“He drove me to it! Fifteen years of drinking, arguing, laying on the sofa and doing nothing. I should have dumped him fourteen years ago.
“We were on our honeymoon, we were both twenty-five, we were both in great shape and the world was rolled out there in front of us. What does this crumb say he wants to do that Sunday, the first day of our honeymoon on an island paradise, the blue Caribbean stretched out in front of a private bungalow on a very secluded island? He wants to watch football? Football, I want to swim naked in the warm waters and make love on the beach under a palm tree and he wants to watch football… it’s our honeymoon for God’s sake!
“I should have listened to my father’s subtle suggestions. Never one to tell me how to live my life he simply suggested I take a longer, closer look before I jumped into marriage.
“If I’d had half a brain, I would’ve realized he was seeing something I wasn’t when my father suggested we live together for a year or two. Encouraging his ‘baby girl’ only child to shack-up with an unemployed pretty boy should have set off gongs in my brain. But no, I was thinking with my hormones and my head was the farthest point on my body from where my concentration was centered.
“Peter (that’s his name) was gorgeous, muscle boy, clean shaven, short cropped hair and perpetually tan.
“By the way, you will notice I said ‘was gorgeous’, the operative word here, ‘was’!
“The history of this debacle began fifteen years ago this past April when Peter hit on me at a friend’s wedding. Now I’m pretty much a knockout myself, was and still am, particularly for a forty year old that’s five foot six, one-hundred and sixteen pounds and not an ounce of fat. Yeah, I still attract them… Peter… not so much.
“Three things happened after we married, fifteen years ago this month, (oh, it’s December by the way) from hitting on me to the wedding alter was eight months eleven days, what a genius I was.
“The first is that I found out that Peter not only didn’t have any money, he was over one-hundred fifty grand in debt and had quit his job, whatever it was, the Friday before the wedding. I was number two in our family business so I was the breadwinner and a damn good one, was and still am.
“The second was that Peter loved junk food, beer and watching sports on TV more than anything else on earth. After six sexless months I realized that his turning down a fantastic, nude, hot and yearning beauty on a Caribbean beach for a beer and finding the only sports bar on an out of the way island was the norm not the exception. I should have dumped him there and then after six months… no I should have dumped him on the honeymoon, but I didn’t.
“The third was the biggest mistake and it wasn’t mine it was my father’s. He felt responsible for not being more outspoken about what a useless piece of monkey poop Peter was, before the wedding. So in order to assure I would continue in the lifestyle both my father and I believed I should live in, he gave Peter a job in our family company. This was the beginning of the end… really; this was the beginning of the literal not figurative end!
“Our family has been in the ship brokerage business for over one hundred years. My father bought out all his relatives some thirty years ago and now he is the sole owner and CEO. I’m now President and COO.
“The business is the middleman between people, companies or countries with ships they would like to sell or get rid of and the same groups that want specific ships. The company brokers everything from cruise ships to nuclear submarines.
“The customers range from billionaire entrepreneurs and arms merchants to small countries and drug dealers. However, it is very hands on and personal and the keys to the relationships are trust and confidence.
“Into this complex enterprise my father placed Peter… now who was being dumb?
“Dad tried Peter in every role he could find; finally he relegated Peter to a glorified watchman of ships in the process of changing hands.
“It was perfect for Peter when he was assigned to oversee the ‘layup’ of a ship in transition, a process that could run from twenty-four hours to six months. He would bring to the ship his TV and a giant cooler of beer, find a place on the ship that was comfortable and order junk food by the carton load. There he would stay growing dirtier and fatter until the ship was picked up and he would get another assignment. He would come home to take a shower and some clean clothes, make a pathetic attempt at coupling with me (I would have had sex with an Orangutan before letting the slob touch my fine flesh) and move off to another day, week or month of TV sports, beer and junk food.
“It was one of these assignments, a very unusual one that gave me the idea.
“Our brokerage had been attempting to sell a beautiful old cruise ship, The Tuul, from the era of the HMS Queen Elizabeth I (1940s & 50s). Although it was in horrid condition, the ship, moored at one of our docks in Naples, was sound. All the magnificent woodwork, grand staircases and staterooms were still in restorable condition. Even so, for six months there had been no takers and the ship was the asset of a complex international bankruptcy. So three weeks ago, the bankruptcy court ordered it towed out to see and sunk as a fish sanctuary in the Gulf of Mexico. Some ‘friend of fishes’ type group had been lobbying for this since the ship went up for sale.
“Watching over this piece of stately history was… you got it, our own Peter.
“He never left the ship. We’d almost forgotten he existed until we got the notice from the bankruptcy court and my assistant asked where I wanted Peter to go next. The ship he was on was going to be towed into the Gulf of Mexico and sunk about two hundred miles off the coast of Naples, Florida, the city where our global headquarters is located.
“Being a wiseass, I suggested that since he appeared to be so content that maybe we should just leave him on the cruise ship. Then I went through the expected arrivals and picked an aircraft carrier coming in from Argentina a day or two after the cruise ship left and told him to assign Peter to it.
“That evening the plan formulated as I sat alone sipping a Margarita enjoying the sunset over the Gulf. It was time to retire Peter, from his job, from my life… from his life.
“No one would be on the ship until the tow crew showed up and they would never venture off the upper deck where the tow lines would be secured. No one would look for Peter because no one would suspect he was still on board. Further I would assure the tow crew the ship was empty, and I was the boss, no one doubted me.
“Almost three weeks later, two days before the ship was to be sunk, I boarded the Tuul at midnight dressed like a dockworker and quietly crept through the first class deck until I reached the suite where Peter had set up his home. Sure enough, there was Peter, as expected, unconscious on a sofa, the television still playing and a couple of empty six-packs on the floor.
“I quietly took off my backpack, cap, kicked off my shoes and unzipping the grey jumpsuit I was wearing stepped out of it and was just behind Peters head, totally naked.
“I unzipped the backpack and took out a pair of surgical gloves put them on and took out the only other item in the backpack, a mountain climbing ice axe.
“Leaning over Peter I whispered into his ear, ‘Hello Peter, I’m here for you’.
“He opened his eyes and saw me as he had not seen me for almost fifteen years and was about to open his mouth when the point of the ice axe penetrated his forehead about three to four inches. He really didn’t move after that first perfectly aimed blow, (I told you I am in great shape), but I didn’t stop until I had delivered between six and ten more whacks. I really didn’t like him!
“That little display of hostility made a bit of a mess, which is why I was naked when I dispatched Peter, not because I wanted to give the slob a thrill.
“I stuffed Peter into the oversized closet in the suite and went into the bathroom which I knew had a hand pumped portable shower. I had sent it to the ship when I had worked out the details of Peters end. The water tank was full since as expected, Peter never used it.
“After about three minutes removing the remnants of that slob from my body I emptied the water tank onto the cabin floor, watching the blood flow down the drain in the corner.
“I got dressed, went out on the seaward side of the ship and dropped the ice axe into the Gulf of Mexico… and went home to a delicious cold Tuna snack and a chilled glass of Chardonnay. In seventy-two hours, the Tuul with Peter in the closet of suite 110, would be some five-thousand feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico… or so I thought.
“The best laid plans of… etc.
At 9:30 the next morning as I was dressing to go to the office my cell phone rang. It was my father, elated with good news, or so he thought. A buyer had entered a very attractive bid for the Tuul and he and his tugs would be in Naples for the pickup in three days. He concluded with the suggestion that I get Peter moved as soon as possible. I giggled a bit (sicko that I am) and told him he had no idea how important that suggestion was and then I did a very strange thing, I drove to his house on Gulfshore Drive and sitting over a glass of fizzy water told him the whole story and how I had better get my affairs in order since I was going to jail for a very long time… or worse. Florida is a death penalty state and boy did whacking Peter qualify for pre-meditation, a requirement for the death penalty.
“At about this point you are saying ‘the bitch deserves to be electrocuted’, particularly those of you that are fat, stinking, sports watching, beer drinking slobs… the wives of these slobs… not so much.
“Sorry guys, it didn’t happen!
“When one is the daughter of a man, who for fifty years, has supplied everyone from the CIA to the Colombian drug cartels with ships of various types and more importantly disposed of ships they did not want traced, very little is beyond possibility.
“Peter’s body and any residual mess were long gone to places unknown to me by the time the Tuul’s new owner showed up.
“All his personal belongings had been removed from the ship and the apartment he lived in on our estate. All his money had been withdrawn from his accounts and someone with his name and general appearance had boarded a flight for Caracas, Venezuela with a very flashy, attention getting female. The couple was later seen boarding a ship bound for Havana, Cuba. It was assumed he tired of his role of watchman of ships in transition and somehow got a better offer in Cuba.
“Me? I still live on the estate in Naples, Florida. I’ve been promoted to Chief Executive officer of the family business. Dad is semi-retired and I am buying his interest out over the rest of his life.
“My father had only one thing to say to me about Peter’s end, several months after the event, ‘Pamela, you are never to do anything like that again’.”
FLASH FICTION 