“Another one bites the dust, eh?” she asked.
The stewardess smiled meanly. “He is a man with myriad appetites,” she said.
“Apparently for the same food or haven’t you taken notice we all look alike?”
“I’ve noticed but as long as it makes him happy…” She shrugged. “That’s all that matters.”
“Where is he?”
Suzanne frowned. “He doesn’t want to see you.”
“I have no intention of going looking for him,” she told the stewardess. “I just didn’t want to run into him when the launch gets here. I really don’t want another confrontation.”
“I assure you he doesn’t want to speak to you, either.” Again the venomous smile shifted into place. “Now, if you will excuse me I really must see to his…comfort.”
“Hey, knock yourself out,” she told the stewardess. “He’s all yours.”
“And he always will be,” Suzanne said with a smirk.
He stood on the deck as the launch swung away from the ship in a lazy arc and motored out into the oily, black water. It was pouring rain and he was soaked through but he didn’t care. He would stay where he was until the running lights of the launch were no longer visible. Lightning flared overhead and lit the launch in relief as it sped back toward Savannah. The yacht was now anchored and would remain that way for as long as he desired it.
Through the downpour he had watched the only woman he had ever loved walk calmly, sedately to the ladder as though the pounding rain was no more of an inconvenience than a chip of her fingernail polish. She hadn’t even looked back toward the yacht.
Her hand on his shoulder wasn’t unexpected. She’d been hovering in the doorway to the saloon for the last twenty minutes. Idly he had wondered how long she’d wait before getting drenched in order to ingratiate herself with him.
“Can I get you anything, Synjyn?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Two bottles of scotch.” He shrugged off her hand. “Take them to my cabin.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Night Thirty
Part Two
“You have to do something,” Suzanne told the captain with exasperation. “I can’t stand another hour of that goddamned song!”
Capt. Mick Fitzgerald was as tired of hearing the same song being played over and over again as were the other crewmembers—most of whom were wearing earplugs. The melody of the Irish ballad would be stuck in his head for days. He used to love the song but now if he never heard it again it would be too soon.
“What should I do?” Fitz asked. “I knocked on the door and he told me to piss off. In New Zealand jargon I took that to mean fuck off. I tried to open the door and he threatened to kill me if I didn’t go away.” He shrugged. “The man’s tying one on. He owns this boat. He pays our salaries. What do you think I should do, Suzi?”
“I took two bottles of scotch in to him,” she said, chewing the cuticle of her thumb. “I’m worried that he’s drinking both of them.”
Not a drinking man, the captain didn’t understand the danger of consuming so much alcohol in such a short length of time. “So?” he inquired. “He gets a particularly nasty hangover. You play, you pay.”
“There’s more to it than that. Guzzling that much booze is a good way to get alcohol poisoning,” the cook said. He was on the bridge with Fitz because the song playing on a loop in the master cabin was giving him a brutal headache.
“He could go into a coma, Fitz,” Suzanne warned. “If something happens to him on your watch what do you think Jono will do?”
“She’s got a point,” the cook said. “Maybe you should call Jono and ask what he thinks needs…”
One of the stewards came rushing in. “Cap, I think the boss is demolishing his cabin. I heard breaking glass and loud thuds. He’s fucking taking that room apart.”
“You see?” Suzanne said. “You have to do something, Fitz!”
“All right,” the captain said. “Have Reynolds get Jono on the horn. Suzi, you tell Jono what’s up. I’ll go down and see if I can’t get Synnie to open the goddamn door.”
* * * * *
He’d drunk the first bottle of scotch in between masturbating for as long as his cock cooperated. By two a.m., he was raw and couldn’t get it up if his life depended on it.
After having belted down the first bottle of hooch on an empty stomach he was shit-faced drunk and feeling meaner than he ever had in his entire life. It hadn’t helped when Fitz came to the door to check on him.
“Synnie, are you okay?”
“Piss off!” he commanded.
“I just want to make sure you’re all right,” Fitz said, trying the door handle, jiggling it as though that would miraculously unlock the portal. “Will you open the door, please?”
“I told you to piss off!” he bellowed. “Or I’ll have your guts for garters!”
He’d picked up the closest thing at hand and threw it at the door. Unfortunately, that missile had been the second bottle of scotch. The bottle exploded—sending shards of glass across the deck.
“Will you call me if you need me?” Fitz asked.
“Piss off!”
He staggered over to the bed—so numb from the booze he didn’t realize he was cutting the bottom of his feet on the broken glass—and flopped down, his head sinking to his chest. His gaze went to his lap and he plucked at his cock.
“Fucking useless pud!” he complained. He’d tugged at it but it just lay there like the limp dick it was.
He giggled at the thought and got up to turn on the CD player. He had to put one hand over an eye in order to see the titles on the jewel cases for his eyesight was doubling and tripling. When he found the CD he was looking for, he put it in the player and pushed reloop on track five. The song started. He hung his head for a moment then cursed savagely before turning around. Mumbling to himself, he lost his balance and stumbled into the desk.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” he snarled and shoved the offending piece of furniture but since it was bolted to the deck, it didn’t budge—despite him trying again and again to push it away from him. His bloody bare feet skidded across the polished deck and he did a face plant on the teak surface.
And knocked himself out.
The entire crew minus Suzanne was hanging out in the corridor outside the main cabin. Other than the song playing at full volume—over and over and over again—there was no longer the sound of breaking glass and furniture or the cabin’s lone inhabitant stumbling about and cursing.
“He’s probably destroyed everything that wasn’t battened down,” Fitz told them. He looked around at Suzanne as she came down the ladder. “Did you get ahold of Jono?”
“No, but I talked to Spike and she’s coming down with their security chief and that doctor friend of theirs,” Suzanne reported. “That native fellow. What’s his name?”
“Craigie,” Fitz provided.
“Yeah, him. She asked about the bird.”
“What did you tell her?”
Suzanne cocked a shoulder. “That she took the check and left like all the rest of them. I think that surprised her. She said they’d take care of everything when they got down here.”
“Jono knows how to deal with him,” Fitz said.
“They couldn’t reach Jono and Spike said to tell you not to let him have any more liquor.” She bit her lip, her eyes worried. “She said to remind you he has a gun or two in there so not to try to break the door down or anything. He might shoot you.”
“Fantastic,” Fitz muttered. “Just how the hell are we supposed to get to him?”
“She said Kit—you know the security chief?—will handle it when they get here.”
“And in the meantime?” the cook asked.
“We’re to try to keep him engaged,” she reported. “Her words, not mine.”
“Engaged?” Fitz said. He put his hands on his hips, hung his head and blew out a ragged breath. “Okay.”
He went to the door—careful to stand to o
ne side just in case his boss felt the need to use it for target practice—and knocked.
“Synnie?” he asked. “Are you all right in there?” When there was no answer, he knocked again. “Synnie?”
“Get away from my fucking door, you asswipe!”
The sudden thunderous bellow from behind the locked panel—punctuated by a heavy fist slamming into the wood with each word—startled the crewmembers.
“He’s gonna wind up hurting himself if he hasn’t already,” the cook said.
“Maybe he’ll just pass out,” Fitz said.
“While that sounds good in theory, we don’t want him doing it without someone being in there with him,” the cook said.
“Because?”
“He could pass out on his back and drown in his own vomit,” one of the stewards said.
“Or fall face down in his puke and drown that way, too,” another put in. “Saw that happen in Shanghai once.”
Something really heavy slammed against the door and they all heard wood splintering, glass shattering.
“The boss is really pissed,” Larkin, the first mate, commented. “What the hell happened this time that was out of the ordinary?”
“You mean other than the bird flying the coop before they even had supper?” the cook inquired. He looked at Suzanne.
“How should I know?” she asked.
“You were with him after she left. Did he say anything?” Fitz asked.
“All he did was curse at me,” she replied. “That’s not like him. He’s always been a gentleman.”
“Well, something set him off, that’s for sure,” the cook said.
“He stood out there in the rain watching her leave and he’s never watched one leave before,” Fitz remarked. “It’s always been out of sight, out of mind with him.”
“Maybe he wanted to make sure she was gone,” Suzanne suggested.
“Nah,” the steward said. “He looked miserable as all get out when I passed him on deck. I could have sworn there was tears running down his face.”
Suzanne rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like that would happen.”
“I don’t know, Suzi. He looked like someone had just run over his little dog,” Larkin said.
“Shit. I can’t take another repeat of that fucking song,” Fitz said. “All right, cut the power to his cabin.”
“He’ll be in the dark,” Suzanne said.
“It’s better than—” Fitz began
“No,” she said firmly. “He can’t abide darkness. He’s afraid of it. He has to have a light on somewhere in his bedroom.”
“Then get me some fucking earphones before I go postal!” the captain ordered.
* * * * *
The room was in shambles.
Broken glass lay like confetti on the floor. The mirror over the vanity as well as the two in the sleeping area were cracked—the surfaces spider-webbed with traces of blood from his fists. In his blue-vinegar fit he had crushed the lampshades and smashed the bases. The bed pillows and cushions from the chairs and loveseat expelled batting like oily gunk from giant pimples. Feathers floated in the air whenever he moved. A leg from the destroyed desk chair had made a great cudgel to scar and score and scrape wooden things that could not otherwise be reduced to rubble. He’d used the leg on the flat screen—hitting it over and over again as though he were swinging a bat at a baseball until it fell from the wall. Ripped fabric littered the floor along with the bent vanes of the window shades and CDs and DVDs that had been snapped in half. What could be turned over had been and what could be ruined was.
The only thing he hadn’t put his stamp of obliteration on was the CD player and only because he wanted—needed—to hear the music that blotted out the voice in his head.
Now he sat in the middle of the demolition taking in the butchery he had wrought and laughed. Stark naked with only wisps of batting and feathers clinging to his sweaty body, he hummed drunkenly along with the song as his feet and fists bled.
He had no idea what time it was.
Hell, he didn’t even know what day it was!
He was so stinking drunk the room kept twisting and turning around him.
Perhaps had he not been sitting on the floor, he would not have spied the bottle of tequila that had rolled unscathed under the desk when he’d wrecked the mini bar beside the bathroom door.
“Hello, love,” he said cheerfully and wiped the back of his bloody hand under his chin to rid it of the drool that was streaming there.
On all fours, he crawled across the carnage—gouging his knees with the remnants of the demolition—and mindlessly flattened his chest over a jagged piece of lamp in order to reach under the desk to retrieve the bottle. He winced as the pain registered for a moment but so intent was he on getting to the booze he refused to acknowledge the hurt.
The bottle rolled away from him twice before he was finally able to corral it. Dragging it out from under its hiding place, he pushed himself to a sitting position and cradled it against his chest.
“My precious,” he said then chuckled as he snapped his thumb across the cap and the lid went flying. It had been a trick he’d learned in college and it never failed to impress the ladies.
Not that he had to worry about impressing them, he thought as he brought the bottle to his mouth. He paused with the rim of the bottle against his lips, his breath as he spoke whistling into the neck of the bottle.
“Give ’em a million fucking mangoes and they’ll love you long time, GI,” he said with a laugh.
He took a long pull on the tequila then rested the bottom of the bottle on his bare thigh, the liquor that hadn’t made it into his mouth dripping down his chin and through his chest hair.
“Me like you, you very handsome. Me love you long time. You like sucky-sucky?” he said in a sing-song voice. “You want fucky-fucky, big boy?”
He chuckled as he took another drag on the bottle and got choked. Coughing violently, he found it hilariously funny.
* * * * *
The launch came roaring out of the fog like an avenging angel. It came alongside the yacht and one by one Spike, Kit and Craigie climbed the ladder.
“He’s been quiet for the last half-hour,” Fitz reported. “I finally turned the power off in the cabin to stop that infernal song he was playing. We can hear him snoring so we know he’s all right.”
“We’ll sort it,” Craigie said.
“Thanks, Fitz,” Spike said.
“Do you need our help?” Larkin asked. “I’m afraid we don’t have a stretcher or…”
“I’m going to sling the dickhead over my shoulder and take him down in a fireman’s carry,” Kit said. “I assume he is incapable of making it on his own.”
“I seriously doubt it,” Fitz said. “And he may be hurt.”
“That’s a fucking given with him,” Craigie said with a twist of his mouth. “He can’t play tiddlywinks without hurting himself. He’s got a brain like a cow’s udder.”
“Ah, right,” Fitz said, his brow furrowed.
“We’re wasting time,” Spike said. “Get A into G, mates.” She headed below decks.
“What’d she say?” Larkin asked.
“Arse into gear,” Kit said.
“Glad you understood her,” Fitz said.
Kit laughed. “It’s a cultivated education.”
Spike was at the door to the cabin when they got there. She tried the knob. “Synnie? Open the fucking door.”
“Bugger off,” came a mumbled reply.
“Well, at least the booze rooster’s alive,” Craigie said. “Do your thing, bro.”
Kit stepped back, lifted his leg and kicked the door in on the first try. It splintered and flew open.
“Fucking shite!” he said as he surveyed the destruction.
“Holy Mother of God,” Fitz whispered from his place behind Craigie.
“What a fucking mess,” Spike said with disgust.
Craigie walked over to where his friend was lying sprawled on the floor with his
back to the overturned mattress and hunkered down. He grabbed the half-empty bottle of tequila out of his hand and threw it across the room.
“Goddamn coconut,” came the insult aimed at Craigie’s heritage.
“I hope you had fun doing all this damage because I’m going to strap your lily white ass down to the couch on the jet and jam an IV needle in your vein. I’m going to wiggle and wiggle it until you scream from the pain.”
“Blow that for a joke,” he said, his words slurring. “I ain’t going nowhere.”
“Yes, fuck you are,” Craigie said. “Where are your clothes?”
“Tore them to bits,” he replied with a lopsided grin. “Got no clothes so’s I can’t go nowheres.”
“Wanna bet?” Craigie said. “Fitz, get me a blanket.”
He fought Kit wrapping the blanket around him. He batted at the hands that tried to pick him up from the floor. He cursed and he yelled and kicked—even tried biting Craigie until the man slapped him. He bellowed vulgarities at the top of his lungs, issued dire threats to lives and limbs but they ignored him. He was warned if he barfed down Kit’s back, he’d pay a steep price for having done so.
He never got the chance. Head hanging down, arse in the air, Kit’s heavy tread jarring the shit out of his belly as the bastard’s bony shoulder jammed into it, the motion made him pass out. When he came to, he was on the couch on his jet with the blanket over his naked arse and Spike was gently bathing his chest.
“You did a number on yourself, asshole when you chucked that mental,” she said. “It’s a good thing you were out of it. Craigie had to suture the bottoms of your feet.”
“I was hoping the bunghole would wake up and feel the stitches going in,” Craigie said from across the aisle. He and Kit were seated at the dinette table, lounging in the booths, facing him with spiteful looks on their faces.
“Fuck you,” he mumbled and looked up at the tubing going from his arm to an IV bag hanging on a stand. “What the fuck are you pouring into me?”
“Rabid rat’s piss and runny plague shit,” Craigie said. “What the fuck do you think I’m giving you? It’s saline solution with vitamins C and B-complex plus doses of Toradol for the headache and Zofran for the nausea. You’re lucky you didn’t get alcohol poisoning. If you were trying to off yourself…”
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