A Man Overboard Read Free Page B

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.
    Like cancer.
    Stacey sat down next to him, her gaze also locked on the rolling mystery they were floating on. “She has the money, and she just wants us—”
    “You.”
    “— me ,” she corrected herself, “to enjoy myself before everything slips down the crapper.”
    He positioned himself up on an elbow and stroked her long hair. “It’s gonna be okay.”
    She turned her eyes from the expanse and set them down on him, smiling sadly. Without a word, she reached down and grabbed his other hand, holding