Chapter Three: Solitaire

Shortly after high tide Doug paused and floated in place a quarter-mile out from shore, held up by the buoyancy of the salt water and the two life vests. He was certain that he was in the area where the boat had gone down. He dipped his face in the crystalline water and looked around. His diving mask would have helped, but he could see to the sand and coral of the bottom for some distance. He'd been searching for almost an hour now and decided that the boat had been farther out than he thought. It had been fighting against a strong wind as he drove it toward the island. Perhaps it hadn't made as much speed as he'd thought. He was beginning to tire and knew better than to push ahead until he had rested.

The sun and warm water felt good to his arms and shoulders, slowly baking strength back into them. He'd used a shovel he'd found in the generator shed to carve out a large "SOS" in the sand near the cabin and had filled it with branches and foliage and non-repairable junk from the cabin to give it contrast from the off-white sand.

He'd also found a large wooden spool containing almost a thousand feet of yellow, braided, quarter-inch nylon rope in the shed and another spool of red. He carried a hundred feet of the yellow coiled around the second life vest It was more than he thought he'd need to anchor the vest as a marker buoy for the boat's location, so he wore one of the razor-sharp kitchen knives tied to his arm. It rested in a sheath he'd made from some heavy canvas sewn together with needle and thread from a tarp repair kit and was tied in place with some nylon twine around the handle.

He turned to look shoreward. Alyson, a sun-browned spot against the background vegetation, was standing at the end of the dock and looking toward him. He waved to indicate all was well. She waved and sat down. Doug had salvage duty, Mary had shack-cleaning duty, and Alyson had been volunteered to catch lunch. The shed had contained two tackle boxes with monofilament line, but no poles or reels. Thanks to the storm, branches for fishing poles were in abundance and needed only some trimming with the machete by the back door.

Alyson was concerned about the time that they might be stranded until Search and Rescue found them, but she was showing a brave face. No, that wasn't fair. She was coping with the situation, probably because neither he nor Mary had shown any fear. Concern, yes; but not fear. Plus he had told her to think of the reaction of the rest of her schoolmates when she wrote her essay on "How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Her first reaction had been the standard Frustrated Daughter Dealing with Clueless Parents look, but that quickly changed when she realized just what those reactions would be. And it implied that she would be home by the time school started. Doug hoped that he was right about the timing.

He turned to float face down, letting the sun warm his lower back, too. His left butt cheek hurt from the splinter it had found on the privy seat. He also had a slight, nagging ache just above his hips. He wasn't sure if it was from the shoveling or from sleeping on the floor. The adults had given Alyson the single cot, putting her at a distance from the "crawly things" that might traverse the floor, and a life vest for a pillow. He and Mary had curled up spoon-fashion on the bedroom floor together, using the other life vest as a shared pillow, with torn mosquito netting crudely draped over all of them, held up by a piece of the rope.

Mary.

One of her odd quirks was that the more physical labor she exerted, the hornier she became, even when she was too exhausted to do more than lie there and let him do all the work. Unfortunately, he'd worked just as hard all day and, while the concept of a quickie with Mary had certainly had its appeal, his body and mind were too numb to do more than appreciate the fact that she was dragging his flaccid member through her wet trench and massaging her clit with it before he passed out from exhaustion.

He'd been more in the mood just before he departed for this swim. His entry into the cabin was greeted by the sight of Mary on her hands and knees, digging around in one of the bottom cabinets and giving him a very exciting "brown eye wink," as Carson Peck called it.

Carson was into anal sex. Mary didn't care much for it, though she'd let Doug use the back door on special occasions. Doug usually had to satisfy his occasional urge for it with Melinda or one of the other wives in the group. Melinda loved being speared from below while she was giving one of her famous blow jobs, and she didn't much care which hole the guy used.

So with all the variety available in the club, why did Mare have to try turning me on to Alyson? He didn't want to think about that right now and forced his thoughts back to Melinda's ass.

A pleasant feeling radiating from his loins was Doug's first clue that he was unconsciously stroking his erection while he floated. Well, it was his own fault if he was still horny. If he hadn't thrown that rubber snake from the shed in front of Mare-What the hell was a guy alone on an island hundreds of miles from anywhere doing with a rubber snake anyway?he might have let him use her asshole to reduce his sexual tension. Instead she had called him an asshole and told him to go drown himself.

He slowly increased the speed as he remembered how good it was to do Melinda in the ass, though not as good as getting head from her. It was also fun putting Melinda as the filler in a three-man-sandwich. The last time he'd done that, he'd been the one up her ass.

Mary had been the sandwich filler twice when they were in their late teens. He'd participated the first time and had used her pucker door. She was deep-throating Harry Baltz-what kind of cruel parents would saddle a son with a name like that?-while riding Tony Kim's pole for all she was worth. Her butt cheeks would clench together as she slammed down around him and spread wide as she lifted for another down stroke, inviting him with that brown eye wink to join in on the fun. He could never forget how enticing her ass looked if he lived to be a thousand.

It had looked just like Alyson's.

It was the most violent cum of his life. His face slammed into the water and he involuntarily inhaled. Despite his choking and spluttering his orgasm did not abate while his fist continued to pound his spewing staff. His hips thrust as if he were fucking the ocean and could not stop their movement. Red sparks ricocheted across the backs of his squeezed eyelids.

Slowly it ended. Sanity returned, and he began to exert his own will to control his body. The coughing stopped. He felt his erection in his fist, still as firm as his body was weak. He just wanted to sleep for a month to recover, but Boner Boy was asking for another round. He released the throbbing shaft and let his face sag into the water.

Long, white strings were floating seaward in the gentle current, breaking up into shorter filaments as they went. He looked toward the base of his body and asked the head still pointed toward his face, Why aren't you dead after that, you horny sonofabitch?

He shifted to float upright and threw his head back to gulp in air. After a few minutes rest he slowly moved toward the mouth of the cove to begin another sweep. Less than a hundred yards later he saw it, sitting at an angle toward its starboard side behind a small rise in the sea floor thirty, perhaps forty feet down. The hole in the side was a dark gash clearly visible from the surface. Debris was scattered about it. The tree trunk had floated away. I wonder if the rental fee stops when the boat sinks. If so, how do I prove when it happened?

He turned toward the dock and floated upright in the water. He gave a long, sharp whistle and watched Alyson scramble to her feet. He held the spare vest at arm's length and swept it from side to side overhead: once, twice, three times, stopping with it overhead and then lowering it straight down. She waved and scrambled to the cabin to tell her mother that he'd given her the signal that the boat was found and reachable. He was going to dive to it.

He began breathing deeply, preparing the rope to coil out as he descended. He slipped out of his vest and clipped it to the one attached to the rope, the one that would be the marker buoy to locate the wreck on the subsequent salvage dives. He gulped air for another minute, then inhaled and held it, flipped upside-down, and descended. He tied the rope to the wheelhouse railing with a quick clove hitch, then fumbled trying to remove the knife from its arm sheath. Taking no chances, he released the rope and shot to the surface.

He again gulped air while untying the stubborn knot in the cord holding the knife in its sheath. When he was ready he descended again, cut the free end of the rope, and swam for the starboard locker at the stern that held the diving gear. They had one full tank and one partially full one remaining. It should be sufficient for them to salvage the boat's contents.

The tanks and other contents of the locker were jumbled and jammed in place. He freed a mouthpiece and opened the valve on the regulator. It was one of the empties. He released it and freed another mouthpiece. He turned the valve and sucked down air. He pulled out Mary's diving mask. The lens was shattered, and he released it, too. There was Alyson's yellow, twin-lensed mask. He grabbed it and then found his own beneath that, under one of her blue swim fins. A blenny swam out of the jumble, seemed to glare at him, and swam off with an indignant flip of its tail. How had it gotten into the locker? He put the mask on and cleared it. Much better.

He was suddenly aware of just how beautiful the floor of the lagoon was and took a moment to drink in his surroundings. Brightly colored fish, angels and butterflies and damsels, fluttered about, generally ignoring him. A low, narrow coral reef ran for maybe a hundred feet along a ridge to the northeast. An impossible-to-describe pallette of living coral polyps, brain corals, anemones, nudibranches, shrimp, crabs, and fish made it look as if a paint truck had crashed. A moray eel lunged from an opening beneath a brain coral and impaled its lunch with needle teeth, a reminder that danger lurked with the beauty here. Doug turned his attention to freeing the contents of the locker.

Five minutes later he was wearing his goggles, fins, and the partially-full tank. The other fins and goggles and the snorkels were tied together and placed in a sturdy rope-handled pail. He tried to descend to the cabins to get his medical kit, but the short hallway was a jumble of broken planks and debris. He didn't want to become trapped. Reluctantly he backed out and checked the locker with the inflatable raft. It was locked! Who the hell had locked it? And where was the key? He checked the other lockers and the wheelhouse for items to take on this trip. Two spear guns with six spears. Two of the other six life vests floating at the top of a port-side locker. They could be used to help lift the pail. A waterproof flashlight that still worked. The compass. The signal mirror. Another flashlight, which he left for the salvage operation. A few other minor miscellaneous items that fit in the pail.

And all the time that wasn't spent thinking about what he was doing was spent thinking about his orgasm and the feelings Mary had awakened toward his own daughter. He was a pediatrician, by damn, and he wasn't about to resume thinking about his daughter, or his patients, as sexual objects. What the hell was Mare thinking? Or was she trying to say something? Maybe hinting, perhaps as part of a fishing expedition?

He was breathing too fast. Calm down! The partially-full aqualung would be needed to finish the salvage, but if it wouldn't be enough if he ran this one out of air prematurely. He clipped the life vests to the pail, cut a piece of rope for later, and pulled the vests out of the locker. He rose with the pail. At the surface he closed the regulator valve, removed the tank, and tied it to a short rope section looped around the marker buoy rope. He watched as the tank, guided by the marker rope, descended to the sunken boat, then lifted the mask to his forehead and peered toward shore.

The fins made it easy to rise higher out of the water. He whistled and waved. He watched Alyson stand, wave, and then turn to shout something at the cabin. She was sitting down again as he stopped kicking and sank to float alongside the pail and the life vests. He unclipped the one vest from the marker and slipped it on. He took the compass from the pail and used it to get a bearing to the shack and another to the northernmost of the inland peaks. That would make it easier to get to within sighting distance of the marker buoy. He attached a snorkel to the mask strap and pulled the mask and snorkel in place. He headed toward the shore at a leisurely pace, observing the life happening in the watery world around him and telling himself that there would be no more notice of his daughter's blooming sexuality.