The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

I sat down on the bunk and worked on getting my breathing under control. When he opened the door, and it seemed pretty certain to me that he would eventually open the door, it would be easy for him to pin me in a corner in this tiny space. The cabin windows were too small for me to squeeze through. I had to break the door latch and get to the deck, where I’d have more freedom of movement, more of a chance. I scanned the room for some heavy object to bring down on the door’s jammed latch handle.

Was that sound another engine? I climbed up to one of the windows and listened. Something was chugging toward us, bumping against the Rubber Duck’s hull, no one speaking but I heard a busy flurry of ropes tying another boat to our side. Just at the outside edge of my range of view I saw a shape heaving itself over the rail and onto the Rubber Duck’s deck. And there was Ricky Luhrmann’s bulky darkness beside the first silhouette, not helping it over, not stopping it, not moving at all but talking.

“What a surprise,” Ricky’s voice said, not sounding at all surprised. “You hid your car, didn’t you? Clever boy, making me think that tonight there was nobody around. But look at you now, all hero rescuer. All you need is a cape.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Very possibly.”

“Ricky, let’s just take the boats back. If anybody notices they were gone, we’ll just say you took it out for a ride because you were drunk and you weren’t thinking straight. We’ll forget all about it.”

Ricky’s creaking laugh cut through the door so clearly I stepped away from it. He must be standing within inches on the other side. He said, “No. I don’t think so, Max. I think we’re just going to play this out.”

“I’ll turn us around.”

Footsteps, scuffling, the bwuppp of a body against the bulkhead. Then I couldn’t hear anything for a few minutes. I climbed on the tiny refrigerator and tried to see them through an open ventilation hatch. The wind had thickened and it whipped a loose canvas on the lifeboat across my line of view, obstructing everything.

“Ricky, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Yes I do. I’m going to teach the cunt little sister to mind her p’s and q’s, to leave me alone, to stay away from me and my business. That includes talking to my brother, talking to the police, asking questions, calling my old boss, hunting me down like it’s her business, her right. It’s not. I’ve been thinking about things I could do that would make it clear to her. There are lots of things. The meddling little bitch needs to know I don’t sit back and do nothing if she messes with me.”

“I think she knows that already.”

“But it didn’t stop her, did it? She kept at it. A few minutes with me, here in the quiet, nobody around to hear a thing, and I’m sure she and I will come to an understanding. Get back in your boat and go home, Max. I’ll return her in the morning when I’m done with her. And she won’t say anything to anybody because I’ll tell her exactly what will happen to her if she does. And you won’t say anything to anybody because that’s what you do.”

“It’s not what I’m going to do.”

“People don’t change. You’ve always been a not-say-anything kind of guy. You did nothing then. You’ll do nothing now.”

“What do you mean I did nothing?”

“You left me alone with her. You came home and there she was, just a little floating thing in the bathtub. Oh, my. How did it happen, Max? Such a tragedy! And when the horrified parents got home we were all so mortified for you, the boy who was babysitting when it happened. Because it was your fault. And you know why? Because you left me alone with her. You went across the street to play basketball. Only be gone for ten minutes, you said. Who can drown in six inches of water? That’s what you said to yourself. We’d left her alone in the bath a dozen times and all was well. But not this time. You knew better. You left her even though you knew what I was. That’s why you’re to blame.”

“Ricky, you loved Pansy. Why would I think that you would hurt her?”

“I didn’t plan it. I just wanted to play, push her head under for a second. I didn’t expect it to feel like it did.” Ricky’s voice was unfolding, getting bigger. “Everyone blamed you. Even you blamed you.”

“Neave!” Max shouted out, suddenly sounding panicked. “Are you all right?”

“I’m all right!” I yelled. “The latch is jammed! The lights won’t go on in here!”

“Let me take the helm, Ricky. This harbor’s clogged with islands.”

“Oh, I studied the charts. We’ll be past Spectacle and out into the open water in a few minutes. There’s the green harbor light. Almost open ocean now. Nobody will hear a thing. Get in your little boat and go back, Max. There’s nothing you can do here. I’m a man of my word. I’ll bring little sister home when I’m done with her.”

I tried, again, to force the cabin door latch. I scanned the dark cabin, looking for anything solid and heavy, but nautical rooms tend to be designed with things bolted down against the natural movement of a boat in water. There was my pile of candy wrappers, a glass and a fork, magazines, the books. And there was a wooden box that I knew held a brass compass. I opened it, plucked the gleaming thing from the gimbals and leveled it, brass-back first, at the latch. One hard blow and the handle rattled though it didn’t give way. Two more and I was rewarded with the sound of a screw or bolt dropping onto the deck on the other side of the door. I grabbed a pencil and pushed it into the old-fashioned iron casing, poking until I heard a satisfying clink. I pushed at the now broken latch again and felt it yield.

Then the door was yanked open so abruptly that I fell forward, out of the cabin and into the firm grip of Ricky Luhrmann. “Got it open at last, sweetheart?” He wound my collar and the back of my pajamas around one hand like a fabric rope and dragged me to the railing, where he pulled the pajamas snugly around my throat. He turned me around so Max could see my face. We stood there like statues, Max and I disheveled and in pajamas, Ricky drunk enough for his balance to give way a bit when the boat hit larger waves. Even slightly drunk, though, he was shockingly strong, and his grip tightened if I so much as shifted my feet an inch.

“Look,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a pajama party.” Max stood perfectly still. I could feel him being quiet so that Ricky would keep talking, be distracted into a drunken false moment and drop his guard. Max caught my eye. Wait, his look said. It’ll come. Ricky’s tone was conversational. He said, “You know, Max, I’ve been listening to you go on about currents and snarks and tracking the junk that goes overboard for years. If I were to slip, and accidentally knock little sister over the rail, I bet I could tell you where she’d end up.”

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