Tide's Ebb (11 page)

“
Boy!
You must jump! We haven’t much time!”

The Mayor’s boy still clasped tightly to the troubled craft’s mast, frozen with fear. “I’m scared!”

“Boy! These seas will smash us both to pieces! You must jump!”

But the boy would not move.

Larry surveyed the scene frantically.

“Men! Get me some line!”

For a second, Marianna believed that Larry was going to do lines of cocaine, which is what many lawyers at her law firm did when times got tough. But then she saw one of Larry’s men rush over with some rope, which Larry looped over his shoulder.

Larry stepped to the edge of his boat and looked over the edge—now there was at least six feet between the two boats. But Larry leapt like a cat with a beer belly. Marianna looked in shock and fascination at how Larry’s stomach jiggled as he landed ungracefully on the Mayor’s yacht, each jiggle as rhythmic as the ocean itself.

The yacht was now listing dangerously to port. The tip of its mast tilted down at a twenty-degree angle to a hungry sea that had already swallowed its share of seamen that fateful day.

Larry hung onto the railing of the Mayor’s boat and scooped up the boy, but as Larry tried to pull away, he felt a tug.  The boy’s foot was wrapped tightly in part of the jib. Larry’s hands worked furiously, a blur of motion like a thirteen-year old discovering the art of self-pleasure, trying to free the boy. But the precious child was truly trapped.

Larry’s blue eyes squinted.  “It’s no use!” he shouted to himself and to the uncaring sea.

Marianna stood captivated by the spectacle. But then she felt her own boat turn.

“What are we doing?!”

One of the teenagers called out, “Lady, we have to head to shore! We have to get you back safely! Suzanne said that she would only have sex with us if we got you back safely!”

She saw their point and realized Suzanne had promised much more than French kisses to the youthful crew.

Suzanne interjected, “But what about Larry? Surely we can stay a little while longer!”

“Ma’am, we can’t do anything for them now.”

And everyone on the boat, mimicking the boat’s own motion, turned their backs to the wreckage, much as Hollywood did to Britney Spears in 2007.

All save one. For Marianna would not look away while so many lives were at risk.

The tip of the Mayor’s boat was now flat with the sea, like a man’s penis when he lies down on his back before you give him a blowjob. But one figure wearing a captain’s hat had climbed onto the fallen mast of the Mayor’s boat. Could it be Larry? Waves lapped at the figure, half-submerged in the ocean’s gaping maw, shimmying along the mast like it was a stripper’s pole and many dollar bills depended on it.

A larger wave rolled in, for a while pushing the mast back into the air. Marianna could see Larry clearly now—his clothes soaked to his back, muscles rippling from the effort. Marianna noted, too, his pleasant bottom, cheeks clenching and unclenching with each shimmy up the mast.  For a moment, she visualized those same cheeks clenching and unclenching with a thrust, a thrust deep into her feminine core, and Marianna felt the earth move in ways that had nothing to do with the rocky seas.

Larry was somehow now at the tip of the fallen ship’s mast.
What is he doing?
Marianna thought for a moment, before once again slipping into a dreamlike state in which she fantasized about other games played with just the tip.  Larry, unaware of the storm in Marianna’s mind, continued his manly, but mysterious, work.  Larry still had the ropes draped over his shoulders—he tied one end to the top of the mast and then began inching backwards down the mast, waves crashing over him.

Oh, you could tie me down with those ropes, big boy…

Chas’s head bobbed above the water still. As Larry reached the bottom of the mast, he patted the boy on the head. But Larry then stood up, carrying the other end of the rope, and jumped back to the other boat, like a pear-shaped lion.

Why is Larry leaving the boy? What is he doing?

Larry then tied the other end of the rope to his own yacht’s mast. The boats’ fates were now connected. When his men saw this, they began shouting, faces contorted with fear and anger. “Captain, you’ll kill us all!”

Again, Larry’s voice carried over the wind: “Men, on my command—
RAISE THE SAILS
!”

Marianna was aghast. In storms like this, boats needed to take their sails down, or risk being flipped by the wind and the waves. Larry’s men seemed similarly shocked—each with the look of having drawn the final spot at a gang bang. Would they mutiny?

“Men, am I not your captain?”

The men nodded solemnly.

“Men, have I ever led you astray?”

The men shook their heads, this time with more passion, although one man appeared to say something about a bar in Bangkok.

“Then men, you have my orders!”

“
AYE AYE CAPTAIN!
” The men both feared and respected their Captain. Marianna saw this and was aroused. She began rubbing her thighs together discreetly.

The men rushed to their stations, as Larry took the helm.  Larry’s boat started to pull away from the Mayor’s sideways yacht, with the boy still on board. Larry began to rotate his boat so that its rear now formed a “T” with the fallen yacht. His men, hands twitching with nerves, tensed up.

“Wait for my command!” Larry’s voice was loud, clear and somehow calm.

Suddenly, a wave crashed against the vessels, pushing the two boats away from each other—the rope between the boats suddenly grew tauter. Larry’s boat started to tip. Would both boats be lost?

“NOW! Men! NOW! Raise the sails!”

The men, in a fluid motion akin to a circle jerk, moved in unison—the sails snapped up, and instantly, the gale-force winds cracked into them. Larry’s boat surged forward powerfully with a fury so great that the rope between the boats now stood as tight as a tightrope. The mast of the Mayor’s yacht catapulted out of the water, before falling to the opposite side. Had the plan failed? But the boat wobbled again in the other direction, waving back and forth in ever smaller drifts like a faulty metronome, before finally standing upright. The Mayor’s boy still stood, though the lad was now crying the precious tears that only beautiful people and unicorns are able to shed.

Marianna’s boat had almost pulled back into the docks, but she could see it all from a distance. She was the first to yell “The Mayor’s boat is saved!” Immediately everyone who had turned their backs on the scene now spun around in happiness and cheered. But Marianna began sobbing—she had come to know just how close she was to losing the most precious thing in her life. After seeing Larry’s heroism, she realized it was she who had been self-centered. She had been a fool—she would go to him. She would go to him, and she would never leave again.

A crowd had formed on the docks, lustily welcoming each boat as it arrived safely. In the enduring torment, husbands embraced their wives and children, friends hugged their friends with benefits, all as if they had just been released from jail. News crews, expecting tragedy, had already arrived on the scene and made do with the frantic, heart-warming scene.

The biggest reaction was yet to come. As Larry’s boat sailed in, with the Mayor’s yacht limping behind, a cheer erupted—a cheer that somehow seemed bigger, louder and deeper than the roar of the cruel watery waste. Children who witnessed Larry stepping off of his boat would say they remembered this moment long into their dotage.  Though there was lightning still in the distance, it seemed to Marianna like the thousand flashbulbs from the thousand cameras were even brighter. A dozen microphones were thrust into Larry’s face, but his eyes suggested that he felt like a reluctant bukkakke star.

The Mayor and a pair of firefighters rushed onto the other boat to free Chas, cutting him loose from the jib. The media cameras quickly turned to the heart-warming scene of the attractive child’s rescue, with nary a dry eye in the crowd, for the child was indeed very cute, and also white.  The Mayor simply held his boy tightly, rocking slowly back and forth. What a precious, valued, and dearly cherished white child he was.

Marianna glanced at Larry. He appeared relieved that the cameras had left him—he had no need of public accolades. Larry stood erect, the wind whipping through his hair. Every inch of his white sailor’s outfit clung to his masculine body, accentuating the bulge at his crotch, He appeared every bit a hero, especially at his crotch.  Marianna’s heart skipped.

She felt her legs propel themselves in only one direction, her arms diving forward to part the crowd. Now she was running towards him, even shoving people away so that she could be near him.   She ran to Larry. She ran to him like a freight train. Or like a semi-truck, or like some other large, fast-moving object. And when she reached him, her arms were flung around him, her small frame crashing against his. And somehow, in all this chaos, in all of this passion, her lips found his perfectly. It was not a delicate kiss, but Marianna felt nerves in every inch—even every millimeter—of her skin come alive. She probed his mouth, her tongue anxious and insistent. Larry returned her kiss with even greater intensity, pushing his tongue past her lips. Marianna felt how Larry’s skin was cold and wet, yet she still melted into him.  Her knees gave out now, she was falling—falling as she had never before.

But Larry’s strong arms ensnared her—thick like two breakfast sausages, warm and comforting. His arms caught her and held her tightly. He kissed her again, delicately grazing against her, as lightning and flashbulbs pulsed and exploded around them. Marianna was pulsing, too, and on the verge of her own explosion.