by Liv Spector
The time off the boat seemed to do each of the guests a world of good. That night, as they gathered around the dining table for a dinner of raw oysters and roasted bone marrow with sea urchin, there was a lightness of mood and a quickness to smile that took Lila by surprise. After all, just two days ago, everyone had been at one another’s throats.
Even Jack seemed to be in a good mood. He flopped down at the head of the table with a satisfied sigh, picked up his mouth-blown lead crystal wineglass that Lila had just filled with vintage Barolo, and made a toast. “Paul, we’ve been friends and business associates for the last two decades and I know what a good and generous man you can be. But the hospitality you extended over the last two days to me, my family, and my guests was unparalleled. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say thank you.”
A chorus of thanks was accompanied by the sound of expensive crystal glasses clinking in a friendly “cheers.” Paul Mason beamed at the group, drinking in their attention and adulation. His cheerful cheeks were as pink as his Bermuda shorts.
But while all the guests were joyful and relaxed, Daniel Poe seemed giddy. He was looking quite grand and ridiculous that night—part Elton John, part Batman villain. Despite the late-August Caribbean heat, he was wearing a three-piece paisley suit and a little bowler hat perched high atop his head, set at a jaunty angle. His eyes were largely obscured by his thick, square black eyeglass frames, and a large, crooked-toothed smile was spread across his thin face. He was shivering ever so slightly. His fingers, several of which were heavy with silver-and-diamond skull rings, drummed excitedly on the table. He hadn’t touched his food, but gulped the $500 per bottle wine down as if it were lager. Lila couldn’t even begin to guess what combination of drugs he was on.
“I feel inspired right now. So inspired,” Poe said in his throaty, working-class English accent. “I’ve been overwhelmed by the beauty of things. I see, for the first time, the divine beauty of the mystery and the unity of all of us here together.” He slowly stood up from his seat and wobbled slightly as he found his feet.
Everyone else looked at one another nervously.
“Are the natives restless again?” Josie asked, with a roll of her eyes.
“Good Christ, my man,” Jack said amicably. “What are you on?”
“My usual recipe for success,” Poe said. “Plus an extra dash of lysergic acid.”
“What the hell is that?” Jack asked, bewildered.
“It’s LSD, Dad,” Josie said, giggling into her napkin.
Jack shook his head. He watched Daniel Poe begin to slowly bend his long, emaciated limbs with a newfound joy, as if he’d never before inhabited his body. “I’ll never understand the artistic temperament,” Jack said with a fatherly frown. “And I count myself a lucky man for that.”
“Don’t be such a square,” Josie said dismissively. “Everyone drops acid at Wesleyan. It’s, like, the only way to see beyond our lies.”
“Oh, shut up, Josie,” Elise said as she drained her glass of wine.
“Yeah,” Paul Mason said, with a playful mockery. “Just a lifetime of dropping acid and you, too, can sell your paintings for five million a pop. I wish someone told me that recipe for success at Yale.”
“I think I should excuse myself,” said an unsmiling Clarence Baines, brusquely getting up from the table. “Mrs. Baines and I will go to our room now. Jack, please have one of your girls serve us our dinner there. Elise, excuse us.”
“Please, Clarence,” Elise said. “You mustn’t go.” Elise disliked when people made a spectacle of themselves, hence Daniel Poe’s very public acid trip was not appreciated. But she wouldn’t stand for Baines jumping ship on dinner. That was just bad manners.
“You know my position on drugs, Jack,” Baines said to his friend. “I know that you keep, let’s call it, eclectic company, but I won’t break bread with someone who holds all my values in contempt.”
“Please, don’t go because of me,” Poe said dreamily. “I’m feeling kingly, gallant, magical, electric.” He began to bounce on the tips of his toes like a Southern Baptist preacher on the verge of speaking in tongues. “I fall on my sword for you, Senator Baines. I will be happy to leave you fine folks to your dinner.”
“That’s mighty gentlemanly of you, son,” Clarence Baines said as he and his wife returned to their seats and Daniel Poe exited the dining room with a curious backward slinking motion.
But just before he was out of sight completely, he bounded back toward the table. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “I know just what I’ll do. I have a surprise for you all. At the exact stroke of midnight tonight, I’d like you all to join me on the main deck. I will unveil the masterpiece I have created in honor of our great host’s fiftieth birthday. I just can’t keep it under wraps a moment longer. Until then!” Poe said with a deep bow, and sprinted down the hall.
Three hours later, everyone congregated on the main deck, ready for the great viewing that would hopefully meet all Daniel Poe’s psychedelic desires. A six-foot statue stood in the middle of the floor, covered in a red silk sheet. It was the very special sculpture Poe made in Jack’s honor, which had been delivered to the yacht days earlier and been stashed since then until the final moment of its great unveiling.
Poe had asked that Sam and Lila have champagne ready for everyone, so as people filed in, the two stewardesses handed out flutes of Veuve Clicquot. He’d also asked that they wear black masks over their eyes and nothing else, but to that request, they sweetly said no. It was a rare treat when Sam and Lila could refuse a guest’s request. They both quietly cherished the moment.
“Gather round, children of light,” Poe said, waving everyone toward him. In honor of this grand unveiling, he had changed from his paisley suit into one of Elise Warren’s floor-length, low-cut Bob Mackie sequined gowns, which showed off his pale skin, dark chest hair, and jutting collarbone. Lila saw that his pupils were extremely dilated, which confirmed what she already knew. He was having some pretty profound hallucinations.
“Daniel,” Elise said flatly. “You’re wearing my dress.”
He looked at her, confused. Then, peering down at himself, he understood what he’d done and began to laugh. “Yes, darling. Apologies for not asking, but I needed to shine tonight and nothing in my closet did the trick.”
“I think you look ravishing,” Josie said, taking pleasure in seeing her mom unhappy.
“Thank you, my little lamb.” Poe began to light a very large smudge stick, which he waved in the air as he danced around the still-cloaked statue. “I must purify the aura of this space. I must welcome in birth and death. Creation and destruction.” The hallucinating art star circled the statue over and over again. Jack and Paul looked at each other in total exhaustion. Clarence Baines, needless to say, had declined Poe’s invitation, but his wife, who fancied herself an experienced and sophisticated art connoisseur (though no one else would have agreed), was paying rapt attention to this whole bizarre performance. Thiago and Esperanza looked on with a combination of mild curiosity and boredom. They were part of a very arty aristo-boho jet-set group that would consider the spectacle of a raving man in a $5,000 evening gown part of just another typical night.
“It’s getting late,” Jack said to Poe, hoping to hurry him along. More than anything, Jack seemed anxious to see what the artist had created.
“Oh, yes. Of course,” Daniel murmured, as if getting pulled out of a trance. He stopped his circling and blinked at everyone on the deck as if seeing them for the first time. He steadied himself and stood squarely next to the statue. “This moment means a lot to me. Not only does this work celebrate my dear patron Jack Warren, but it is the culmination of my twenty years as an artist. And,” he said as he pulled the sheet off the statue, “here it is.”
Lila heard someone gasp, but after that there was nothing but a very uncomfortable silence. Standing before th
em, with a red silk sheet pooled at its base, was a six-foot-long and one-foot-wide golden penis, with a stream of ejaculate made out of diamonds shooting out from the top.
Josie began to snort and giggle. Elise stared blankly at the penis while holding her champagne glass toward Lila for a refill. Paul Mason was frozen, with his eyes on Jack, waiting for a cue from him on how to react. Thiago and Esperanza smiled slyly at each other, knowing that this would be a story they’d be dining out on for years to come. The artist didn’t look at his patron or the other guests. He was staring reverentially at his creation, running his hand up and down the cool, golden shaft.
Charity Baines, the only one brave enough, or dumb enough, to speak, said, “Well, how interesting.” She was following the rule that all good southern girls are taught by their mothers: when you don’t like something, just say it’s interesting.
What Daniel Poe didn’t see, but what everyone else did, was that Jack Warren was extremely unhappy. Livid, in fact. He tossed his champagne down his throat and then smashed the empty flute to the deck. The violent crash finally ripped Poe’s attention away from the giant gold phallus.
“How dare you!” Jack shouted, almost shaking with rage. His hands were clenched into fists and the veins in his forehead popped out. “Do you think I’m a fool?”
“What?” Poe said, totally confused.
“I give you ten million dollars to make something in honor of my birthday and you give me this?”
“You don’t like it?” Poe asked innocently. He looked lovingly at the statue, confused as to how anyone could fail to adore and admire such a thing.
“No, you fucking idiot. I love it. I think it’s wonderful that, in my honor, and with my millions, you’ve made a big gold dildo with diamond cum. Yes, that’s just what I was dreaming of.”
“Are you being serious?” Poe asked. His face was contorted from his extreme state of confusion. He was obviously way too high to comprehend sarcasm.
“Fuck me,” Jack exploded with frustration. “No, Daniel. No, I’m not being fucking serious.”
“Oh, no! You don’t understand. Please let me explain.” Poe, bewildered, hallucinating, shuffled toward Jack. The ball gown made it impossible for him to take anything but tiny little steps. He was in no state to calm a pissed-off billionaire. Lila really felt for the guy. He launched into a nervous spiel about how this statue harkened back to the Roman fertility god Priapus and was intended as a celebration of Jack’s masculinity, virility, wealth, and status. But Jack wasn’t having it.
“I know what you’re really saying,” Jack said. “You’re saying you think I’m a dick. A giant, gilded dick! Well, I won’t be insulted on my own fucking boat by some drug addict who calls himself an artist.”
Jack rushed toward the statue, placed his hands on it, and with all his strength, pushed it over until it crashed to the floor.
“Noooooo!” Poe screamed. “You’ll ruin it!”
“Paul! Thiago! Get over here now! I want you to help me lift this thing.” The two men joined Jack. When he was in this kind of rage, no one would refuse him anything lest he bite their heads off. With Thiago holding the tip of the penis, Paul on the shaft, and Jack on the base, they all groaned as they tried to lift it up, but it was too heavy.
“Sam!” Jack shouted at the terrified stewardess. “Go get Ben, Asher, and Pedro. Fast.”
Within a minute there were six men hoisting the statue, while Poe began to whimper and wail. “Please, Jack. Don’t destroy it.” Then he became enraged. “No!” he shouted over and over again with more and more anger cracking his voice. “I’ll give you all your money back. Just don’t do this.”
But there was no reasoning with Jack. He ordered all the men, groaning under the weight of the statue, to walk to the railing and throw it into the ocean. Poe’s screams were too loud for Jack to hear the satisfying splash of it hitting the water.
“That will teach you,” Jack said, jabbing a finger in Poe’s face, “not to ever, ever fuck with me.”
Poe ran to the side of the boat, bending over the railing to see where his beloved masterpiece had gone as he howled in despair.
Needless to say, the good mood that existed over dinner had evaporated completely. Lila looked around at all the blank faces and the champagne flute smashed into shards by the large dent in the deck left by the toppled statue. It was a disaster. Everyone seemed afraid to breathe out of fear of Jack’s wrath. Only Thiago, who had managed to somehow surreptitiously wrench the diamond arc of semen off the statue before assisting in tossing it into its watery grave, was smiling.
Within a couple minutes all the guests had returned to their cabins, even Daniel. But that wasn’t the end of the drama. Throughout the night, there were crashes, slashes, screams, pounding, and a steady stream of cursing coming out of Poe’s cabin. Smash went the flat screen. Crash went the mirrors. Slash went the pillows. And on and on. An entire rock band couldn’t inflict the damage he did to his room that night.
Around 3:00 A.M., Lila and Sam finally were able to return to their tiny, underwater closet and stretch out on their bunk beds. But even though she was bone-tired, Lila couldn’t fall asleep. A thought kept tugging at her mind. She kept seeing Daniel Poe’s anguished, tear-soaked face. He had seemed utterly destroyed. It was like Jack had thrown Poe’s child into the vast, churning ocean.
What if Poe’s anger turned deadly? The man was unstable enough that it was a distinct possibility that he could be Jack’s killer. Her profound exhaustion, mixed with the realization that there might be yet one more person with a motive to kill Jack, made Lila feel lower than low.
“Can’t sleep?” Sam asked in the complete darkness of their cabin.
“Nope. My mind’s going a hundred miles a minute.”
“You have no idea,” Sam said with a groan. “I’m beyond fucked at this moment.”
“What’s wrong?” Lila asked.
“Well, after all that golden-dick bullshit went down, I checked on Mr. Warren to see if I could get him anything . . .”
“Oh, Sam,” Lila said, knowing what was coming.
“What? I can’t help it if what he wanted was a blow job. I mean, I was thinking he might need a drink, but I guess he was looking for something stronger. Anyway, right in the middle of the whole thing, guess who walks in?”
“Who?”
“Who else but Chief Stewardess Edna Slaughterhouse! Big Brother herself.”
“No!” Lila had to admit that that really was rotten luck, but at least Elise hadn’t been the one walking in on her husband getting blown by the maid. Neither of them would’ve made it out alive.
“You know that spiteful bitch will make me pay for it,” Sam spat.
“You think she’ll kick you off the yacht?”
“I’m worried that she’ll make my life such a living hell that I’ll wish she kicked me off the yacht.”
“Let’s hope not,” Lila said. Listening to Sam’s troubles took her mind off her own long enough that she was able to close her eyes, and gain a few brief hours’ respite from this ship of fools.
THE NEXT MORNING over breakfast, no one dared mention the goings-on of the previous night. Then again, people had other things on their minds besides the giant golden cock gathering barnacles somewhere on the floor of the Caribbean Sea.
Clarence Baines was grumbling about some weak polling numbers that had come out that morning, and put him ten points behind his challenger in the Republican primaries. “He’s burying me, Jack,” Clarence said. “I gotta go after him. I need a whole new TV campaign, but you know that means more money.”
But Jack wasn’t biting. He didn’t even look up from his miso soup at the worried senator. Everyone around the table seemed to know what Clarence was too obtuse to realize, that this was not the morning to be pestering Jack Warren for more donations. Their host was still seething
. Hell hath no fury like a billionaire mocked.
Baines wasn’t the only one who got bad news that morning. Paul Mason had received word that a major institutional investor was running scared at the current shakiness of the financial system and had backed out of underwriting a major M&A deal Paul was handling, meaning he’d lose tens of millions of dollars. Lila heard it all when he was barking into his cell at the breakfast table before everyone else sat down.
“I’m stuck on this goddamn boat having to hand-hold a fucking baby, meanwhile everything’s about to go to hell. That’s just fucking great,” Paul said as he repeatedly jabbed a halved grapefruit with a tiny serrated knife. “Yeah, I’d leave, but if Jack pulls out, too, then the whole thing is done. Kaput.”
Despite the tense silence, Clarence just wouldn’t let up. “What about you, Paul? You’re a king on Wall Street. Can you help me raise some dough? Otherwise my goose is cooked.”
Just when Paul was about to tell Clarence that begging for money before a man had a chance to digest his breakfast was strictly verboten, the now-disgraced and extremely strung out Daniel Poe stormed into the dining room.
“You fucking bastards! You goddamn, bourgeois, philistine, fucking bastards!” he screamed. All he was wearing was a pair of stained silk pajama bottoms that hung so low beneath his pointy hipbones that you could begin to see the dark swell of his pubic hair. There was a long red cut on his forearm that was slightly bleeding.
“You aren’t welcome here,” Jack said, in a low, stern voice, keeping his angry eyes trained on his breakfast.
“Like I give a fucking toss,” Poe said. “I’m not following your rules anymore.”
The smell of booze, cigarette smoke, and vomit emanated from him. It had clearly been a very rough night for Daniel Poe.
“I’m only here because I want to look into the eye of my betrayer,” Poe said to Jack, pointing his long ring finger in his direction. “Insulting me as an artist is one thing, you bastard. But sabotaging my entire fucking career is another goddamn thing entirely.”
