by Ryan Schow
“For sure, man. For sure.”
“How long have you been selling?” Bailey asks him, giving him the benefit of the doubt, by the look of it.
“Depends,” Quentin says. “For a real paycheck, or just selling?”
“Just selling.”
“When I was a kid, I stole three Butterfingers from a friend of mine who stole a box of Butterfingers from the grocery store. They were the big bars, not those tiny little bars you buy for seventy-nine cents at Target.”
“How old were you?”
“Maybe nine or ten?” he says. “Anyway, I sold them in school at lunch for two bucks a piece and made six dollars total. I’ve been selling since then.”
“Why pharmaceuticals?” I ask.
“Because insider trading within the government for pharmaceuticals is legal, and where they make the most money is in taking a new drug to market. So, it seems like a pretty stable market if you consider the government loves to feed their own.”
“Do you really believe that?” Marcus asks, skeptical.
Quentin shrugs his shoulders and says, “What does it matter if it’s real to me?”
“Why would you lie to yourself?” I ask.
“That’s sales, half the time. Convincing yourself of a truth that has yet to come into existence. See, if we told ourselves the truth, that half these drugs will help people and the other half might hurt or kill them, we wouldn’t sell this shit day after day.”
“You know that’s not true,” I tell him.
“Says the idealist,” he quips.
“I’m not an idealist,” I say, almost defensive, but only because I’m exhausted.
“No, you’re a washed up skateboarder,” he says, looking at Bailey.
Bristling, I say, “I’m not washed up.”
“Then why are you here?” he challenges. “Why are you in San Diego slinging medical solutions with the rest of us and not on a halfpipe with Vans or Santa Cruz printed on your t-shirts?”
“My daughter,” I admit, not sure if I should be truthful, or if one day one of these three will use it against me. They say never trust a stranger with the truth…
“She said you can’t skate anymore? That you have to grow up and get a real job?” Quentin asks with a bit of bullish humor in his voice.
“I think you nerds are today’s bullies. Some sort of revenge game you play for being picked last in kickball, or never getting laid early in life.”
“Answer the question, Nick,” he says, undeterred.
“It wasn’t my daughter who wanted me to stop, it was my wife. I just wanted to keep my family together.”
“And did you?” Bailey asks, looking intently at me.
“Crushing much on GQ Johnny?” Quentin says. Looks like he might have a bit of a nasty streak.
“Don’t be such a tool,” she says.
“I’m just a realist.”
“Well you’re coming off like a douchebag,” Marcus says, cracking another beer.
“You got another one of those?” Quentin asks.
“Upstairs fridge. What did you do before pharmaceuticals?” Marcus asks, narrowed eyes on him, almost like a pair of ticks, or the bead of a laser sight.
“Sold cars.”
“Figures,” I mumble.
“What’s wrong with selling cars?” he asks. “It’s a commodity like anything else.”
“Car guys are shysters,” Marcus says.
“Ever sold cars before, meathead?” He laughs and says, “No, of course you didn’t. You were busy lifting weights and growing out your beard.”
“What did you sell before this?” Bailey asks Marcus, the tension rising. It looks like she’s trying to keep the ball out of Quentin’s hands, so to speak.
“I sold the idea that freedom was secured in a foreign land behind the barrel of a gun to a bunch of propeller heads like you who wanted me to defend their country.”
“You have a problem with guns?” Quentin frowns.
“Are you kidding me?”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” he says.
“I served my country. I paid my dues and now I’m back to enjoy the freedom this land has to offer, except now it seems the war has followed me home. And no, I don’t have a problem with guns. Do you, Playstation 4?”
“What do you think is going on?” I ask, not really liking how this conversation is heating up.
“How the hell should I know?” the big man barks. “I’m as much in the dark about this as the rest of you.”
“You know those drones, though.”
“Yes. Which is to say I’m pretty sure they’ve been hijacked. And judging by the news, this is a larger event than just San Diego.”
“Sounds like it,” I say.
“Could it be a worldwide event?” Bailey asks. She looks at Marcus’s last beer a little too long, the one he didn’t offer Quentin. He pops the top, hands it to her.
Quentin frowns at the gesture.
“I don’t know. Listen, just because I fought for the country doesn’t mean I’m still plugged in. I’m not. I never was. We were taught to take orders. To never yield to fear. We willingly gave up our lives to God and Uncle Sam every time we rode into the field of battle so that when we were there, we were one hundred percent committed to the cause. The battle was our deaths. It’s what we signed up for, what we were promised. But until that time, we had to watch the man beside us, the man in front of us, the man behind us.”
“What about now?” Quentin asks.
“If it was me, I’d throw you overboard, but you did us a solid. All of you did. So for now, it looks like it’s the four of us against the world.”
“Well as exciting as that sounds,” Bailey says with a deep yawn, “I think I’ll have to take on the world tomorrow, after a decent night’s sleep anyway.”
“You gonna finish that?” Quentin asks, eyeing her beer. She hands him the half empty bottle and he takes a deep swig.
“I’ll second that motion,” I add.
“Anyone got any preference on rooms?” Quentin says, burping then excusing himself in a manner that no one really finds entertaining. “Because Bailey should get the biggest room.”
“And who said chivalry isn’t dead?” she says without much enthusiasm.
I have the feeling chivalry isn’t dead, it’s just not preferred from guys a girl doesn’t like, and it’s clear she’s not all starry-eyed for this guy.
“I’ll go with you, if you don’t mind,” I say thinking only of crawling into a bed myself.
“Have at it,” Quentin grumbles with a pouty edge to his voice.
Downstairs there’s the master stateroom, the VIP stateroom and the guest stateroom. Bailey takes the master stateroom even though she says either of the other two are just fine. I take the guest stateroom because it is the smallest and I really don’t want Quentin having any other reason to get his diapers in a twist.
Chapter Fourteen
When I open the door to my room, I realize there are two twin-sized beds. I return to the upper deck to tell Marcus the news, but he says, “I prefer sleeping outside, but thanks.”
“Well if you change your mind, that extra bed is going to be empty,” I say. He looks at me, gives a manly nod, which is really a thanks and a dismissal wrapped in one.
Heading back down to my room, I undress, run some water through my hair and over my face, then dry off and crawl into bed.
It doesn’t take long, but when I’m out, I’m out.
I wake up to the turning of the engines sometime after day break. The light streaming in through the window lets me know I’ve slept the night through, which I’m sure my body must appreciate. But the shudder happening throughout the boat isn’t the best alarm clock ever.
Forced out of bed, I get up, put on a pair of pants and head topside. Marcus is back on the flybridge, two decks up, eyes alert and taking in the seas ahead.
“Where are we going?”
“Heading further out to sea. Here, take a
look,” he says, handing me a pair of binoculars.
I do. What I see are skies filled with black dots. The drones are back, hitting the city with the same vigor as before, turning it into an ash heap that somehow looks ten times worse during the day.
“The whole damn city is burning,” I mumble as I scan the skies.
“Looks that way,” he says.
I fish my cell phone out of my pocket, tap the cracked screen, get a low battery warning indicator when it comes on.
Crap, I can’t help thinking.
At this point, honestly, I’d kill for a charger. I search the flybridge, find nothing. Down below, in the main saloon and on the afterdeck, I come up with the same result: nothing. Unless you count an iPhone charger as that “something,” which I don’t because I’ve got an Android.
A minute later Bailey walks up the stairs with wet hair and a fresh face, then stops when she sees me. Her eyes dip to my chest, but pop back up at the speed of light.
“Did you take a shower?” I ask.
“I did.”
“Any hot water left?”
“I think so,” she says, looking away.
Heading back downstairs I step into my shower and stand under the hot water for about a half a minute before washing my hair and body. I’m about to stand here and let the heat work all the pain and tension from my body, but then a thought occurs to me: this is our fresh water supply.
I immediately shut the water off, almost like I’ve done a bad thing. I have. Drying off, I style my hair with my hands then head back up to the flybridge.
“How much fresh water does this thing hold again?” I ask Marcus.
“Three hundred gallons, why?”
“Bailey and I took a shower and it was fresh water.”
“Together?”
“No. Jesus, man, you sound like Quentin.”
“It was the way you said it.”
“Well?”
“You basically washed with our drinking water,” Marcus says, the reality of the situation setting in.
“That’s what I figured,” I say, feeling foolish.
“Why don’t you drag Quentin’s ass out of bed and tell him not to shower,” Marcus says.
“Roger that.”
Bailey comes up the stairs behind me. “We could have done a lot worse than this,” she says. “This must be a two or three million dollar yacht.”
“Yeah, but it’s pretty hard to feel good about our situation with a view like that,” I say, pointing toward the coast.
For miles along the coastline, all we see is smoke, lines of fire and a buzzing in the air. When we’re sufficiently out to sea, where the waters are calm, Marcus shuts off the yacht and drops anchor. The depth is two hundred seventy eight feet and we only have three hundred feet of anchor. Meaning we can’t go much further out to sea and still anchor down.
The three of us head down to the main saloon where Marcus whips up a breakfast with Bailey’s help. I’d heard there was food, but I wasn’t sure how much. This is good, but we need to start thinking of things in terms of rations. We all have to start thinking like that.
Downstairs in the VIP stateroom, Quentin is just waking up. He looks beyond tired and pretty ragged.
“Grab a bar of soap and take a dip,” I say said. “It’ll wake your face up, make you smell a lot better.”
“Why can’t I just take a shower?” he says, groggy.
“Fresh water tanks are for drinking water only. We have to conserve. Not sure how long this will play out.”
Quentin stands, grabs a bar of soap from the head, then shuffles out to the swim deck where he strips to his underwear and jumps into the water feet first. Bobbing in the water up to his chin, he looks cold. He looks so cold it seems like he can’t summon a breath. A moment later he manages that one deep breath, then another and then a smile creeps over his face. He dips his head underwater, then comes up for air and says, “Other than my balls being in my armpits because this water isn’t exactly bathtub temperature, it feels, I don’t know…pretty refreshing.”
I don’t really want to stay out here with him, but I know I shouldn’t just leave him either, so I stay. As he’s soaping his body, making a fountain of sea water with his mouth and whistling, the reality of this situation dawns on me for the hundredth time. We are at war with an enemy we know nothing about.
Being married, I got pretty good masking my emotions, burying them deep enough to rationally deal with what is in front of me, but this is too great a tragedy to simply cast off. Seeing the coastline fires, though, studying the gigantic black clouds hanging over some of America’s more gorgeous cityscape, has me turning away. I can’t look at it any longer.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Quentin.
“Don’t worry, man. I’m fine.”
As Quentin soaped his body, as he thought of his family back in Reno, he knew it might be awhile before he got back there. Then again, he might never make it home.
Don’t think like that, he told himself. But he couldn’t help it. He was a loudmouth, a smart aleck and the class clown, but this was beyond that. Beyond him. For the first time in years a seriousness washed over him and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit.
He floated on his back mostly, his torso and legs sinking below the water. It felt good to be clean, to be cool, to not be constantly swallowing grit, or having to spit to clean his mouth. It felt even better to not be running from anything or anyone.
“You got anything on in there?” a voice asked, meaning was he or was he not skinny dipping?
Circling around in the water, he turned and found Bailey standing on the swim deck with her hands on her hips looking clean but wearing dirty clothes.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?” she asked.
He thought about making a wise crack, but he couldn’t.
“Not really.”
This seemed to surprise her, and it showed in her expression.
“Well this is curious,” she said.
“What is?”
“An honest response.”
“Times being what they are,” he replied, “I figured a temporary rise to maturity was in order.”
“Well don’t grow up on my account.”
“This isn’t about you,” he said, slicking his hair back and blowing his nose. “I’m thinking about my family. Wondering about yours, Nick’s and Marcus’s.”
“Marcus has no family.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“He said as much.”
“So he’s just along for the ride?”
“Apparently.”
Quentin swam to the deck, paused and looked up at her.
Making a face as he climbed out of the water, Bailey looked down and said, “I’ve seen a small wiener or two in my time, but I didn’t realize it was that cold.”
He looked down at himself, then back up at her and said, “It needed a safe space from all this.”
“So it turtle-shelled?”
He threw a hard frown at her then said, “What’s your deal?”
“I don’t know. The end of the world is here and we’re on a yacht off the California coast. It seems wrong. And I don’t feel very polite.”
He just stood there, dripping, her standing in between him and his clothes.
“I’ll get you a towel,” she said.
“Now is better than later,” he replied with an iciness to his voice even he didn’t like.
“I thought you’d have a better body under those fancy clothes,” she said, casually.
“And I thought you’d be nicer under that beautiful exterior.”
“I’m nice enough,” she said, crossing her arms and not going anywhere.
“And I’m fit enough.”
They looked at each other for a long time, then they started laughing together. He suddenly stopped, his face going back to neutral so fast it let her know he was pacifying her and no longer interested in pretense.
“Get me
a towel please, or move away so I can get this sad body back into my filthy, fancy clothes.”
She frowned, then left, returning a minute later with a towel, which she tossed to him just out of reach.
He had to bend over to get it, but by then she was gone, back in the cabin.
As he was drying off, he wondered about his three sisters in Reno. He wondered about his mother. She wasn’t a balanced woman. If something happened to him, or if Reno was attacked the same as San Diego, he was afraid she’d sink into a mire of depression. As a bipolar woman with a love/hate relationship for her medication, she was already teetering on the brink of unmanageable.
If she stopped her meds, if his sisters had to intervene again...
Last time they had her committed. When he saw what happened to her in there, he nearly snapped. His mom was totally mental, but that wasn’t right. She was still his mother and if there was one thing that remained constant in his life, it was his love for her. And as difficult as it was to admit, he loved his sisters, too. They were doing their own thing, and they thought the best way to manage their mother was to let someone else manage her, but they weren’t selfish. They just weren’t that involved in her day to day the way he was.
Without him there, he was scared for her.
When he got back inside the yacht, he headed to the master stateroom where Bailey was staying. He poked his head inside, found the closet. He opened the door to the cedar lined closet and perused the owner’s wardrobe. It was a beautiful collection of apparel, albeit a small one. There was no walk-in closet and the man who owned the boat was most likely a bachelor based on the absence of a female wardrobe.
He remembered seeing the old guy shot dead on the docks with the two girls who were dressed like girls-for-hire. For a second he was envious, not of the fact that he’d obviously lived a good life, but that he was dead.
In the drawers, Quentin found a stack of bikinis, anything ranging from one-piece to two-piece suits with wraps and sunglasses. He knew what this was. The guy could simply grab a girl off the street, offer her a boat ride and have a good time. Naturally, guys like this, control freaks—or just freaks in general—they’d provide clothes for their women. Things they arranged that were to their liking, regardless of the woman wearing them.
