A Man Overboard Read online

  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 h
ead, 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 it tight.

  It was true. According to the doctors, cancer had been detected in the aftermath of her last mammogram. Jack was half-convinced that it came from the mammograms themselves, as studies have shown that radiating your breasts every year can actually cause tumors to grow. It was a conversation they’d had a bit too late. But it didn’t matter because they were going to beat it. The question was how? They were both highly skeptical of all the traditional treatments, as many of them had been proven to cause the very cancer they’re supposed to treat. And there was no way she was going to spend the last four years of her life begging for death, looking like some sixty-pound extra from the set of The Walking Dead. There were other options available, and they were going to investigate them all before starting down that gauntlet of misery. As far as they were concerned, much of western medicine was designed to make a profit off the sick and dying anyway. When insurance companies were footing the bill for “the cure,” why market prevention? It was a trillion-dollar industry where the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the US make more money than the remaining four hundred and ninety Fortune 500 companies. And as always, everything came down to money. From inoculations to epidurals, the propaganda practiced by the Society was shameless. Like CDC researchers advising mothers to stop breastfeeding in order to make vaccines more effective (vaccines that increase the number of diseases a child was likely to get by 500%). That the Supreme Court protects vaccine makers from lawsuits and that there is even a federally funded National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that has paid out over a billion dollars since 1986 added no solace when it came to trusting the medical community with the health and wellbeing of their son. But this wasn’t even about Joseph or autism or mercury. This was about cancer and its accepted treatment, a treatment that could turn their foreseeable future into a horror film. So, a gift from mother-in-law, this two-week cruise was their calm before the storm, and though it was never put into words, perhaps their last chance to be happy together.

  Leaning over, Stacey kissed him on the cheek while sliding her hand up his leg. Then she got up and began undressing as she left the room.

  Jack watched her leave and had to fight hard and quick to reinforce the dam that was keeping all his worry at bay. There was plenty of time to be concerned later. For now, they were going to forget about cancer and enjoy themselves in ways they hadn’t since before Joseph was born—a period of time that now seemed to have been incredibly too short.

  He reached over for the television remote and turned on the big flat screen that hung on the wall beside the bed. The channel showed the ship’s progress, a red dot moving slowly against a map. The tip of Florida was still in view, as were the approaching Bahamas. They were about sixty miles away from Miami now.

  Stacey entered the room again, now wearing some kind of transparent robe thingy. As she opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony, Jack stared in amazement at his wife’s beauty. Over the last four years, she had managed to regain all she’d lost in childbearing, her body a finer piece of sensuous art than it had ever been before. She stood with her back to him, the wind blowing her sexy veil open and back like she was a superhero, her cape flapping behind her. There was no one but him to see her nakedness, the balcony privately set apart from the rest of the staterooms. Only Neptune could see her…or a sailor at his periscope.

  He stared at her for another five minutes before she turned and walked back in.

  “Want to take a shower before dinner?”

  He was out of the bed faster than a startled frog off a lily pad.

  4

  The sun was setting behind Stacey’s head, highlighting her golden hair and casting a radiant halo. The black dress she was wearing was form fitting and revealed enough to attract even the purest of eyes. Jack didn’t need to worry about that, though. Everything he saw was his. He recalled a verse from somewhere in Proverbs—a verse he and his junior high friends had no trouble committing to memory back in Father Jacob’s class. Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times: and be thou ravished always with her love. He was satisfied all right. And though his eyes might wander from time to time, it was only because he was a curious human being, not because he wished for something more than he already had.

  “What are you smirking at?” Stacey asked.

  He didn’t realize his thoughts had made it to his face. “I was just reciting some scripture.”

  She rolled her eyes in mock disgust.

  “Communist,” he quipped.

  “From Russia with love, baby.” She winked at him, leaning forward on the table and giving him more to take in.

  “‘Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.’”

  She smiled. “Really?”

  “‘This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.’”

  “Tell me more.” She slid the menu over, ignoring a group of people squeezing past her chair and sitting at a table beside them.

  “‘I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples.’”

  “Apples, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Wisest guy to ever live. Had a thousand wives.”

  “That’s a lot of breasts.”

  “Two thousand, I believe.”

  She leaned back and brought the menu up, blocking his view of her clusters. “A theologian… I had no idea. Shall we debate over dinner?”

  “About the smell of your nose?”

  “The existence of God.”

  He moved his gaze to the waters resting just over her shoulder. “I’d rather not. You know what they said about the Titanic.”

  “You think God sunk the boat because some idiot said that God couldn’t sink it?”

  “Idiot? I would think you�
�d agree.”

  “That God couldn’t sink a boat? That implies that there is a God who can’t sink a boat. So he’s an idiot. Secondly, if there was a God, then He could certainly sink anything He wanted. So he’s an idiot twice over.”

  “Wow.” He leaned back and studied her. “You’re my theology. Beauty, love… How can I behold you and not believe in a Creator?”

  She smiled. “I love it when you’re naive. It’s so sweet.”

  Jack loved the quipping and did his part to ensure that it was exercised often; their differing views on spiritual matters a source of mock-contention that they found entertaining. When Jack’s parents died, his grandmother had taken him in, determined to see him raised right. A religious woman if there ever was one, it was only natural that Jack ended up with a Christian education (rather than, as Grandmom said, “the propaganda the State’s shoveling into the youth these days”—though Jack had found its own propaganda within his Christian education, too). Good old Grandmom, how he missed her. She died the day after he turned nineteen, and even though her faith hadn’t managed to make a convert out of him, he’d seen and heard enough to know that there had to be something out there. He just didn’t know what. But, boy oh boy, would Grandmom be filled with righteous indignation if she knew he’d married a Russian atheist! Sorry, Granny.

  The restaurant they were in was magnificent, and if it weren’t for the view behind them, they could easily forget they were actually floating in the middle of the ocean. The waiter came over to their table.

  “Are you lovely people ready to order?” he asked with an accent Jack didn’t recognize.

  “Give us a few more seconds,” he answered.