Laurie Deloit's career as a super-whore has brought her a long way. Her lover died and left her in possession of a fantastic yacht and a multi-billion dollar fortune. Sex is available whenever she wants it, which is often. But she has no intimate relationships, and nothing useful to do. Re-connecting with her father, and establishing a friendship with his unabashed bride-to-be, help her to feel part of a family. Her emotional response to a terrible tragedy that shocks the world—a mass murder of children at a school in the Eastern US—gives her a cause and a way to spend her fortune. But the needs of her heart go unanswered. She tries Gregory the sea captain, then tries Phil the smooth operator, and finally realizes what she really desires.
On my private deck, stretched on the lounge chair and sipping a beer to wash the mechanic’s taste off my tongue, I look at the blue water and see the boat’s curving wake. I’ve kept us circling for my hour with the ashes and the mechanic. I know this annoys the captain, which is part of the pleasure.
I pick up my phone and say, “Go somewhere.”
The wake straightens. The sun is all I use for a compass, and it’s directly above. I can’t tell which direction we’re heading. I don’t care.
Every two weeks, we put into port to exchange crews and pick up supplies. It’s never the same place twice, often an island, usually tropical. On these days I stay in the master suite and shut away the sounds and smells of the dockside. Any exposure to life on land makes my connection to my months at sea with Charlie grow thinner.
Did I love him? I never said so. But since he left his body, I find the question worth brooding over.
My beer bottle is empty. I put it in the rope and canvas sling tied to the deck rail, and lower it to the cocktail deck. Julio promptly replaces it with a cold one. Pulling it up, I hear women’s laughter. Who’s making merry?
If Julio is hiding stowaways, he’s fired. His ass will be flown off the boat before sunset. That’s the one inflexible rule of this party ship. No one, employee or guest, comes on board unless they’re screened by CPS Placements, the company Charlie set up to protect him from his friends.
I go downstairs to the master suite and sit cross-legged on the bed while I use my pad to check the security cameras. No one on the cocktail deck except Julio, innocently polishing glassware. No one on the gangways or in the guest bedrooms. I do a scan for security badges. The system will tell me the location of anyone wearing a badge, and will give a warning if anyone not wearing a valid badge has moved around on the ship in the past twenty-four hours.
The screen shows no passengers without badges, except me. I never wear one. It interferes with my nakedness.
Is the damn system working? I bring up the engine room video for the past hour. I’m on the workbench. The skinny butt of the mechanic lifts toward the camera and sinks, sending his cock through me.
Look at what you’re doing, Laurie Deloit. It hits me hard. I’m pantomiming the things Charlie and I used to do—huddling naked on the bed with a computer in my lap, puzzling through some problem, and taking a break to watch porn.
It’s time to move on. I need to decide on a course, take aim, and put some distance between my present and my memories. I know the best place on the boat to do it.
