Black Waves

"I'll respect you more," she said. "In the morning. Overcome your primitive ape-like desire to possess me, mature past treating me like a car or those fancy laptops you like. Grow up! If you're a confident man, you'll see how this makes our love even stronger, and our marriage better. Just one night, and then I'm yours until the end of time!"

I looked down, tears in my eyes, and nodded dumbly.

"Good boy," she said, and kissed me on the crown of my head like my mother used to as I sat crying while reciting the verse of the day. It was too bad because I actually liked the Bible and the God of jealous vengeance that was in it. He knew that to love something was to want to possess it, not for your sake, but to guide it and make it part of you. She had rejected all of this without understanding.

I kissed her back and then she was gone.

An hour later I stood on the deck, enjoying one of my host's Cubans. The mellow, vanilla flavor with a hint of pepper and cream soothed my mind. I was also making quite a show of guzzling his wonderful, honey-butter sweet bourbon as if it were MD 20/20.

My host joined me.

"She took door number two?" he said.

"As you said she would," I said, stepping back a little unsteadily.

He patted my back. "Don't feel bad. That's the slave cabins. She's drugged by now. I'll get a good price for her in Dubai and you'll never see her again." With her luggage, toiletries, meds, and clothing gone, the cops would view this one as a classic case of a wife running away from a sad cuck of a husband.

"Thank you, old friend."

"What are friends for?" he asked, and strode off to join the party, which I knew would go until dawn.

I waited until he was gone and then went back into my cabin, chucking (regretfully) the Cuban over the side. Lisa had brought an overnight bag, but I had a full suitcase. I unzipped it, removed a layer of evening clothing, and took out the two objects inside, then went to the deck. The raft inflated with a capsule, and I mounted the little motor on it easily. Remembering my military training to the letter, I lowed myself and the boat, then launched into the wake.

You see, you always have to ask yourself, "What would I do if I were this guy?" The answer, if you want to keep your power and money, is to always tie up loose ends. Lisa was a loose end and that made me a loose end. If her mother or job called, I might blab. That meant that I had to be missing, presumed dead, and there was no moment more ripe for it than now. Man loses wife, gets drunk, and decides to end it all. No loose ends for my Polish friends, or our employers, who he had surely informed.

I motored off toward the South Carolina coast, new identity and bearer bonds in a hidden wallet across my gut, and did my best to forget everything about my life, now dead, receding with the tossed wake of the boat.