Thomas Prescott Superpack (68 page)

Without preamble, the Warlord reached out his hand and ripped away her bikini top. Her giant breasts leapt out and she screamed. The pirates all began to laugh. Tupac pushed her forward and she began stumbling back in our direction. She tried to cover her breasts, but her giant red nipples kept peeking out.

When she reached us, Gilroy said, “Dammit, cover yourself up!”

I really wanted to hit him in the face with a crowbar.

J.J unbuttoned his Hawaiian shirt, he had a plain white V-neck underneath, and handed it to her. “Here.”

She nodded her thanks, wiped her tears with it, and then put it on.

Marge was hardly given a second glance. Evidently, the woman in question was under 200. Marge started back towards us, then thinking better of it, made her way to the bathroom (She would later say, “Since I was up.”)

The next five minutes passed in agony. Every so often the Warlord would make one of the women open their mouths, but each time he would shake his head and Tupac would send the woman rushing back to her seat.

When the Warlord was one woman away from Susie, Frank looked over at me. Written on his face, plain as day, fear. Abject fear. I could feel the same fear crawling up my neck, climbing up my chin. What if the face on that piece of paper the Warlord was holding was Lacy’s? And I’m sure Frank was thinking the same about Susie.

J.J. Watkins chimed in, “Ransom.”

I turned. “What?”

“Ransom. They’re probably looking for someone on the ship to ransom.”

For the third time, I agreed with the annoying hack next to me. After hearing about the AIDS demands, I’d dismissed the idea of ransom altogether. I didn’t doubt that the AIDS relief was their primary objective—you could see the conviction in the Professor’s eyes as he spoke, a fury in his belly—but the Warlord was a different story. I couldn’t see behind those aviator glasses, but my gut told me that when he’d been staring at Lacy, it hadn’t been lust in his eyes, it had been dollar signs. As for Lacy, we had quite a bit of money, but it was all under my name, and since the majority of that money was tied up in stock I’d inherited from my parents’ death, it wasn’t liquid. It would take days, if not weeks, to get cash. And last I’d heard, the stock wasn’t doing all that well so I’d be lucky to squeak out a couple million bucks.

I looked at Frank. Mr. Snuggie. The guy had bundles of cash on him at all times—thousands of dollars wrapped in a red rubber band—and after one too many Mai Tais, Frank confided in me that they had more money than they knew what to do with. Tens of millions of dollars. And who was in charge of all that money? Susie.

But, this didn’t make since. What were they going to do? Ransom one hostage from another hostage? No, the idea behind a ransom was to make an outside party pay for the release of the abducted individual. Although, I suppose they could force Susie to transfer the funds from their bank account to an account of their choosing. But if they were going to go this route, why not do it with everybody? No, they wouldn’t single out one person. And they would be concentrating on the men. Susie was a rarity. She was probably the only one of all the women against that wall that controlled the family finances, and maybe that was her fat face on that piece of paper.

Talk about thinking in circles.

The Warlord dismissed the woman to the left of Susie, then took a step to the side and stood directly in front of Mrs. Camper. Frank leaned forward in his seat. I heard him sniffle. The Warlord’s inspection—or comparison—of Susie was over before it began. Apparently, the women he was looking for had three chins or less.

Tupac pushed Susie down the aisle.

Frank beamed.

I watched in my peripheral as Susie wedged her way through the seats, but my main focus was on Lacy. The Warlord took two steps to the side and blocked my view of my sister. He held the picture up to her head and I could feel his eyes moving down my sister’s body. He stood there for what seemed like an eternity. He stuck his left hand out and I knew he was running it through my sister’s short blond hair.

I saw his hand moved down to her neck. Then her arm. Then disappear. Although, I couldn’t see, I knew clear as day the Warlord was holding onto my sister’s breast. I looked down at the red carpet between my legs. This was too much.

And then it happened. A collective gasp. The Warlord crouched over, groaning. His beret fell from his head as he hobbled, holding his crotch.

Lacy had kneed him in the balls.

Um,
check please
.

The Warlord straightened. He leaned into my sister and I could hear his shouting. He pulled the knife from his pocket and it disappeared, its next stop my sister’s throat.

This was it, I was going to watch my sister be gutted like a fish.

But it never happened. He whispered into her ear, then threw her down on the floor. She scrambled to her feet before Tupac had a chance to grab her, and began wending her way through the chairs. When she was ten feet away, she raised her eyebrows and said, “How’d I do?”

“On a scale from one to ten? Minus fifty thousand.”

She plopped down and said, “What you want me to do? He grabbed my boob.”

I don’t know. Let him. I did say, “I thought he might have.”

“Yeah, I don’t like it when people grab my boobs.” She cupped her breasts in her skimpy green bikini with her hands. “I know they’re small, but I’m very protective of them.”

Lacy turned to Susie and slapped her leg, “Good work sister. You were great.”

Susie gave a sheepish smile.

“Yeah, you were babe,” Frank concurred.

J.J. leaned over me and said, “What did he say?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t understand him,” Lacy said, shrugging.

I gave her a look. She knew exactly what he’d said. She looked at me and said, “He said he wanted to take me to Chili’s when this whole thing blows over.”

“You are a lying whore.”

She laughed. “Dick.”

“Did you get a look at the picture he was holding up?”

“I was too busy trying to keep my virginity intact.”

I looked at Susie. She shook her head.

Lacy said acutely, “They must be looking for some girl. And the way he was looking at me, I’d say she’s about my size. He kept looking at my teeth. Maybe she’s a snaggletooth.”

I looked at the Warlord as he moved down the wall. He wasn’t going to find what he was looking for in this room.

THREE DAYS EARLIER

11:56 p.m.

“Wanna play another round?” We’d been playing rummy for the past hour.

“I’m tired,” Lacy said, batting her eyes open and closed. “And my vagina hurts.”

We’d spent the better part of the afternoon on horseback. It had been Susie’s idea to explore the white sand beaches of Mozambique astride the glorious beasts. My stallion, actually a mare, was named Bagru. He/she was brown and he/she acted more like a Roger, so that’s what I called him/her. After seven hours astride Roger, my inner thighs burned, I could feel my heartbeat in my ass, and my testicles had officially put in for early retirement. In all honestly, the afternoon was considerably more fun than I’d expected. The four of us had tied up the horses at a number of small huts located up and down Praia de Zavala, sampling the local cuisine and lubricating with tropical offerings. Susie even to the point where she thought it would be a good idea to get her hair braided and beaded by an African woman on the beach. But, the highlight of the excursion had been when Frank’s horse, a white behemoth named Ratak, had decided he’d had enough of Frank’s whistling and ran into the surf where he promptly and unceremoniously bucked Frank into the ocean.

“Put some ice on it,” I replied.

“I just might,” she said with a laugh, already halfway under the covers. “What are you gonna do?”

The Campers, who could barely make the trek back to the ship—both walking as if competing to see who could keep their thighs further apart—had called it a night an hour earlier. “I don’t know. I’m not tired at all.”

“I told you not to drink that Redbull.”

“The first one or the second one?”

“The third one.”

“Right.”

She mumbled something else, but it was unintelligible. Baxter had materialized from wherever he’d been hiding and was already asleep on her chest, snoring away. I walked over and pulled the blankets up over the two of them and kissed Lacy on the forehead. I thought about renting a movie from the Blue-ray library and ordering room service, but I needed to expend some of this Taurine or I was going to be awake until February. I slid into some casual duds; jeans, cranberry tee, and gray Chuck Taylors.

The casino was packed and I remembered that it was some special night and the band— a
good enough quartet that played everything from reggae to country—was playing in the back corner. There was an empty spot at the baccarat table and I changed a hundred. Baccarat was my new favorite game. If you’ve never played, it’s like a complicated version of blackjack, but instead of 21 you’re trying to get nine.

I bet the entire hundred on the
banco
, banker, and won. The next hand, I bet all two hundred on the
punto
, player, and lost.

I was in the casino for exactly four minutes.

The arcade was a floor down. There were six or seven games, a pinball machine, and an air hockey table. There was a kid playing Miss Pac-Man. He was the only kid on the boat. Mika. He was from Greece and he was on the cruise with his parents, who appeared to be in their late ‘60s. I suppose they suspected there would be more kids on the ship. Lucky for Mika there was plenty of booze and one extremely immature man/boy named Thomas. Aside from my sister and the Campers, I had clocked more hours with the pudgy 13-year-old than anybody else. I peeked over Mika’s shoulder and said, “Eat that yellow dot . . . now that one . . . now that one . . . now that one . . . now that one . . . now that one . . . now that one. . .” until finally he started laughing and the pink ghost got him.

“There are some beers behind the pinball table,” he said.

I grabbed a beer and played a few games of pinball, impatiently waiting for Mika to die a couple of more times. After two beers, Miss Pac-Man accidentally came unplugged.

Mika’s dark features creased. “What the fuck?” He shoved me in the arm.

I shoved him back.

Five minutes later, Mika tapped out.

Still got it.

We both dusted ourselves off, shot-gunned a beer, then played air hockey for an hour. He beat me four games out of seven.

After describing in detail how badly I was going to whoop his ass in pool basketball the next day, I walked out. I’d worked off about half the Redbull in my system, but I was still wide awake and now I was hungry. I headed to Cargo, the late night cafe on Deck 7. There were three other people hanging out and I watched Sports Center and ate a delicious Johannes-burger with a fried egg and chased it down with a strawberry milkshake.

It was almost three when I walked into District 9. Only the diehards remained, thirty people spread between the bar and the dance floor. I sidled up to the bar and ordered Don Julio 1942, neat. I sipped the drink and watched the deluge of bodies grind to the electronic music blaring from the DJ in the corner.

I felt her before I saw her. A light squeeze on my right thigh. She had light brown hair stacked high. Delicious cheekbones, pale skin, a face to remember, and one I did not. Light eyes that were hard to distinguish under the red lights. She was wearing black jeans that clung to a size two body and a beige blouse with a drooped neck, revealing a hint of a cavernous shadow. Her face was stern and somehow sexier than any smile.

She took the drink from my hand, took a sip and handed it back to me.

“I want to dance,” she said, in what I guessed was either a British or Australian brogue.

I was in love.

Again.

She took my hand and I let her lead me to the dance floor. She released my hand and began to move, her lithe body swaying, finding the music. She danced away from me, a cascade of fifty-something men closing in on her from every angle, but it was as if they didn’t exist. Her eyes were closed. I danced, not
good, not bad. Two women silently made their way in my direction. I danced with them for a couple of tracks. Again, I felt her before I saw her. She turned me around, pressed her body to mine. The one hundred pounds that comprised her were made of granite and fire. We moved against one another. She grabbed my shirt and pulled me into her, trying to melt our skin together.

A couple songs later, she took my hand.

We walked from the club in silence.

She pushed the door open to her room. She turned and licked my lips. She lifted my shirt and kissed my belly. She ran her mouth over the bulge in my jeans, blowing hot air onto my growing erection. I pulled her up and pushed her against the wall. She moaned. I bit her bottom lip, pulled it taut, bit it again. Slowly I kissed my way down her body. Unbuckled the clasp of her jeans. Pulled the zipper down, tooth by tooth. Her panties were black mesh. I put my mouth on her and returned the favor. She purred. I picked her up, her legs interlocking behind my back, her tongue finding my neck and the edge of my ear.