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His arms wave in wide circles as he loses his balance due to the steep angle of the boat. In seconds, he’s let out a “Heeeeey,” and toppled over the rail with a splash.
“Jerry!” Marney rushes to the rail, but the tilt is significant, and she can’t stop her momentum. Suddenly, she’s over the rail, too!
“Damn it.” The captain throws his hat on his seat, snags a life saver from a hook near the front, and dives over the edge.
Oh. This is not good.
“See what you did!” Gina cries. “You killed Marney and her husband.”
The crew gets more forceful, pulling people off the boat. I turn away from them, pinning my hat to my head, and peer over the edge.
Marney and Jerry bob in the water. The captain swims over to them and hooks their arms over the floating ring. The three of them slowly make their way to the dock, where a long ladder dips into the sea.
“Come on along, thank you, come on along,” sing-songs a woman on the dock, trying to force everyone to head to the beach. “We’ll take good care of them.”
Marney heaves herself up onto the rungs, but Jerry has difficulty.
The captain grunts with the effort of trying to shove Jerry high enough to get a foot on the ladder. He keeps going underwater. The crowd on the boat lets out a gasp every time he dips below the surface.
“Please make your way to the beach,” a crew member insists, herding most of marketing down the dock. They crane their necks to watch the struggle in the water.
I stay on the boat as long as possible, watching the Dougherty employees slowly get forced away from the end of the dock. The crew is physically pushing them.
Marney reaches the top of the ladder, and a man hauls her onto the wood planks.
Then it takes the man from above and the boat captain from below to push Jerry’s hefty body up to the dock.
I swear half the ocean cascades off him to drench the captain one more time.
A female crew member touches my arm. “We need you to exit the boat.”
“This is my fault.”
She shakes her head. “No, they refused to listen to the crew.”
“But I started it.”
“Everything will be fine. Let’s get you onto the dock.” She leads me off the small boat.
Most of the employees are gone, but Gina waits for me, hands on her hips.
When I get close, she resumes her tirade. “You were fired, missy. You did not have clearance to come on this trip. You’re a stowaway and with the cost of each cabin, it’s probably a felony act of fraud!”
She doesn’t scare me, truly. There’s no way Dougherty wants the ugly publicity of me getting arrested or sued or whatever.Once, when we reallydidhave fraud, a guy in IT stealing an entire order of iPads totaling fifteen grand, they handled it internally.
So I shrug. “Some people would say it was an act of cruelty to fire me right before a company trip for something that wasn’t fully investigated.”
Gina is so shocked that I have argued with her about this that she sputters for a bit. I walk past her down the dock.
A crew member hands me a towel. She smiles, but her eyes dart to Gina and back to me.
“Thanks,” I tell her, and take one. I’m going to enjoy myself if it kills me.
I aim for the food hut to grab a plate and a margarita, but my confrontations are far from over. Viola is waiting near a pair of blue beach chairs, her eyes like lasers as she watches me walk off the dock.
Here we go.
She tromps toward me in a bright yellow bikini. She must have fake-tanned last night because she’s significantly darker than yesterday.
