Must Love Otters (17 page)

I wish they’d come back.

Not to eat me, of course. But because they have each other, and I’m alone and I want to see the baby again, just one more time.

That was, on the spectrum of human experience, ranked equally as most frightening and most exhilarating.

No one’s going to believe me. I fell into the water with three killer whales and
lived to tell
.

My body is near convulsions from the very real cold, cold that I’ve never had the displeasure of experiencing ever before, not even when, summer between fourth and fifth grade, my dad’s work schedule got weird and because of his I’m-a-terrible-daddy-because-you-don’t-have-a-mommy guilt kicked in, he sent me to a summer camp that was likely a training stop for Al Qaeda where the lifeguard everyone called The Kraken threw scared kids into the unheated pool just to listen to their screams. I was cold then, but not cold like I am now.

And as if cold weren’t enough, the oar, the only remaining oar, is floating away from me, likely to find its mate.

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

Holy
shit
.

Things just got fucking real. I could die of hypothermia out here. The canvas is the only thing left remotely dry—the fleece sweatshirt is so heavy with the inlet waters, it’s nothing short of miraculous that I was able to right myself in the boat. The cotton wool around my ankle is five pounds of waterlogged goo and some of the tape has lost its sticky, now hanging off like the frills on my father’s fishing flies. In a weird twist, the cold in the wrap is helping to numb the pain in the sprained muscles. A tiny blessing in disguise.

Teeth chattering and hands shaking, I scramble for the flares. Maybe someone will see it, see this little boat floating all by itself in the darkness, and hop in their own boat, zoom-zoom-zoom on out to save the dumb American girl with only enough brain cells to fill a shot glass.

I don’t know how to use a flare.

I pluck the plastic cap and a string dangles from the top. I can’t read the instructions along the flare’s side—it’s too dark, and not even the limited illumination from my phone helps when I discover the instructions are in French.
Magnifique
.

Out of options, I pull the string and turn away as the flare sputters to life, a blaring red flame tearing from its ignited end. Startled by the intense heat and aggressive overflow of nuclear-grade light, I accidentally drop it—
plop
. Into the water. It burns for a while longer, maybe a minute, before fading out, its oily husk spent and now nothing more than litter in this pristine landscape.

No rescue will befall me if I freak out and drop the damn thing in the water. And what I
really
need is one of those flares they used on the
Titanic
. The kind that shoot into the sky.

Oh my God, the
Titanic
sank.

Please tell me this is not the
USS Hollie
.

“There are no icebergs, Hol … no icebergs,” I say.

If ever there were a time to cry, it’s now.

So that’s exactly what I do.

I cry for all the stupid things I’ve ever done throughout the whole of my life, from bad boyfriends to risky haircuts to slumber-party piercings that got infected to the time I took a ride down a winding country road in the bed of a pickup truck driven by a drunk friend to trusting that brief romance with the senior football player who promised if I sent him a shot of my boobs he’d erase it but of course not before posting it online so everyone could make fun of Hollie’s Invisible Hooters to quitting college because I lied to my dad and used my student loan funds to hire a shady private investigator to find my missing mother to letting my best friend talk me into dangerous shit and never being able to say no to her and then grieving after she dumped me and moving in with Keith and his Yorkies and on and on and on. I’m so skilled at cataloguing the stupid shit I’ve done in my life, if this were an Olympic sport, I’d be gold medalist times infinity.

And now I’ll have to get a roommate. With my luck, it will be some weird chick with strange taste in lovers and food with plantar warts she will share simply by walking on the same floors and showering in the same tub. If I can’t find a roommate, I’ll have to go back and live with Mangala the demon goat and try to keep my dad from setting me up with Manjit’s cardiologist son.

And then I remember that my otters are back in Room 212, alone, wondering where Hollie the Human is and why she hasn’t returned from the date to cover their little plastic otter eyes with a washcloth while Hollie does godless things to the perfect body of that lying sack-o-shit everyone calls Roger. If that’s even his name. My otter friend doesn’t know that Hollie the Human is floating oarless away from her, that this could be my last night on the planet known as Earth, the heartless, hurtful rock that it has become, and no one knows where I am or will figure out that I’m gone until it’s too late and the sharks do surface from the depths to pick clean my bones.

I laugh at myself through the cascade of tears. Such a drama queen.

Things could be worse. It could be …

“And you had to go and think it, didn’t you, you stupid shit.”

Raining.

The patter of drops on the canvas tarp covering my shivering, aching body curled in the boat’s bottom eventually lulls me to sleep. I don’t know how long I’m out—when I wake to scraping along the boat’s underside, I check my phone for the time only to find it wet, and thus dead. Of course. A thin fog has settled over the water’s surface and the rainclouds have obscured the stars, but the scraping, I’m relieved to find, is not another orca.

It’s the shore.

Land ho!

Somehow, during my slumber, the boat drifted east and the wooden bottom is rasping against a rocky shoreline. I’m so thrilled to not be in the middle of the inlet that I spring from under the tarp and hop one-footed into the holy-shit-that’s-still-effing-cold water to pull the boat a few feet onto solid ground.

I went to summer camp. I can do this. The rain has lessened, though everything is still damp and weepy. Starting a fire will be tough with no dry wood. I’ve got fire via the two remaining flares, so I could burn the boat, but that seems counterproductive. I might need it again, even without the oars.

A crack-snap in the distant greenery startles me. Yeah, definitely won’t be burning the boat. Might need to make a hasty getaway.

Shit, can bears swim? Of course they can. They eat salmon and salmon are in water ergo bears can swim.

As can cougars. That’s how they get to these islands. They swim between them, paddling with their giant, mightily clawed feet in the glacial water to check out the eats on nearby menus.

I grab the crutches out of the boat’s belly and slap the metal shafts together like a ginormous city-dwelling dork. Maybe the sound will scare off whatever is coming down to sample my fleshy parts. I almost pee my already soaked G-string when a huge owl throws itself out of a nearby tree and flies low above the short beach, soaring over the water until its form is swallowed by mist.

I should probably not camp on the beach itself—still too cold and nothing but the canvas tarp for protection, which will do very little in the way of keeping skin and muscle attached to bone in the event of inquisitive bear or cougar. Not like sleeping in the boat will offer much more protection, but it’s all I got.

I do my best to drag and shove the boat completely out of the water and am so grateful that no one is nearby with a camera to videotape just how completely ridiculous this must look. Me hopping around like a maimed bird, bare knees and calves coated in dirty sand and tiny pebbles and a slime that I hope to dear baby Jesus is kelp or other sea-belched greenery, oversized sweatshirt filthy and sopping and oh so heavy. Perhaps in response to my body having bigger problems, i.e., survival, the throb in my twisted ankle has calmed. Maybe it feels sorry for me, like, “Man, Hollie, this is really fucked up so I’m going to chill and maybe you can find us a way out of this before the grim reaper knocks on your forehead.”

Thanks, ankle. No, really, I mean it.

I hope the tide doesn’t come in too high, or else I will be floating again within just a few hours. Another reason why I should stick close to my vessel. A captain never abandons her ship. Especially when the ship has the sum total of five granola bars, the only stash of civilized nutrition before unraveling the fabric of the barely there little black dress to use as thread for a handcrafted, broken-branch fishing pole baited with owl pellets.

Five granola bars. Five meals. Maybe more if I can exercise self-control.

Yeah. Right.

I eat two and a half. But all this rowing and fretting and swimming and almost dying with orcas has expended my energy molecules, spent them like a redneck lottery winner’s wife in a bedazzled gun shop. I chug one of the bottled waters, unaware of how thirsty I am until there are only a few slurps left.

Man, I hope that inlet water is drinkable.

When the rain starts up again, so do the shivers. I turtle back under the canvas to await dawn, frozen fingers crossed that no mommas of any sort will come along with their wee charges for a midnight snack.

I tuck the canvas tight around my fetal-position body, trying like hell to keep the water from seeping in and expediting the hypothermia that is bound to set in soon. Except with my homemade cocoon, there is little fresh air getting in. Although the trapped exhaled carbon dioxide is good for warmth, it’s not so great for my body’s insatiate need for fresh oxygen. Which presents a problem if I’m to keep warm and dry.

A problem exacerbated when new scratching sounds begin on the outside of the boat.

I have to look. I should at least be prepared to use a crutch to defend myself. Maybe I should take the crutches apart and use the sharper ends of the dismantled metal shafts.

Scratch scratch. Chatter chatter.

I know that sound.

I poke my head out and come eye to eye with a rather large, very fluffy raccoon. Not sure who jumps higher, me or him, but he hisses and backs up. He’s not alone—scattered about the beach is a whole troop, and while they collectively startle when I sit up straighter, I am soon forgotten in favor of washing the dead crabs they’re fighting over.

Crab. Where’d they get that? I can eat crab.

I watch them chew and squabble, fighting over the claws and juicy innards. Two juveniles come to blows over a leg but one is clearly tougher and waddles off to another part of the beach to dig into his spoils. Too bad no one has any butter or garlic, or I might fight the little fella for it myself. So raccoons eat more than maple-smelling, hundred-dollar bills. Go figure.

Without warning, the sky lights up and the rain explodes from the clouds. So much for tonight’s smorgasbord. The raccoons are off into the brush just as the thunder detonates overhead.

As if I weren’t wet enough already.

Back under the tarp.

I don’t sleep because the thunder is too loud and too terrifying, and I swear the lightning is striking the beach all around me and I will emerge from my pretend tent to find this island completely alight and the beach will be inundated with creatures trying to escape the fiery wrath of the sky’s temper tantrum.

Between rumbles—
one one-thousand, two one-thousand
—grrrrrrrrrrBOOM, says the sky—something else rumbles toward me. A sputtering put-put, like a motor.

A motor!

From a boat!

I pop up from under the cover, my hand serving as windshield wiper against the torrential downpour, desperately trying to see if that is indeed a boat coming closer to my little harbor.

When the light flashes across my face, it’s not from the sky but from a bulb!

“Hey! Heyyyyyyy! Over here!” I wave. Not sure if the mariner can hear me over the elements.

The rowboat’s bottom rough against my naked skin, I scrabble to my knees, no longer worried that I am absorbing even more water. If it’s a boat, I need to be saved. I really, really want to brush my teeth. And punch Roger in the throat. Maybe not in that order.

“Heyyyyyyy! Help!” The bright light lands on my face, blinding me, and a small horn sounds.

At last. Saved.

The wind has grown ferocious, and I can see the waves buffeting the boat’s side. I’m unable to see much else through the darkness secondary to the flashlight’s glare, but a voice yells back at me, “I gotta drop the anchor! I’ll come to you!”

I huddle again, waiting for my rescue to be completed. Maybe it’s a kindly fisherman caught in the storm and he’ll help me back to his nearby cabin where his portly wife will put on tea and wrap me in a woolen blanket and say things like
Dear, dear, look what the cat dragged in, poor wretched creature
. Or maybe it’s a passing tourist, a family of vacationers, en route to their own cabin or maybe even to Revelation Cove, and the unexpected tempest took them by surprise too, and inside their warm boat, they will have cocoa and a bathroom with one of those portable toilets, and a bag full of dry socks and spiced rum for just such occasions.

“Hollie Porter? Is that you?”

Or maybe it’s none of the above.

“Hollie? Are you okay? Can you walk?” I slowly reemerge from the canvas, wondering if I should play dead.

“Yeah,” I wave. “It’s me.”

Concierge Ryan, outfitted in rain gear and looking like the Gorton’s fisherman, struggles through the waist-deep water, a long rope in hand as he jogs toward a tree growing out of the rock face.

“Anchor’s down but I gotta tie off, just in case. Are you hurt?” he yells. I don’t bother to respond—he won’t be able to hear me until he’s closer.

Within a minute, he’s standing over me, his large frame a shield from the rain but only long enough for him to bend over, throw the tarp aside, and hoist my soaked body over his shoulder.

And back into the water we go.

He helps me on board, and I’m grateful to find a cabin on this boat—a built-in couch and a kitchenette. It’s drier than what I had going on in the rowboat, and I spy a very thick blanket draped over the back of the captain’s chair.

He doesn’t even wait for the door to slam behind him before the ranting begins.

“Where the hell have you been? What were you thinking, taking a boat out without telling anyone, without even a life jacket? Do you have a death wish? Are you really that stupid? You could’ve died out here and no one would’ve known! Do you know what kind of liability we’d be looking at? The resort could be shut down!”

I stare back at him, shivering so hard my teeth ache in my head. “You got anything to drink?”

“What?”

“Drink. I’m thirsty. And cold.”

“Are you going to answer my questions?”

“Drink first. Dry clothes second. Talking third.”

He pulls off his funny yellow hat and rain slicker, steps out of his waders. Everything wet is hung from hooks, shedding water into a long basin rather than on the thin carpet under our feet.

“How’s your ankle? Is it okay? Are you hurt?”

I can’t answer. Too cold. He moves past and cranks on a small heater. From a plastic bin, he pulls out sweatpants, yet another Revelation Cove fleece pullover—this one dry—and some thick wool socks. “You can change in the forward cabin. Just pull the curtain. I won’t peek. And put your wet stuff in the shower stall so it doesn’t get all over the bed. We have to sleep somewhere tonight.”

We’re sleeping here tonight? Why aren’t we sleeping in our respective beds back at the resort, those dry, high-quality, cushiony, insect-and-raccoon-free beds?

As the question floats into my head, a strong wind slaps the side of the boat, knocking both of us just enough off balance to look cartoony.

“It’s too foggy. Water’s choppy. I don’t want to take a chance. We’re anchoring here for the night.”

I’m not going to argue. I don’t want to take a chance, either, given that I’ve already spent time in this body of water. My jaw is killing me from the chattering. No more midnight swims.

“What time is it?”

Ryan looks at the tiny digital clock next to the steering wheel. “Around 2:30.”

“When’s sunrise?”

“Why, you gotta be somewhere?” he says. I squint at him. “We should get that wrap off your foot. You’re dripping on the carpet.”

I look down. Certainly enough, a small puddle has formed under me. “Sorry.”

He grabs a roll of blue industrial towels and rips off a few sheets. “Do you need the crutches or can you hop?”

I don’t answer with words but rather by hobbling into the forward cabin, sliding closed the curtain with as much annoyance as I can muster. I’m burning my few remaining granola bar calories with this incessant shaking. I have to get out of these clothes. I fear for the integrity of my teeth. Shit, I was on Keith’s dental plan. I won’t have dental insurance until the next open enrollment at 911. If I still have a job.

Why do these questionable life decisions keep coming back to kick me in the girl balls?

I plop the sweatshirt and little black dress and the wad of cotton wool from my now very purple ankle into the shower bottom as instructed, although it’s less a shower than a fiberglass rectangle wide enough for an emaciated six-year-old. “How the hell do
you
shower in this?”

“Very carefully.”

I peek through the curtain, wise to not pull it away from the wall enough for him to see I’m still butt naked. He’s making tea.

“Do you take honey?”

“And whisky.”

“You can’t have any booze until we get your body temperature back to normal.” I know the medical rules of mixing alcohol and potential hypothermia. Those St. Bernards with barrels of brandy? Pure myth. Alcohol can make hypothermia worse, and St. Bernards never carried brandy to rescue snowshoers.

I will get dressed and sit in front of the heat and warm up and I won’t die of hypothermia nor will I be a midnight snack for enterprising, curious orcas, and then I can have some whisky.

Although if this boat’s rocking doesn’t ease up, I might barf up that whisky.

“You okay? You need help?” he asks.

“I think I can handle putting clothes on.”

“That hasn’t been my experience with you so far.”

“Here we go again,” I say, throwing the curtain aside. The sweatshirt is huge and the T-shirt smells like old cologne and storage, and the sweatpants—pink—I just hope they’re clean and not from one of Ryan’s boat girls. If he has boat girls.

Does he bring his lady friends out on this boat? Oh God, am I wearing coochie pants?

Whatever. Beggars can’t be choosers.

He’s stirring honey into a mug, holding firmly to the handle so it doesn’t slide off the counter. “Have a seat. Wrap up in that blanket. Your lips are purple.”

I didn’t even have a moment for vanity. I’m sure I look like a supermodel right now. Whatever. That blanket is thick and wool and has my goosebumps written all over it.

Ryan hands me a steaming mug. I sip too quickly, scalding the tip of my tongue.

“So is this the part where you restart your yelling at me for stealing one of your boats and putting myself in danger?”

“Do I need to?”

“You started it, so I thought we’d finish and get it out of the way.”

“It’s not often that I have to go searching for guests in the middle of the night.”

“How’d you figure out I was gone?”