Chapter 46

December 30, 2000 - February 3, 2001

Bahamas

Nicole was still wearing the handcuffs when she got up the next morning, along with a big grin which neither she nor her husband commented on, not that it required a lot of comment. It was pretty obvious that this wasn't the last anniversary where she'd be wearing handcuffs -- and enjoying it.

Unfortunately, she and Randy had to be leaving that morning -- an all-too-brief visit with some real friends before heading back to the frozen north. By midmorning they had to be heading for the airport, so Randy took off her handcuffs, they said their goodbyes, and they got in their rental car and left. Trey got in his Cougar not long afterwards, promising to let Al know about being a swamper as soon as he found out about his internship, that he now obviously hoped wouldn't be offered. He had a few days before getting back to college, but had to go through Indiana on his way to Kansas City to visit his parents for a few days.

Buddha and Myleigh both had doctorates in English literature and enjoyed discussing it with each other in such flowery, intricate, and obscure language that it was usually difficult to figure out what they were talking about, and even the language they were using might not be entirely clear. The surf was flattish, so that afternoon the two were going at it at full power and didn't mind being left behind when Crystal, Scooter, Al, and Karin drove to the airport to pick up Michelle.

Having Michelle around put a different spin on things; she could be pretty exuberant when she felt like it, and she was really up that evening around the campfire. Buddha and Giselle had heard the story about Jennlynn flying them to Randy and Nicole's wedding the year before, and now Michelle told an exceptionally funny version of their decision to visit her at the Redlite the month before -- always protesting her sheer innocence and naïvety, which no one who knew her believed the slightest bit of.

The surf was back up the next day and stayed pretty decent until Friday, when things were winding down, anyway. Crystal took Al, Karin, and Myleigh to the airport for their return to Phoenix and Kansas City respectively, while Scooter and Michelle stayed behind to pack up their camping gear and ship it back to Flagstaff, along with repacking what they'd need for their four weeks on the sailboat.

As the previous year, it took two flights to get to Abaco, but once they got to the harbor the Felicity Ann was waiting for them. Although only four feet longer than the Phoebe Lee that they'd used the previous year, it seemed a lot larger. Arrival was late enough that they just hung around Marsh Harbour for the evening.

The next morning, just for the sake of something different, they decided to head west to check out Grand Bahama, and then maybe go on to the Biminis, and maybe Andros if they thought they had time to get that far. The previous year they'd mostly messed around Abacos and Eleuthera, so it gave them a chance to look at something new. The run to Freeport was a really nice blue-water sail on a glorious day; Scooter was in her element, cigar in her mouth as she steered the Felicity Ann toward Freeport.

Freeport proved to be quite a bit more touristy and busier than they expected, and when they went bar crawling that evening, they didn't really find any place that suited their fancy, so they were back on board early. The next morning, without a lot of discussion, they decided to backtrack to the east, to check out the legendary deserted beaches of the east end of the island. Early that afternoon they found one that was just about as deserted as the brochures showed.

"OK, you two," Michelle piped up. "Here's the perfect place for you two to try out your new bikinis."

"What new bikinis?" Crystal smiled. "We hit some closeouts at K-Mart last fall; the ones we got there should hold us for a long time."

"Oh, these are gifts," Michelle snickered. "Some of the people at my family get-together the other day are fun, and I don't see them often enough."

"Are any of them as crazy as you are?" Scooter grinned.

"Well, some of them, maybe in different ways," Michelle laughed. "I've got this one cousin about my age who's got a neat business. She imports specialty clothing from some place she has it made in Mexico. It's swimsuits and like that, and some of them are pretty good. She has this one line called Wild Wet bikinis she distributes. I told her about our trip down here, and asked her if she had something that was really daring. She said she did, then she got a bunch of them out of her car and gave them to me. They're factory seconds, and she said to spread some of them around among my friends, so I brought some along. They should fit, they're pretty much one-size-fits-all."

She went below to her luggage and came back with a couple packages, handing one each to Scooter and Crystal. "You gotta wonder," Scooter said, "If the package is that small how daring the bikini is."

"They're supposed to be daring," Michelle grinned.

"Why do I suspect this is a Michelle special?" Crystal shook her head.

"You never know about this gal," Scooter agreed as she opened the package. "You're right," she said as she held up the tiny pieces of fabric. "That's pretty daring all right. I'd say it would cover about half what that yellow job you had last winter covered, and that wasn't much."

"On top of that," Crystal observed, "With fabric that thin, what it covers it must not cover very well, and that's dry. Wet, I'll bet it turns close to transparent."

"That's the general idea," Michelle grinned. "That's why they're called Wild Wet, after all. I think they'll do just fine at attracting some attention while we're messing around down here."

"Michelle, this is a little far out, even for you," Scooter protested.

"Hey," she snorted in reply, "Who dragged me into a whorehouse? And who did nude photos? This is damn near as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get in the Canyon."

"Oh, shit," Scooter shook her head. "Crystal, I'll do it if you'll do it."

A few minutes later they had changed, if the term could be used, and were in the Zodiac they towed behind the yacht, heading for the beach. "I swear to God," Scooter shook her head as Michelle rowed the inflatable. "I wouldn't feel as naked if I was naked."

"That's the general idea," Michelle snickered. "After all, you wear something like these bikinis to get attention. Aren't you hoping to find some guy on this trip that you can wave your body around dressed in one of these in hopes you can get him to take it off you?"

"That might be all right for the right guy," Crystal protested, "But the thing is, that doesn't cover much on you and you're pretty skinny next to Scooter and me. They're all the same size, so proportionately, we're even less covered than you are."

The beach really was deserted, and it was a very nice day, so after a little while they became a little less body conscious, even though the bikinis really did turn more or less transparent when wet. They dried out fairly quickly as they laid out in the sun, just taking in the day. "You know," Scooter said at one point, "We ought to get a snapshot of this to send to Randy, just to prove he was right. Send one of these bikinis to Nicole too, so she could model it and he could get a taste of what it would have been like."

"My God," Crystal shook her head. "Can you imagine what Nicole were to think if he'd come with us, and someone took a picture of the three of us and him, just like this?"

"Actually, it might do him a favor," Michelle snickered; she'd heard the story of Nicole in handcuffs, and Randy's rejection of the offer to come sailing with them. "I mean, Nicole wouldn't want to let him out of her sight after that."

"He'd appreciate that, but not that way," Crystal sighed. "Boy, I'll tell you though, I sure have had some second thoughts about him the past week."

"You mean because he locked Nicole in handcuffs like that?" Michelle asked.

"Well, yeah, a little," Crystal said. "But it obviously started out as a tease, and they didn't realize the serious undertones it had. The thing is, if a couple things had gone a little differently, like if Nanci had gone to some college around home, I could have wound up marrying him. But you know what? Sooner or later the very same issue would have come up, and I don't think I'd have been anywhere near as understanding as Nicole."

"You mean to go ahead and wear the handcuffs," Michelle asked, "Because she knew he was pissed with her, and it was a way for him to work it out?"

Crystal shook her head. "You're not getting it," she said. "He wasn't pissed, he was disappointed. I'd go so far as to say that he was more disappointed with himself than anything, because he couldn't just let her go out and do something like that."

"I still don't quite follow you," Michelle protested.

"I'm not sure I follow it myself," Crystal sighed. "Look, just for the sake of talking it out, let's assume that Nicole had kissed him off when I went back to Spearfish Lake after my first fall in the Canyon, and we went apeshit and got married, OK? So, spring rolls around, and I head back to the Canyon, because he knows that's what I want to do. But even though he would have known about it, wouldn't he have still been disappointed that I'd abandoned him for the Canyon?"

"Well, yeah," Scooter nodded. "Especially since you would have only been married for a few months."

"I know he'd be disappointed," Crystal nodded. "Randy knew from early on that I had these wanderlust issues, which is part of the reason we never got married in the first place. We realized that it was going to be an issue we couldn't overcome. Well, Nicole has a bunch of those same issues." She took a deep breath to think for a second, as much as anything else, then continued. "The one time I met Jackpine, the girl Nicole hiked the AT with, was at Christmas the winter I stayed in Spearfish Lake with Josh and Tiffany. The four of us were sitting around Nicole's house, I was telling AT stories, and they were all ears. Jackpine turned to Randy and asked if all the talk about us getting out made him a little jealous. And he said, 'No, it makes me a lot jealous. I'd like to do stuff like that but it's not in the cards. I get to go out and do stuff once in a while, not as much as I like. Hell, last week I got to drive all the way down to Camden. That was my big adventure of the fall. I don't try to plan anything very often since it usually gets shot in the ass before I can do it.' He tried to sound like he was joking, but he couldn't cover up that he was really pretty bitter about it. I mean, Nicole and Myleigh and I had been all over the place doing our own thing and he was in Spearfish Lake busting his ass on some construction site."

"Same exact issue, even then, right?" Scooter asked.

"Same exact issue," Crystal nodded. "We got to talking about the only break he was going to have with Nicole for a long period was a week at Buddha and Giselle's. I hadn't been there in a couple years, and I said it'd be fun to go, but I couldn't because I was up to my ass in dog shit. He asked if I remembered when we'd been down there two years before, back when Nicole and I were first talking AT. He told us back then that he'd love to do it too, but he had to work. And then he said, 'I never thought I'd get the chance to say this to you, but I'll give you back what you said to me: 'Bummer when you gotta work, isn't it?' That's going to carry me a long way.' He was not joking; he was seriously pissed and trying to cover it up."

"Pissed at you and Nicole?" Scooter asked.

"Pissed at himself," Crystal sighed. "Because he'd let himself get sucked into a position where he had to be a work junkie and couldn't do some of that stuff he really would have liked to do. But Nicole caught it right that instant. She said, 'Randy, I had no idea this was bothering you that badly. Would you rather I just forget about the hike?' I'll never forget it, because that was the second I lost my last chance with him. If he'd said yes, she'd have dumped the hike right there to stay with him. I would have had real trouble dumping the Canyon."