the stewardess.

“Bad dream?” he asked.

“The plane lost an engine, and we crashed in the Everglades. The survivors banded together and for three days were gnawed on by monster alligators. We died last with our intestines wrapped around each other and our stomachs floating like jellyfish in the water.”

“Mmmm. Yummy…” He shot a furtive glance out the window, seeing the open mouth of a large reptile floating toward them. “Make it two.”

* * * *

The flight to Miami was uneventful—the box cutter of all box cutters hadn’t brought the nation to its knees, there were no mishaps into alligator-infested swamps, and the TSA hadn’t rummaged through Stacey’s goods. All-in-all, it had gone as well as could be hoped in today’s world. And now here they were, floating on a ship in the middle of a blue nothing with two weeks of romance and unbridled passion on the horizon.
Oh
yeah
.

Stacy stretched back on the deck chair, reclining in her bikini while dropping her own novel to the deck beside her.

Jack ran a hand through his short, black hair and looked over, his eyes gliding over the terrain of his wife’s body. Once he had the geography properly surveyed, he let his eyes flutter down to the title of her book. “
Simple Simon
, by Ryne Douglas Pearson. Hmm…never heard of him.”

She closed her eyes, absorbing the warmth of the afternoon sun as the ocean breeze played with her hair. “You ever see the Bruce Willis movie
Mercury Rising
?”

He closed Koontz’s
The House of Thunder
and squinted over the tops of his mirrored sunglasses. “Of course.”

“This is the book the movie’s based on. There’s actually a whole series based on the character.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Book’s much better.” She moved the straps of her bikini down off her shoulders, her eyes still closed. “Remember that movie we saw in the theater with Nicholas Cage…
Knowing
?”

“Yeah, I loved that movie.”

“He wrote the screenplay for it.”

“Bruce Willis?”

The side of her mouth rose into a smirk. “Nicholas Cage.”

“Oh.”

Without opening her eyes, she reached down and tapped the author’s name with her finger.

“I actually read
Confessions
,” he said.

“Mine?”

“Pearson’s. But they weren’t
his
confessions—”

“So you did hear of him?”

He smiled. “I love you.”

She placed a hand on his thigh.

“Hey, watch it!” He brushed her hand away. “There’s people around.”

“Oh, like that’s a major concern of yours.” She pulled her top down further, exposing flesh that hadn’t seen daylight in at least five years.

The section of the deck they were reclining on was packed with other sun bathers offering their skin as sacrifice to the galaxy’s fiery center. A couple of young women were lying on their stomachs a few chairs away, topless.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked her.

“What?”

“You’re exposing yourself to all these strapping young men. They’re liable to become jealous.”

She ran a hand through her hair. “Won’t that make you feel good? Men ten years younger than you jealous of the wife you were somehow able to catch?”

“Not while they’re tossing me overboard as some kind of savage ritual aimed to impress you.”

“Oh. Well, then maybe I just want your eyes on
my
melons and not theirs.” She nodded to the topless college students.

“Oh, please. They have nothing on you.” He opened the book.

“And how do you know that?”

He bit his lower lip. “I didn’t—
don’t
know…that. I…wait, what did you say? You talking about those people over there? They’re men, aren’t they?” He leaned forward, feigning to get a better look. “They’re
wo-
men? Yucky.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she responded. They looked like strippers with their perfect butts hanging out for every male to see and want. Their thongs were almost invisible between their tanned cheeks.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Stacey began, “take off your mirrored sunglasses, or I take off my top and let the frat boys woo me by tearing you to pieces and throwing your limbs to the sharks.”

“Sharks?” Jack sat forward. “You think there’s sharks out here?”

“It’s the ocean, dear.”

He took his sunglasses off and set his gaze on the blue seas. Some kind of island music was playing over the speaker system, and the serenity of it all made him sigh with satisfaction. He reached over and took Stacey’s hand. “Am I really that old?” he wondered aloud, reflecting back on the “ten years younger” remark. Then he sifted further back through the conversation. “Hey, what did you mean, ‘
somehow
able to catch you’?”

“Don’t worry about it, honey. If truth be told, I caught you.”

3

“Your mom didn’t spare any expense, did she?”

Jack was lying on the king-size bed, his fingers interlocked behind his head, taking in their suite. At the foot of the bed was a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that stood looking out into the great blue unknown. The view captivated him. It was so vast and humbling that it almost scared him. Even aboard this enormous pleasure vessel, they were but a freckle on the ass of a sand flea. The enormity of it made all the problems of 21st century man seem insignificant in some cosmological way. People, with all of their problems, died. Wars were fought and won, one generation’s challenge gave way to the next…but this ocean was still here, completely indifferent to mankind’s petty and insanity-driven issues.

Stacey walked in from the living room, and her stunning presence brought him out of his musings. No, death was not a petty concern, whether nature cared about it or not, it was the most serious and sobering consideration of man. Death…it was what made life worth living, what made every day precious—a limited supply of life the very source of its value. Just like any precious resource, the more common it is, the less value it has. It’s the economics of the soul, though try as hard as we may to add more days to it, inflation hasn’t been all that significant. Life is only common to those in power, who see people as numbers born for their own ego; it’s never a common thing to the individual. The problem, however, was being able to get the most out of the days when it looked like the last grains of sand were about to tumble through the narrow waist of the hourglass. Especially when it seemed unfair, that time had come to rob a loved one of so many unfulfilled hopes and dreams.