Category: The Ocean

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

Karen sat uneasy in the leaky rowboat, the kind that made promises it couldn’t keep, praying it would cough them up on Alcatraz’s rocks by midnight so Jonny could hunt down his missing ticker. The fog rolled in like a bad alibi. Boris fussed with the oars, pretending to check knots, but his eyes told the real story. He’d seen it a thousand times: the way men kept their distance from women like Karen because beauty that loud made cowards of them. And Karen—poor kid—never knew the damage she did just by breathing. She wanted one man and one man only. From the moment Jonny had sidled up, all trench coat and trouble, tapping her for island know-how she gained from her job as the top tour guide on The Rock, she’d been lost. Boris watched the familiar spell take hold and sighed. The boss had that effect. Always had.

Jonny felt it before he saw it—the stare, heavy as a loaded revolver—aimed squarely at his rock-hard glutes. Same story, different dame. He turned, tore his shirt open, and let the night see the hole Jesse the Knife had punched through him back on Alcatraz. “Don’t,” Jonny said, voice low and final. “Don’t fall for me. Not till I get my heart back from wherever that rat hid it on Alcatraz. All I’ve got is danger and bad decisions.” The oars dipped. The boat crawled. Karen said nothing. She just stole glances at the man shaped like regret and figured—quietly, stubbornly—that she could make do.

Jonny’s Island

Boris shook the salt from his jowls and watched the last bubbles of the S.S. Jonny Pals wink out like bad ideas at dawn, the sea around them littered with the bloated punctuation marks of a voyage gone wrong. Survival, he knew, was about priorities, and priorities were about people. He cleared his throat and laid it out like a crooked hand of cards. Pussy was a given—some things in this world were as fixed as gravity. The movie star with the Frankenstein jawline didn’t blink before calling dibs on the brilliant professor, citing destiny, chemistry, and the simple math of ego. Everyone nodded, because in a crisis people believe whoever sounds most confident, even if he’s wrong.

That left the odd scraps, and that’s when Linda cut in, braids swinging, red gingham bright enough to insult the sun. She chose her boyfriend Jonny…’s pal Eddie with the cool efficiency of someone picking the only lifeboat that hadn’t sprung a leak, and she didn’t bother sugarcoating the reasons. “No offense, Jonny, but you’re pretty damaged and I don’t think you’ll survive more than two weeks in the wild. Plus, you cheat on me in every other Hack Werker novel with whatever hot celebrity has a birthday that day, so it’s not like I owe you anything. “ Jonny felt the verdict land like a sap to the kidneys. Boris made it official with a wag of his paw and a tone that brooked no appeal: couplings set, pecking order established. Jonny, freshly demoted to island mule, got the worst of it—dragging the dead from the shallows while the living sorted their futures. The sea smelled like rust and regret, and as Jonny worked, he couldn’t shake the feeling that being unfuckable was the least of his problems.

Happy heavenly birthday to Bob Denver!

Wet Christmas

It was Christmas Eve, and the rain came down like it had a grudge, rattling the windows of Casa de Jonny while the four of them hid from the world in velvet chairs and bad intentions. The tree glowed soft and guilty in the corner, presents stacked beneath it like evidence nobody planned to log. Jonny slipped into the other room when his phone rang, the door closing on the sound of the storm, and Linda watched the black water streak down the glass like tears that knew better than to fall. “I don’t know how Santa can make it through this,” she said, her voice filled with holiday sentiment. Pussy snorted from the couch. “Who cares? We’ve got our loot. If a few third-rate countries wake up empty-handed, the planet’ll keep spinning.” Boris said nothing, as he was too addicted to the way Pussy licked the castration scar where his nut sack once dangled to want to upset his woman.

Linda was drawing breath to unload on the tomcat when Jonny came back, his face set in that way that meant the night had just taken a sharp turn. “That was Saint Nick,” he said. “The rain grounded the reindeer. World’s flooded, sleigh’s useless. He needs our turbo boat to cover the mess.” Pussy grinned, all teeth and trouble. “Fine. Just tell the elf to knock first. I’m giving Boris his Christmas present when we go to bed and I don’t want some little green freak to interrupt his barks of ecstasy.” Jonny was already stripping down, pulling on a waterproof thong like a man who knew fate didn’t wait for modesty. “You don’t get it,” he said, voice flat as a dead battery. “We’re not lending the boat. We’re driving it. North Pole. All four of us.” Outside, the rain hammered harder, like it approved of the plan, and somewhere in the dark the world waited for a Christmas delivered the hard way.