Read Online Tide's Ebb by Alexandra Brenton - Free Book Online

Cup.
     
    The Mayor’s boat was listing, as well—a thin, but jagged stripe on its hull evidence that it too had been breached in the collision. It was only a matter of time. But somehow, the boy Chas still stood, still waving, but his other hand gripped the mast, comely white knuckles even whiter with tension.  
       
    Marianna found herself paralyzed with fear. Fear—for the fates of those poor souls, and for the fate of the Mayor’s good-looking little boy. If the boy had been ugly, perhaps it wouldn’t have felt so painful. But as it was, the child was cute enough to appear in commercials, and the loss was unimaginable.
     
    Most of the crowd seemed similarly rooted to the decks of their boats.  But a lone voice rose over the howls of wind, and the peals of thunder, robust and driven by determination: “Men, lower the sails and make for the Mayor’s boat!”
     
    Larry’s men responded to the urgency of his voice, each taking his station and working furiously, some positioning the vessel’s archboard, others angling the bilge and binnacle. Larry’s boat, unanchored, quickly approached the Mayor’s ailing yacht.  Marianna sensed the danger here. The yacht was unstable and even the slightest of bumps might flip it over. The sea rocked all of the boats viciously, the maneuver ever more precarious. Larry piloted his boat so that it was at a ninety degree angle to the yacht and then moved forward at high speed.
     
    Without a doubt, Larry’s boat would crash into the Mayor’s yacht!
     
    Miraculously, Larry’s boat turned at exactly the right moment, so that the vessels were now parallel—and Larry’s boat did not so much as graze the Mayor’s yacht. Larry stood at the edge of the boat and called to the Mayor’s winsome young child, even as waves pummeled both vessels.
     
    “ Boy! You must jump! We haven’t much time!”
     
    The Mayor’s boy still clasped tightly to the troubled craft’s mast, frozen with fear. “I’m scared!”
     
    “Boy! These seas will smash us both to pieces! You must jump!”
     
    But the boy would not move.
     
    Larry surveyed the scene frantically.
     
    “Men! Get me some line!”
     
    For a second, Marianna believed that Larry was going to do lines of cocaine, which is what many lawyers at her law firm did when times got tough. But then she saw one of Larry’s men rush over with some rope, which Larry looped over his shoulder.
     
    Larry stepped to the edge of his boat and looked over the edge—now there was at least six feet between the two boats. But Larry leapt like a cat with a beer belly. Marianna looked in shock and fascination at how Larry’s stomach jiggled as he landed ungracefully on the Mayor’s yacht, each jiggle as rhythmic as the ocean itself.
     
    The yacht was now listing dangerously to port. The tip of its mast tilted down at a twenty-degree angle to a hungry sea that had already swallowed its share of seamen that fateful day.
     
    Larry hung onto the railing of the Mayor’s boat and scooped up the boy, but as Larry tried to pull away, he felt a tug.  The boy’s foot was wrapped tightly in part of the jib. Larry’s hands worked furiously, a blur of motion like a thirteen-year old discovering the art of self-pleasure, trying to free the boy. But the precious child was truly trapped.
     
    Larry’s blue eyes squinted.  “It’s no use!” he shouted to himself and to the uncaring sea.
     
    Marianna stood captivated by the spectacle. But then she felt her own boat turn.
     
    “What are we doing?!”
     
    One of the teenagers called out, “Lady, we have to head to shore! We have to get you back safely! Suzanne said that she would only have sex with us if we got you back safely!”
     
    She saw their point and realized Suzanne had promised much more than French kisses to the youthful crew.
     
    Suzanne interjected, “But what about Larry? Surely we can stay a little while longer!”
     
    “Ma’am, we can’t do anything for them