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Jeff Schmidt didn’t know how much longer he could hold on. A rogue wave had hit the cruise vessel amidships, throwing him over the rail, slippery with salt brine. “Sonofabitch!” he groaned, gnashing his teeth. He trembled with exhaustion. “Just shows what happens when you accept a free five day, four night cruise!”

“I love you, Carrie Ann,” he had sputtered on the second night out, toasting her in wine, staring dumbstruck into her amazing blue eyes. They sat at the bar in the Crow’s Nest, part of a discotheque in the very tippy-top of the ship. Blond, an Irish beauty with acres of pink skin, Carrie Ann wrinkled her nose and gave him her staccato laugh, as sharp as the bark of a cannon: “Ach! Ach! Tee hee hee!” If they wanted, Jeff and Carrie Ann could dance the night away to Donna Summer’s Love To Love You Baby and ABBA’s Dancing Queen. Jeff’s wife Susan was in the casino, gambling.

Jeff had never intended to have a shipboard romance. God forbid! But there she was, his second day afloat, on the Lido Deck, getting in line for the international buffet. Seeing Carrie Ann in her green smock, his mouth fell open. “Ach! Ach! Tee hee hee!” she laughed. Wrinkling her nose knowingly, she pegged him with her icy blue stare.

Sonofabitch! Jeff was a goner.

“Who are you?” he panted, approaching her. He read her nametag. Carrie Ann. Spa and Cosmetics.

Even after a dozen years as a real estate agent in the Midwestern office of Bob Meachum Realty, meeting thousands of customers, Jeff had never felt so stricken, so totally overcome. It might be the sea air. Susan was occupied on the afterdeck, learning to play a steel drum.

“I work in the spa, you dummy,” giggled Carrie Ann. “Why don’t you ever come to see me?”

‘Well, uh, women use the spa,” gulped Jeff, hopelessly aroused, accepting a mottled brown plastic tray from Carrie Ann. Working cruise ships out of Fort Lauderdale, she was on her lunch break.

“It’s not only women,” she insisted merrily. “Men come use the spa, too. Anybody who wants to. You can come… use… the spa…” she lisped invitingly, batting her blue-tinted eyelashes and giggling. “Boop-boop-be-doop!” she crooned, smiling toothily. She sounded like Betty Boop.

“I will. I shall. Come to the spa. Right after lunch,” he stammered. He wasn’t sure if Carrie Ann was trailer trash or a goddess, but he loved her. Desperately. He was passionate about it. She made him feel young and stupid.  

“You sit over there,” she pointed, once they had loaded up their trays, her red nail polish gleaming. “I have to sit in the employee dining area, you understand, but I so want to keep an eye on my great big teddy bear!” Chortling, her eyes shone. “Otherwise, who knows, some hot-blooded señorita may catch your eye and spirit you away-ay!” she laughed. She knew about such maneuvers. She deployed them often enough, herself.

His mouth as dry as cotton, trembling from head to toe, Jeff did as instructed. Shoveling food into his mouth absentmindedly, he sat staring across the expanse of carpet, glass and metal. Staring helplessly. Occasionally, Carrie Ann pegged him with an icy blue glance. She didn’t seem to have a lot to say to her coworkers, reserving her attention to reading the ship bulletin.

Part of the cruise itinerary was a daily lecture on timeshares in Florida, California and Arizona. All three states offered vacation opportunities for members of a timeshare. While listening to endless sales pitches, Jeff and the other passengers drank mimosas. Attendance at the lecture wasn’t mandatory. What were they going to do, throw you off the ship? But if you missed a session, you got a nagging reminder on a scrolled paper stuck in the metal mail slot by your cabin door. If you missed two sessions, Stephanie or Craig from the timeshare company rang you up on the phone and demanded to know if you were feeling all right. “Haven’t got a bout of Covid-19?!” they asked cheekily. “A high fever and dry cough?” In the business world, there was no such thing as a free lunch.

Prior to their cruise, Jeff had made a fat commission off Ray O’Day, the car dealer, who hired Jeff to handle his purchase of a mansion on the south side of town. A typical Southie mansion, it was a little run down, constructed last century by a steel baron. Ray O’Day didn’t seem concerned about the money, focusing on the exact changes he wanted done to the house. He had a young wife from Honduras, Gabriela. Smitten, Ray would do anything to please her.

Observing them, Jeff wished he felt that way about his wife. Whatever passion they once shared had long since dissipated. Whenever he made amorous advances, Susan laughed good-naturedly and muttered some quip: “What’s up, doc?” or “Why now?” or “Can’t it wait until Date Night?” One reason for going on this cruise was to rekindle some romance in their lives. Jeff had found it. Happy with the status quo, Susan didn’t seem inclined to look.        

As obedient as a puppy, right after lunch, Jeff trotted to the spa in the forward end of the ship. He found Carrie Ann behind the counter, staring icily at the world passing by. That gaze of hers was a gift of the gods. You could get lost in Carrie Ann’s sky-blue eyes and never find your way out again. Buxom, with a tight little ass to die for, she was generous with her attributes, making fools of people in every walk of life. “Oh, hi!” she exclaimed. “Ach! Ach! Tee hee hee!”    

Whatever debauched fantasies he harbored, once he signed in on a form with multiple copies in yellow, pink and green, Jeff found the massage itself to be a rather robust, impersonal affair. Lying on his stomach on a Naugahyde table, a white terrycloth bathrobe spread beneath him, he experienced Carrie Ann’s pummeling as unexpectedly vigorous. Brusque. She didn’t even talk. Suddenly, she exclaimed, “Okay, you can turn over.” Once on his back, his underpants conspicuously swelling, Jeff watched as Carrie Ann humorously poured scented oil into the palm of her right hand and rubbed her hands together. The cubicle filled with the pungent, sweet odor of lilacs. “I’m a trained clinician,” Carrie Ann explained, massaging his chest rhythmically. “Right out of high school, I knew that I was gonna need to make a living. If Donald Trump or Wes Craven didn’t want to marry me, nobody else would!” she chortled brightly. “This cubicle is under surveillance,” she added, yawning. “It’s to cover the cruise line in case of liability.” She pointed at the small, black security camera hanging from the ceiling.

Whatever Jeff had expected, it wasn’t this: To be shunted along like a sausage on a factory assembly line. He was sorely disappointed, until the moment when Carrie Ann suddenly scraped a scented fingernail across his shoulder, along his neck and around behind his ear. Totally aroused, he became putty in her hands. “We’ll have time together,” she murmured, smiling toothily, eyes bright. “Just not here!”

Once Jeff put his clothes back on, Carrie Ann had him sign a chit. Then she walked him to the ship’s store, full of souvenirs, designer clothes, jewelry and name brand watches behind glass.     

“You have your ship’s card?” she asked, twinkling, pointing skyward at the security camera. “Buy me some things!”

As soon as the salespeople behind the glass counters saw a green smock, they understood that one of their own was getting showered with goodies. Solicitous to a fault, they acted as if they had never laid eyes on Carrie Ann. To avoid embarrassing Jeff, who might at any moment turn off the faucet. Such things happened.

Fat chance. Carrie Ann was a sweetly enthusiastic shopper, rubbing up against him, cooing “TAG Heuer” or “Nike” or “Cartier,” her busy hands caressing his wrists, playing with his shirt collar or playfully rummaging through the contents of his pants pockets. Gazing helplessly into her eyes, Jeff had never felt so desired, so admired, so appreciated.  They walked around the shop. Jeff bought her a TAG Heuer watch, a gold necklace with a heart-shaped pendant, an anklet, a Shetland wool sweater and a tin of toffee. The merchandise had yellow price tags as sticky as flypaper. Signing, Jeff put everything on his ship’s card. The saleslady plopped their purchases into a cloth tote bag with a logo advertising the steamship line.

Leading him to the foredeck, Carrie Ann stood by the rail smoking a cigarette. Jeff stood mutely watching her, Carrie Ann’s blond hair ruffled by the sea breeze. “They expect rough weather on this cruise,” she pointed out, moving a hand in front of his face. Her fingers with their red nails flexed wildly.

“I didn’t know that,” replied Jeff, entranced.

“I have to get back to work, blah, blah, blah,” said Carrie Ann, gathering her packages. “Do you and the missus go to the after-dinner show?”

“We did last night.”

“Why don’t you send the missus to the show and then you and I can have some leisure time for us ourselves?” asked Carrie Ann ungrammatically. Jeff couldn’t imagine any sweeter way to say it. Seeing the way he looked at her, Carrie Ann laughed. “Ach! Ach! Tee hee hee!”

A little stuffed at dinner and worse for wear, Jeff sent Susan to the show and met Carrie Ann on the afterdeck. Standing by the outdoor pool, she smoked her umpteenth cigarette of the day. Her windblown hair was ghostly silver in the moonlight. “Someday I’m going to be rich like Donald Trump,” she explained. “That’s why I believe in tax cuts and strict enforcement of immigration laws and conservative justices on the Supreme Court and all that bat shit.”

“And all that bat shit,” Jeff laughed. He couldn’t believe how amazingly attuned to the tenor of the times Carrie Ann was. He figured these were things she picked up at the spa, listening to people’s chatter. “Donald Trump will be running again in 2024,” he pointed out, bemused by the very thought of it. The man was a titan, he never aged.

“Yeah, yeah, second chance,” said Carrie Ann, taking his hand and leading him to the elevator. “And now the cranky baby’s talking about having his own party.”

“Anybody can found a political party,” Jeff remarked.

“I can’t,” she replied. “Show me your cabin.”

As he unlocked the cabin door, he looked at her and asked, “Aren’t you afraid Susan will walk in on us?”

“We’re not doing anything,” Carrie Ann pointed out starchily. “First Class, Second Class, I just wanted to see your cabin.” Turning away, she walked back down the corridor.

There were First Class suites on Deck Six, but Jeff had never considered booking one. Closing the door, he followed Carrie Ann. He felt a little shattered. She had never spoken to him in that tone of voice before. “I’m s-so s-sorry,” he begged. “I guess I’m just nervous.”

“What do you have to be nervous about, silly?” she teased, pinching him in the side with a claw-like hand. Thank God! Everything felt right again in Jeff’s world.

Carrie Ann took him to a part of the ship accessible only to the crew.  Behind a white-painted steel door, they climbed metal stairs two decks and entered a hallway leading to the infirmary. Unlocking an examination room, Carrie Ann laughed in Jeff’s face and said, “Be they ever so humble, these are the digs!” As soon as the door swung shut, leaving them in semi-darkness, Carrie Ann grabbed him, pulling him close and ravenously planting her tongue in his mouth. They stood kissing, swaying in each other’s arms. Jeff had become so engorged, he thought he would pass out. “Let’s get some light on the subject,” cracked Carrie Ann. Abandoning him, she went to a light switch by the door and turned it on. The room was bathed in pale fluorescent light.

Jeff was shocked at the clinical whiteness. The air, recirculated, felt chilly. “Take off your clothes,” said Carrie Ann. As Jeff stripped, she took each garment and folded it neatly, putting it on a metal shelf. Down to his socks and his drawers, which ballooned comically, he waited to see what she would do. Shivering, his skin broke out in goosebumps.

Fully clothed in her green smock, Carrie Ann plucked a wad of paper towels from a black plastic dispenser on the wall by the sink. She had him lie on his back on the examination table. Then she went to work on him, massaging Jeff into a total, explosive eruption. Lickety split, one, two, three. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. That’s all she wrote.

“Is that it?” he panted.

“Oh, no!” she cooed. “You can do a lot more!”

He kind of hoped they would, you know, make love. Carrie Ann’s professional training put her in a different frame of mind. She wasn’t the least bit surprised that it took a full ten minutes of energetic physical coaxing to achieve Jeff’s second orgasm. After that, totally depleted, he followed her meekly to the afterdeck where she had a smoke, her blond hair silky in the moonlight. “Oh, before I forget,” she said, fishing a chit and a ballpoint pen from the pocket of her smock. “You need to sign for the massage.”

Laughing ruefully, Jeff signed the chit.

“Sorry I’m in such a bad mood,” said Carrie Ann. “It’s that damn impeachment trial on the shore to ship TV.”

The impeachment trial in the Senate was a slow-motion train wreck. Every day marauding Democratic managers, holding all the cards, showed repetitious videos of the attack on the Capitol. How many times were we supposed to watch President Trump, speaking behind bullet-proof glass, say “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”? Why couldn’t the wild card Demographs understand that for the vast majority of Southerners, Midwesterners , north country Michiganians and Wisconsinites, this trial was a long, dull, throbbing pain a long way away in The Land of Buzzkill. Just because it was writ on parchment in the Constitution didn’t mean that you take a crappy attack on the Capitol by Canadian football hooligans and blame it on Our Most Dear and Beloved Leader. What was the matter with them??? Hadn’t those perverts ever attended a Trump rally? Trump was life. Trump was fun!

Unless, of course, you were a lib or Hispanic. Jeff couldn’t understand Trump’s animosity toward Latinos. What South of the Border scoundrel had treated Our Leader so badly in his youth, he nursed a lifelong grudge? Trump liked Slavic women with pendulous breasts and big fannies. It would never occur to him to mix blood with a red-hot señorita. Low-brow white boys from Queens didn’t do miscegenation shit. After all, Donnie’s daddy belonged to the New York branch of the Ku Klux Klan.      

Hanging over the rail, Jeff could no longer feel his hands. Why me? he thought. Jeff knew why. Only a complete fool would go wandering around the outside of the ship in such stormy weather. The crew had battened down the hatches and stowed all movable gear. The captain warned the passengers over the P.A. system to remain indoors. Jeff, meanwhile, needed to clear his head. And clear his conscience. Maybe a good soaking would do as penance. Well, so much for good intentions, old buddy! Jeff knew there was an aphorism for his current predicament— the best laid plans of mice and men something, something, something— but he couldn’t remember the rest of it.

As his arms slipped on the railing, slick with sea water, Jeff realized that he might never get to toast in champagne the heroic life and untimely death of record producer Phil Spector, creator of the Wall of Sound. Jeff admired the man’s cajones. Nor would he ever get to make love to Carrie Ann, if that’s where their relationship was headed. With her, it was hard to tell. He probably wouldn’t get to cast his vote for their hero Donnie Trump in the 2024 election either, a billionaire businessman president who drained the swamp, smote their enemies, brought universal prosperity to Wall Street and built a wall between the Democrats and the rest of America!

Feeling his grip on the rail slipping further, Jeff’s bitterness overflowed. Damn timeshares!

“What’s going on?” asked Susan on the third day of their cruise. “You are, like, out for the count almost every minute of the day.” A raven-haired beauty with critical, hazel eyes and a round chin, she was nobody’s fool. Room service had delivered breakfast to their cabin.

“It’s the salt sea air,” swore Jeff reassuringly. “I’m just not used to it. That and seasickness. I spend half my time laid out on a deck chair, wishing I was dead. I saw you playing the steel drum, by the way. That’s my girl! You go get ‘em, babe!”

Unimpressed by his salesman bravado, Susan shook her head meaningfully and said, “I came on this cruise with my husband. So far, I haven’t seen hardly any quality time with my husband. Nu?” An ultimatum.

“Yeah, okay,” Jeff insisted. “I promised a guy I would look over the deed to his property this afternoon and recommend a realtor— since I don’t practice in Florida— but otherwise I’m free and available for the entire day!”

“Good! Let’s keep it that way,” Susan replied coldly.

“Making allowances for my fragile sea legs, of course,” Jeff amended.

Pushing away her half-eaten breakfast, Susan rolled her eyes and sighed.

“What’s your wife gonna say when she sees all those unexplained charges?” Carrie Ann asked, leaning against the railing on Deck Four, which consisted mostly of old-fashion brown deck chairs and enormous white lifeboats. She and Jeff were virtually alone, only the occasional jogger speeding past, huffing.

“I do the accounts,” explained Jeff. “Susan’s kind of oblivious that way.” Trying to grab a hold of Carrie Ann, she kept gliding beyond his grasp.

“Well, this is boring,” she observed. “Let’s go to the Ship’s Office and you can take money out of your registered bank account.”

“Money?” asked Jeff.

“Yes, you know, the green stuff.”

“What kind of money?”

“A thousand dollars cash,” twinkled Carrie Ann, glancing down knowingly at Jeff’s crotch. Coming into his arms, she ground her pelvis against his groin suggestively, planting an endless kiss smack on his mouth. She tasted of peppermint and smelled of lilacs.

Jeff felt abused because of the money request, until Carrie Ann chortled “Loverboy!” and massaged the bump at the back of his skull rhythmically. YES! This was good. This was worth living for. This was love!

“Can we go back to our little hideaway by the, you know, infirmary?” he asked, his cock all but tearing a hole in his trousers.

“Let’s go to the office and get that money first,” insisted Carrie Ann, running her left hand over his swollen crotch and laughing, “Ach! Ach! Tee-hee-hee.” 

Jeff felt like an idiot, staring into the deep blue ocean of her eyes. Every time he gave in to her just a little, he promised himself that this time would be the last. Yet their relationship seemed to grow of its own accord. He really wanted to help Carrie Ann any way he could. He couldn’t even explain why. She was just so sweet, so nice, she brought out the compulsion in him.

Having been on many cruises, Carrie Ann had seduction down to an art. She figured that since Donnie Trump became a celebrity by hiring a ghostwriter to pen The Art of the Deal, maybe she, Carrie Ann, could hire a ghostwriter of her own and write The Art of Seduction. After all, Florida was lousy with ghostwriters. Jeff could bankroll her in that. Wanting to make him happy, she felt sure of it. This first thousand was a promising foretaste of what was to come. It wasn’t exactly a Horatio Alger scenario, but Carrie Ann believed that success comes to those in America who are bold enough to take a leap into the unknown. She could do that. Bored out of her skull, she would take that leap any day.       

As the ship rolled, Jeff Schmidt plunged into the sea. Submerged in freezing water, he tried to focus on some facet of his situation. As he clawed his way to the surface, salt water hit him full in the face. Leaving him choking. The cruise line must have contingencies for “Man overboard!” Of this Jeff felt certain. Floating in a wave-tossed daze, he watched as the ship steamed away into a gray mist without him. As the cold crept ever nearer to his heart, Jeff realized he was a goner. Damn! Just when Donald Trump was remaking America for people like him, the Forgotten Man. An oily blackness clouded Jeff’s vision. Tears of frustration froze on his cheeks. A wave caught him and pulled him under. So this is drowning, he thought. Fake News? Guess what…

I’m fucked!

As the darkness closed in around him, one final thought sputtered across Jeff’s tortured brain: Me and Trump. Drowning in bat shit.