Boarding the Golden Serpent

Zikica had six months, one duffel bag, and $47,000 in student loans, and the boat at the end of slip fourteen was going to fix exactly one of those.

The Golden Serpent was 180 feet of white hull, chrome, and tinted glass, and the catamaran in the next slip looked like a bath toy beside it. Zikica stopped at the top of the dock with the duffel strap cutting into her shoulder and stared.

Six months, live-aboard, room and board, and a paycheck of $47,000. She'd done the math three times on the bus from the airport, and it came out the same every time. Debt gone. Every loan, every late fee, the whole stupid pile of it. She could breathe again.

She walked up the gangway.

Frank Lin was waiting on deck himself. She'd expected a purser, or at least somebody in a uniform. Instead the owner stood there in a white captain's polo with the sleeves rolled, salt-and-pepper hair cut close, tanned forearms crossed, six-foot-one and in no hurry about any of it. His eyes were steel gray, and they didn't do anything when she stepped aboard. Most men's eyes flicked down to her tits, or away, or down and then away. His held her face for two full beats. Then he smiled and put out his hand.

"Welcome aboard," he said. "She's all yours to learn."

His voice was low and even, the kind you had to lean toward a little to catch.

"Thank you, Captain," Zikica said. "Happy to be here."

"Frank is fine. Captain is for when we're working."

"When are we not working?"

"Good question," Frank said, and turned to show her around.

He walked her through the yacht the way other men walked people through their living rooms. The main salon was cream leather and teak without a scratch on it. The bar ran the length of one wall and was stocked with bottles that cost more than her old rent. The silver on the dining table was polished until she could see her own nose in a spoon.

"How many crew?" she asked in the engine room.

"Three. You, me, and a mate who joins us in Nassau."

"Three," Zikica said. "On a hundred and eighty feet."

"I run her light. I don't like strangers on my boat."

"I'm a stranger."

"For now," Frank said.

She let that one go.

The passage forward of the salon was single file, with a chrome-framed mirror on one wall, and she went first. In the mirror she watched his eyes drop to her ass, stay there for one clean second, and come back up before she turned around. He didn't look caught. He looked like a man checking the weather.

She kept walking, because she'd done two seasons on charter boats and she knew how not to react. He was a rich man with a big boat and working eyes. She wasn't here for his personality.

Her cabin was at the stern. It had a bunk barely wide enough to roll over in, a thin mattress, a flat pillow, a hook, a shelf, a drawer, and a porthole about eight inches across. Frank leaned in the doorway with one hand braced high on the frame.

"Small," he said. "But the sea makes up for it."

"The contract said private quarters."

"It's private. Nobody else fits."

Zikica laughed before she could stop herself, and he held her eyes a beat too long before he pushed off the frame.

"One more thing," he said. "The halfway clause. Did you read it?"

"Ninety days in, we come back to Fort Lauderdale for a port call."

"And either of us can end it there. If you want off my boat at ninety days, you walk with the full forty-seven. No questions."

"That's insane. Why would you pay six months for three?"

"Because I don't keep anybody aboard who doesn't want to be here," Frank said. "It's bad for the boat."

Then he was gone down the corridor.

Zikica dropped the duffel on the bunk and the springs complained about it. She put her palm on the porthole glass and felt the sun in it. Six months, or three if he turned out to be a creep, and the same number either way.

She started unpacking.

***

The galley was better than any kitchen she'd worked in on shore. The knives were sharp, the stock was labeled, and everything was exactly where it should be. She plated a chilled soup with a parsley garnish nobody had asked for and carried it out.

Frank sat at the head of the dining table with no phone, no book, and a glass of wine he hadn't touched. She set the bowl down, nudged it a quarter inch to center it, and poured.

"Thank you," he said.

The second time she came out, he watched her. He watched her come through the door, cross the room, set the plate, and leave again, and he didn't bother to hide it. In the galley she stared at the wall for three seconds. He was eating dinner and she was in the room and his eyes worked. That was all it was.

Between courses he asked questions in that same low voice. Where had she trained? Did she sleep well on the water? Why yachts?

"Honestly?" Zikica said. "The money. And I like being where nobody can find me."

"Nobody?"

"My sister calls on Sundays. That's it. My old landlord can get in line."

"Debt," Frank said. It wasn't a question.

"Forty-seven thousand dollars of art history and a marketing degree I've never used. So your number was very… specific."

"I asked your agency what would make you say yes."

"That's a little creepy, Frank."

"It worked," he said.

She refilled his glass without being asked. He looked down at it, then up at her, and said nothing at all.

At the last course he leaned back and turned the wine glass by the stem, watching the wine instead of her.

"You're wound tight," he said. "That's normal the first few days."

"I'm fine. Thanks."

"I run sessions for crew. Breathing, guided focus. Some people sleep better after."

"Like… meditation?"

"Like hypnosis," Frank said. "Light trance. I trained in it years ago, before I had money, and I'm good at it."

Zikica nearly laughed in his face. She knew exactly what kind of man ran hypnosis sessions for his stewardess, because she'd done two seasons on charter boats and could have written the manual on rich-man bullshit in nice packaging.

"I'm fine, really," she said. "But thank you."

"The offer stands." He picked up his fork. "Nine o'clock, my cabin, thirty minutes. You can leave any time you like. Most people don't."

And that was that. He went back to his food, and she'd been dismissed without being dismissed.

At the sink she ran the tap hot over her wrists and stared at the drain. Hypnosis. Right. What was next, a pendulum? A cape?

The thing was, he hadn't pushed. He'd offered once and gone back to his dinner. A man who needed something from her would have pushed, and this one didn't seem to care what she decided. She'd watched a lot of men fake indifference over the years, and this looked like the real thing. Was that better or worse? She honestly didn't know.

Her shoulders hurt. She'd been up since four, flown, bussed, unpacked, and run a five-course service on no food, and her jaw had been clenched since the gangway. She was going to wake up with a headache either way.

And she was curious, which was the embarrassing part. She'd seen a stage hypnotist in Vegas once make a dentist from Ohio cluck like a chicken, and she'd always wanted to know if it was fake. Thirty minutes. If it was nonsense, she'd lose thirty minutes of a Tuesday night. If it was something, she'd know.

The galley clock said 8:41.

She changed into a clean uniform, because the old one had consommé on the hem and if she was going, she was going as staff. She buttoned it to the top. At 8:58 she was outside his cabin with her hand already up, and she knocked three times.

The door opened.

***

Frank's cabin was wide and dim, with one warm lamp on the desk and a king berth made up tight in dark linen. It smelled of cedar and salt. A leather armchair sat in the middle of the floor, already angled toward the berth.

"Sit wherever you like," Frank said.

She took the chair, because it was so obviously the chair. He sat on the edge of the berth with one ankle on his knee.

"Ground rules," he said. "This is hypnosis. You'll be awake and you'll hear everything. If you want out, you open your eyes or you say a word, and I bring you up and we're done."

"What word?"

"Pick one."

Zikica thought about it. "Ashore."

"Ashore," Frank said. "Say it now, so you know it works."

"Ashore."

"Good. That one's yours. It works every time, for as long as you're on my boat, and nobody gets to use it but you." He uncrossed his ankle. "Do you want to do this?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"That's not an answer."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, Frank. I want to try the hypnosis. Do I get a crystal ball, or is that the premium package?"

His mouth curved at one corner. Then his voice dropped.

It wasn't much of a change. It went lower and slower, that was all. He told her to let her breathing slow and her shoulders drop, and to listen to his voice. It was the same script as the mandatory staff yoga she'd done at twenty, the one where she'd mentally written her grocery list for forty minutes straight.

She sat up straight with her arms crossed and watched him, because she was going to catch the trick.

He didn't have one. He didn't gesture and he didn't swing anything. He just talked, low and even, about her breathing and the weight of her feet on the floor and the sound of the water against the hull. If you got quiet enough, he said, you could feel the boat breathe.

She'd felt that before, falling asleep on smaller boats, and she hadn't thought about it in years.

Her shoulders hurt, so she let them drop half an inch, which was just gravity. At some point her arms uncrossed, and she noticed it late, with a small flat jolt. Her right hand was in her lap and her left was on the arm of the chair. Had she moved them, or had they moved? Was there a difference? She decided there wasn't.

The cabin was warm. Her breathing had slowed to match his voice, the way you fall into step with somebody walking beside you on a dock. She was just tired. She'd been awake since four. There was nothing wrong with this.

His voice kept going and she couldn't stop following it. Her thighs had gone loose against the leather, and she noticed that, and then she stopped noticing it.

"That's enough for tonight," Frank said, in his normal voice.

She blinked.

Her arms were heavy and so were her legs. In the dark glass of the porthole she could see a pink flush across her collarbones, and she looked away from it and stood and smoothed her uniform with both palms.

"That was…" She found her professional voice. "Yeah. Fine. Thanks."

"How do you feel?"

"Like I took a really good nap."

"Same time tomorrow," Frank said, "if you want."

She got her hand on the door handle. "I'll see."

It wasn't no. She knew it wasn't no, and so did he.

In her bunk she ran the whole thing back like a service review. She walked in, she sat down, he talked, she breathed, she left. He hadn't touched her. He hadn't said one thing out of line. She'd been looking for the creepy part the whole time and she couldn't find it anywhere.

So why was her underwear damp?

Because she was twenty-two and hadn't been laid in five months, and a man with a nice voice had told her to relax. That wasn't hypnosis. That was biology.

She rolled onto her side, and the hull moved under her, slow and steady.

She was asleep in about a minute, which hadn't happened since college.