“Yes, very much so,” Ray shouted back hoarsely.
“Well, come on board,” the man said, waving them to the back of the boat.
With eager exhaustion, the four survivors swam the length of the one-hundred-foot yacht, toward the back, where the distinguished man was lowering a ladder.
As they climbed, the name of the boat, written in giant letters, loomed before them: Eyeball.
The moment Ray’s toe exited the water, his mood changed, his spirits soared. He and his nuts had done it! The experience had been invaluable! They would now reap the benefits.
“Sit back and enjoy,” he told Lynn, Alan, and Roland as they climbed out after him. “Relish the magic. Few moments in your life will ever be as wonderful as this. Try to imprint it on your memory. Notice the ecstasy you’re experiencing right now. Savor every nuance of it.”
“You’re not acting very dehydrated,” remarked Lynn, who was barely able to stand.
They were given water and dropped off in Nassau. A cab took them over the bridge to their hotel on Paradise Island. They showered and put on dry clothes.
They each, in his or her own room, ordered room service. Lynn remembered a picture book, from her childhood, that said you weren’t supposed to gorge yourself when you hadn’t eaten in two days or you could get sick. Lynn ordered pasta and a shrimp-stuffed avocado. Alan ordered two cheeseburgers; Roland a steak, wine, cheese, and a chocolate mousse; and Ray ordered conch chowder, pasta, and a disgusting pineapple soufflé.
Lynn would have preferred not to be alone at that moment, but being alone was better than being with them. She’d have been happy with a good friend near her, like Patricia.
Alan was thinking about little other than his bodily needs. He wanted to eat and sleep as soon as possible.
Roland felt disgusted with himself for having gone along with these freaks. He felt embarrassed.
Lynn, Alan, and Roland all felt the same way about one thing. They were thinking, Never toy with life. Never take life for granted and squander it. As they heard the things they were telling themselves, they realized that it had worked. This new attitude was exactly the one they had been hoping to acquire.
After eating, they each put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on their doors and slept.
Fifteen
For a while their existence was diminished and enhanced at the same time. The smallest elements of everyday life seemed heavenly compared to floating in the ocean. They were so appreciative of the slightest things, that they settled for small things. At home they each sat in bed, and the mere feel of the sheets against their skin (in Alan’s case, the rat’s fur against his cheek) was bliss. They felt they could live like this for fifty years and be perfectly content, need nothing else out of life. They slept a lot. And they enjoyed walking. Walking on the hard ground was practically orgasmic.
The stalking chain had dissolved in the ocean. The nuts were too tired to care about stalking each other. And when the tiredness faded, the prospect of stalking still seemed tiresome, repetitive, monotonous, a waste of time — not entirely unlike bobbing in the ocean. Life was too short for stalking.
Lynn wanted to forget her ocean experience and resume normal life as quickly and thoroughly as possible. She wanted to drench herself in normalcy and routine. If routine were a liquid, she’d love to take a bath in it. No, scratch that — too close to their ordeal.
She went to the hateful dinner she had been hoping to avoid through death, feeling self-conscious about her appearance. Her hair was dry and damaged from having soaked so long in the sea, and her skin didn’t look its freshest. But Ray had been right: The dreaded dinner wasn’t so bad compared to bobbing in the ocean for days. The host’s obsequiousness struck her as charming.
As for Ray, he continued working on his matchmaking business Chock Full O’Nuts, which was as successful as ever. He loved how his ocean ordeal had sensitized him to the pleasures of life and desensitized him to its discomforts and pitfalls and bad days. He was so excited about it, he could hardly contain himself and was certain that in a year or so he’d want to do it again. Life was too short not to — even though doing it might shorten it more.
Ray was glad that the nuts didn’t seem obsessed with each other anymore. His only disappointment was that because they no longer needed anything more than solid ground, they seemed a bit vacant, like shadows of their former selves. Maybe that was what sanity was — a less heightened self.
But that state didn’t last long. The divine perspective they had acquired thanks to the grueling ocean experience wore off soon enough, as it tragically always does. As they lost the perspective, their appetite for more than solid ground was reawakened. They did some of the things they’d told each other they’d do if they survived.
Alan purchased more pets. In addition to his rat, he now had a rabbit, a dog, and a ferret.
Roland went to France to visit his dad and ask him for a refill of cyanide. When his dad asked him what happened to the cyanide in his locket, Roland said he’d emptied his locket one day when policemen were searching everyone in a park where a crime had just been committed. His father told Roland he’d made the right decision, that one could get into a lot of trouble for carrying cyanide around. He gave his son a refill. Roland’s father had a small cyanide-filled chest that had been passed down for many generations, along with the lockets. It was useful when lockets were emptied for various reasons.
A month after her oceanic experience, Lynn was standing in line with Patricia at the local bakery when she heard, behind her, an attractive male voice uttering her secret, “real” name.
She could not get herself to turn around. She just grabbed Patricia’s arm and squeezed hard.
“What?” Patricia said.
Lynn didn’t answer, she let it pass and walked out of the bakery looking away from the voice. Lynn realized she would never know who it was. Perhaps that was better than being disappointed.
Later that afternoon, at the gallery, Patricia asked Lynn why she seemed so melancholy, and Lynn said it was because she had been within touching range of the man of her dreams, and not only had she not touched him, she hadn’t even looked at him.
“When?”
“In the bakery, when I grabbed your arm.”
“Which guy was it?”
“I don’t know, but I heard him behind us say to someone, ‘I love that scary elephant.’”
“That guy? I know who he is, Lynn. He’s your neighbor. If he’s the man of your dreams, you certainly haven’t lost him. In fact, you’ve probably seen him around. I’ve often meant to ask you what you thought of him, because he seemed like your type.”
“You know him?”
“Not really. But he’s cute.”
“Who is he?”
“He works at the flower shop, three doors down, but you never buy flowers, so maybe you’ve never seen him.”
Lynn ran out the door.
Lynn entered the flower shop. There was a man in a far corner, sitting on a chair, working with string and flowers. He was an average-looking man with a gray mustache. She approached him, looking at him gently, her head tilted sideways, her expression generous. He looked up and smiled at her.
Perhaps there was another man who worked in the store. She had to make sure she found the right one, the one who had uttered her real name, and not jump to any conclusions. She turned around and found herself face-to-face with another man who was standing there, right behind her, wearing a dark blue apron and holding a vase. In one moment, she had absorbed his face, a feat that usually took her many hours.
In a voice she recognized as the one that had uttered her real name in the bakery, he said, “May I help you?”