by Diane Cook
Ross and Dan spat words and dusty saliva toward Phil. They’d woken disoriented, frenzied, lost to time.
“The jerky is gone!” Ross barked.
“The peanuts!” Dan screamed. He took a breath and screamed again.
The remaining oar was also gone.
“How?” Phil asked.
Ross and Dan stopped mid scoop.
“Someone must have taken it,” Dan said, and scratched his palms, pilling bits of grime and skin. He looked over his shoulder as if someone had tapped it.
“Who could have done that?” Phil asked. He focused on seeming innocent.
Ross eyed him suspiciously.
There was no good answer to this question, and so they settled into an uneasy calm.
Phil felt roller-coaster queasy; the final part, when the hills come too quickly.
We are unlucky, he thought. Like people who always miss the bus, even with a schedule. Though maybe luck is cyclical. Maybe luck was constantly on the move, gracing people and then leaving them. People with luck or good fortune early in life—they’ll crash into a snowbank and freeze to death, slowly over days, to the sound of other cars passing just out of sight, or get snarled in the propeller of a boat when they’re snorkeling on a relaxing vacation, or die giving birth to their child. Phil tried to think of when luck had visited him last, if ever. Was he due for some, or had he squandered his share long ago?
Phil peered sheepishly at Ross from under his lashes. “I slept with your wife.”
“I know.” Ross dunked his head in the lake.
Dan clapped his hands gleefully, and the resulting pop was the morning’s only other noise. “If I were a television writer, I’d be writing all this down, because this is gold.”
“Dan, you are a television writer,” Phil said. He laughed, but the lake dampened the sound and it came off morose.
Dan scowled. “That’s what I meant. I meant if I had a pen.” He picked at a sun blister on his thigh until he let loose the pus. He dabbed his finger and licked it.
“Did you sleep with my wife?” Ross asked, easing a leg out for a stretch. It brushed by Phil’s shoulder, purposefully, Phil thought.
Ross dunked his hands into the lake and gave each underarm a good scrub. He smelled them with fascination.
“Does it matter?” Phil asked. He’d hoped what he said would come off as a joke, and was annoyed it hadn’t.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think it actually does, now that you mention it.” Ross flicked his wet hands in Phil’s face. “Now that we’re here, I think it matters.”
“Well, then, no, I didn’t.”
“Why did you say you did?”
“Because I wanted to. I’ve always wanted to sleep with your wife. She was hot.”
Dan nodded. “She is hot.”
Ross shrugged and twirled the minute hand around and around on his watch.
Phil scratched his head. “Why did you say ‘I know’ when I said I slept with her, if I never slept with her?” He was beginning to suspect Bren had said something to Ross. It was years ago, and they’d been so drunk, and it was only a blow job.
“Because I thought you did. I always thought you did.”
“How could you think that? How could you think I’d do that to you?”
“Because I banged your sister. Remember?”
“Why would you bring that up? When we get home I am going to sleep with Bren. You deserve it.” Phil stared out at the water. The way it moved on its own made him feel vaguely wet, like he was becoming part of the lake, being absorbed.
Ross chuckled. “No chance,” he said, not even bothering to look at Phil. Which stung. Did he mean they had no chance of making it home, Phil wondered, or that he had no chance with Bren? How could Ross seem so sure? Had Bren said something? Phil squirmed in the bottom of the boat, trying to quell his burgeoning erection. He wanted to sleep with Bren badly.
“If I were writing this into a television sitcom,” Dan mused, “or even a movie, I would have written this as a fight scene. Every time you guys say something, I’d have you start wrestling, so that the boat is almost tipping, and things get very tense for the audience, which thinks the boat is going to tip, but then I, or, you know, the actor playing me, intervenes and says something like—” Dan put his finger to his lips, thinking, then hollered, “ ‘Hey fellas, something something blah blah,’ and then cue laugh track”—he pointed to the wavy gray horizon—“and that would calm you down because, you know, metaphors, etc. And then some action music would play, and we’d start figuring a way out of this mess.”
Phil looked at Ross. He wiggled his eyebrows in a way that asked, Is he losing it? But Ross wouldn’t look at him.
Ross, instead, looked at Dan with interest. “What is the way out of this mess?”
Dan scratched at the rubber seams beneath him. “I’m glad you finally asked. Let’s flag down one of the tankers we keep seeing.”
“We haven’t seen any tankers,” Phil said.
Dan’s face registered shock, but then a vague smile appeared.
Ross glared at Phil.
“All right, then,” Ross said soothingly to Dan, “we’re three men in a boat in a large lake that is a major shipping route. Why have no boats passed to rescue us? I want you to write me a world in which that happens. I want my own television show, dammit.”
So Dan told them about how, the other day, a coup d’état occurred in Canada. Rebels blocked all waterways and ports in protest, and were holding the prime minister hostage. Armed gunmen had broken into his room late at night while he enjoyed a cigar and a brandy, though this particular boutique hotel had strict no-smoking rules, which would be communicated by a slow pan from a No Smoking sign to the prime minister relishing a thick exhale just before the armed men barged in, threw a bag over his head, and dragged him through the hallway to the service elevator. Patrons screamed and cowered against walls at the sight of the guns because Canadians are peaceful nancies. The armed men brought the prime minister to the basement, which was really a dungeon from colonial times. They tied him to a chair and threatened to rape his daughters if he didn’t cooperate. They’re twins. “Double the pleasure,” one of the more dastardly gunmen said, twirling his waxed mustache. The prime minister broke under the pressure of picturing his beautiful brunette daughters brutally raped, shown in slow, soft-lit vignettes so that it’s classy and, of course, feminist. As viewers, we’d be horrified and so we would all understand—we would have sympathy for—the prime minister when he handed over the country to these armed men.
Dan paused, finger to lips again, and again looked over his shoulder at an imagined encroaching someone or something. He continued in a whisper. “Okay, listen, the army steps in, overthrows the prime minister, strips him of the authority to give the country to the gunmen, and proceeds to battle the counterforces laying siege to all of the rebel territories. So there are no boats here right now because in the seaway that leads to the ocean, the one we’re heading for, a fantastic battle is taking place. Picture it: Underwater torpedoes! Cannons! They’re fired from the bluffs by scrappy yet handsome, thrown-together village armies. Your run-of-the-mill believe-in-able poor-people types. The kind that wear potato-sack clothes and such. Somehow a pod of government-trained beluga whales is unleashed to deliver explosives—strapped to their heads on helmets, okay—by swimming under enemy boats and blowing up themselves and the boats. Total kamikaze shit. We’re talking whale medal of honor.” Dan punched the air. “The war is on. Boom. Prime time.”
“That’s quite a show,” Ross said admiringly. “What are you going to call it?”
Dan snapped his fingers. “Man V. Nature.”
Phil laughed. The other two looked at him. He’d thought it was a joke. “Why?” he asked.
“Everything is man versus this and man versus that. It’s so simple,” Dan said, his voice rising. “It’s man versus everything. It’s me. It’s you. It’s us. It’s in us. It’s in—”
“Okay, okay, but it�
��s a war story,” Phil interrupted. “It should be Man Versus Man.”
“I’m the writer. I get to call it whatever I want. And it’s Man V. Nature.” Dan crossed his arms, satisfied. He had made his point.
“Well, I’m calling it Man Versus Man. Try and stop me,” Phil said. He meant it jovially, but joviality seemed to be dead, at least where he was concerned.
“I’d watch Man V. Nature,” Ross said to Dan. His point was not lost on Phil.
“Oh, I would too,” Phil chimed in so he’d feel included. He itched a spot on his ankle that he’d already scratched raw. Under his fingernails he smelled rot.
Dan slammed his fist down on the hot rubber side. “God, I wish I had a pen. Some paper, too.” Then a look like happiness passed over his face. “When we’re rescued, I’m going to sell that show and make you a star.”
“Me?” Phil asked.
“No, not you.”
Ross smirked. “You’re the star of Man Versus Man, remember?”
A flock of geese flew by their boat, their shit making splashes like tiny bombs in the water.
A kind of bare grief Phil saw in movies but rarely experienced himself bubbled up. He was not quick to trust it. He said, “Cool,” agreeably.
Phil dipped his beer can into the lake and splashed it around to part the sun-warmed surface water so the icy stuff below could rise up. He let the can fill and drank it in one long gulp. “Why would I sleep with your wife? I had my own wife.”
Dan and Ross chuckled and exchanged an incredulous look.
“Because your wife sucked, and my wife is awesome,” Ross explained.
“Patricia didn’t suck.”
“Um, yes, she did. She sucked. And you hated her.”
“No, I didn’t. She hated me. But I loved her. I really did. That’s the truth.” He didn’t know if that was the truth. Honestly, he probably didn’t love her specifically, but he’d loved that she was a woman, acted like a woman, and had at one point, early on, seemed to love him. Or pretended to. But it didn’t matter now. He hated her now.
Phil poured a can of water on his head. He filled it, did it again, and then again until Dan whined about water in the boat. Phil stumbled to kneel, pulled out his penis, and tried to aim over the side like they’d always done, but the stream was weak and urine pooled in the lifeboat. Instead of yelling, Ross and Dan shared a look, and again Phil was at a loss for what it meant.
Dan pulled out a strip of jerky from a secret stash in his shorts. He passed it to Ross, who held it up like evidence. It wilted in the heat. To Phil, it smelled like real meat cooking on a grill. Drool spilled down his chin.
“This is the last one,” Ross said to Phil knowingly, and pushed the length of it into his mouth.
Dan woke screaming “Fire!” and jumped up from the sagging plastic bench. His shorts were wet, and a deep intestinal smell wafted from him. Ross yanked down Dan’s shorts to reveal an oozing patch of holey flesh covering one entire cheek. The smell forced a puke from Phil. Ross soaked his T-shirt in lake water and gingerly pressed it to Dan’s ass to clean it. Dan stood naked like a toddler in the backyard sun. A smile played at his lips as he surveyed the lake reaching in all directions. He turned to Phil, who was rinsing out his mouth. The boat shook, shivered.
“Does it look like it hurts?” he asked.
“It looks like it will kill you,” Phil said.
Dan giggled. “It doesn’t hurt one bit.” He repeated it under his breath, emphasizing each word, until the men helped him lie on his side along the bottom of the boat. There would be no more rotation of seats. Phil and Ross settled next to each other for the foreseeable future.
Phil slept poorly, fighting off annoyed elbow jabs from Ross. Phil wanted his sleep time to be an escape. He wanted to dream of a girl, of Bren. But what if he called out her name and Ross heard? What about dreams of some vacation, some cabin in snowy woods, instead? A fireplace. Some beer. Or maybe he could dream of flying. Away. From here. In the end, he dreamed of birds, their talons puncturing his arms as they pried white worms from the blisters on his neck.
“Wake up,” Dan hissed, slapping their thighs and feet, whatever was closest. He was frantic again. “Get your things together. We’ve got to go!”
Ross rubbed his eyes. “Where? Go where?”
Phil tried to get his bearings. He looked around. He touched his neck.
“Down there,” Dan shrieked. He pointed into the water. “Listen, I’ve been hearing more about this war that broke out, you know, I told you about it.” They nodded, bewildered. “Well, it’s getting worse. Common citizens are taking up arms to push the rebels out, and it’s full-on revolution all around us. You can hear it if you listen really hard.” Dan squeezed his eyes in concentration. Phil heard a trickle of water, and saw Dan pee himself.
“It’s a humanitarian nightmare. World War Three. The only safe place is under the surface. I mean, think about it.” His eyes bulged. “It’s kind of beautiful. This world collapses. But the world below this world—it flourishes. Man V. Nature. See?”
Dan propped his chin on the side of the boat and peered into the water. He marveled, “We are actually in the perfect position. Stuck out here, we are citizens of no world. And so we’re totally welcome down there.” Dan gazed at Phil with admiration. “I don’t think I could have done it. But you have guts. You knew something was happening. You kept us out here. You’re kind of a genius, man. I’m so dumb, I thought we were going to die. And soon.” Dan laughed hard. “Turns out we’re gonna live.” He briefly air-guitared.
Phil blinked. Was he serious? “I didn’t keep us here. I didn’t know anything,” he said cautiously.
Dan’s chest heaved. He sweated. “Bren and the girls are already down there. Say hi, Ross,” he said, waving at the water.
Ross’s mouth gaped, but despite himself, he looked. “I don’t see anything.”
Dan clutched at his own shirt. “You’re a terrible husband. Terrible father. You just broke their hearts. Right in two. Don’t you see?” He twirled his finger in the water, creating ripples that moved farther away from him. He leaned out, peering closely at the center spiral he’d created.
Ross said, “Hey, pal, get yourself back into this boat.”
Dan turned to Phil. “Don’t you see?” he pleaded.
Phil shook his head.
Ross said again, “Get in here. You can’t leave me. If you leave, I’ll die of boredom.”
Phil winced.
Dan choked out a real sob. “But I’m so tired, Ross.” He said it like a secret he didn’t want Phil to know.
Everything was still, and Phil thought maybe the moment had passed. Then quickly, easily, Dan slid his body over the side of the lifeboat. Phil managed to grab his foot, but the shoe slid off with a couple of kicks, and they watched Dan waggle and pull, like a kid diving for toys in a backyard pool, until the darkest water swallowed him.
“I’ve got to go in, get him,” Ross said.
“We’ve got to get him,” Phil corrected.
Neither man moved.
Air bubbles rose to the top for a few minutes and then the lake was calm.
“Fuck,” Phil said, holding Dan’s shoe in the air. Ross snatched it and threw it overhand, the force pitching the boat wildly. It plunked like a stone into the water. The ripples went on forever.
Phil thought Ross would make a play for the better seat, now that Dan was gone, but instead Ross slumped over, barely propped up by his own bones. Phil slid to the boat floor and stretched out. He stifled a groan of pleasure out of respect for Dan.
Ross didn’t say anything all day. He just peered over the edge like he was looking for something important and kept almost seeing it.
When the sun began to set, Ross reached into a zippered pocket on the inside of his shorts.
“What’s in there?” Phil craned his neck to see. Maybe it was food.
“It’s nothing,” Ross said, taking out an index card and a stubby pencil, the kind used at golf c
ourses.
“You had paper and pencil this whole time? And you didn’t give it to Dan?”
Ross waved the card in the air. “Too small to fit a whole TV show on, don’t you think? Besides, I didn’t remember I had it. What kind of asshole do you think I am? I would never do that to him.” He bent over the card and began to scribble.
“What are you writing?”
“Nothing that concerns you. It’s for my girls.”
“Are you going to signal a bird to pick it up and fly it to them?”
Ross singsonged, “Meh. Meh. Meh. Meh. Meh,” mocking Phil’s comment, his whiny voice. He scooped water from the side of the lifeboat and flung it at Phil. Phil retaliated by filling his cupped hands and dousing Ross’s lap and scorecard.
Ross leaped to his feet and the boat bottom folded, water rushing over the side. A cramp from sitting so long seized him and he lurched forward, bending deeply, so his face met Phil’s. His sunburned eyeballs looked like the bottom of a dried lake bed. Tears burst from them and tracked through the grime on his face. “You expect me to believe you didn’t do this on purpose?”
“Sit down! What are you talking about?”
“Strand us out here. You know, run out of gas.”
Phil laughed. “Calm down.”
“You just happened to forget to fill the tank? That’s crap. We’ve been coming out here how many years?” Ross sat down with a thud, and more water poured in.
“That’s baloney. You’re crazy.” True, Phil hadn’t filled the tank up all the way. Dan and Ross hadn’t offered him any money. It was weird. They usually did, but this time they’d just pretended to look at the map when he backed the boat trailer up to the pump. Gas was so expensive now. He’d felt uneasy ever since he’d picked up Ross. He and Dan, they’d been fine, talked about girls Dan could fix him up with now that he was single. But then Ross had gotten in the car. Phil thought then that maybe Bren had finally told Ross about the blow job. He’d always thought Ross acted weird around him, ever since. For years he’d assumed Ross knew. He wanted Ross to know, to know and to go on these trips with Phil anyway. Because they were such good friends and nothing could ruin that. And Phil could feel he’d gotten away with it. And then maybe it could happen again, with Bren. It had been a fantastic blow job. He’d been drunk, yes, but he still remembered it. She acted drunk, but he knew she wasn’t. She had wanted to do it. And the fact that Bren never came to the door to see Ross off on these trips was proof to Phil. She was harboring some serious feelings for him. God, Bren. They used to have a ball together back in the day. They’d all go out when Phil visited for the holidays, him and Dan and Ross and Bren. Ross and Dan always drank too much and were a mess. But in basic training Phil learned how to act sober even when he wasn’t, so he always offered to drive Bren home and then would rejoin Ross and Dan later. They never suspected anything. Bren was so giggly and her mouth was so big, with her sleek white teeth and that thin slippery tongue. They made out the first couple of visits, and he felt her up frantically. And when she was pregnant, her tits were unreal. And then, that fantastic blow job. But then she stopped going out with them when he was visiting. “She’s with the kids,” Ross would explain. And Phil always thought he saw a weird look on Ross’s face.
