The Deep Blue Alibi

her body?

God, why am I thinking of him?

Victoria tossed the newspaper into a trash receptacle and glanced at Steve, whose right hand covered his groin.

'Now what?' she asked.

'It's shrinking.'

'Oh, stop.'

'Do you think I'm small?' Remembering Aqua-man in his Speedos. Knowing they were moments from encountering Junior's jumbo Johnson.

'I think you're well proportioned for your body.'

Touche.

'I mean it, Vic. Am I a little . . little?'

'I don't have a sufficient sampling to answer. But yours is fine. It's cute.'

'Cute? Cute is for kittens. A man wants to be a monster. A leviathan. A colossus.'

'Okay, it's a cute little colossus.'

'An oxymoron if ever I heard one.'

'It's fine. You also have a great tush. You look terrific in jeans.'

'I'd kill for a pair right now,' Steve said.

The path ended at a rope bridge suspended over a peaceful lagoon. Lily pads and water flowers on the surface, fat Japanese koi swam below. From unseen speakers, music played. Dark and mysterious, heavy on the drums. Jungle music.

A man and woman, both naked, both in their sixties but fit and tanned, padded across the bridge, headed their way. They would all have to pass sideways.

Okay, good test, Victoria thought. Act normal. Reach a comfort level.

'Hullo there!' the man called out.

'Hi! Hi!' Victoria was too loud.

The woman looked them up and down, and Victoria felt herself reddening. 'You two need some sun,' the woman advised.

Victoria told herself to keep her eyes above waist level, but maybe Steve was right. If you're going nude, you expect people to look. As they scooted sideways, she let herself check out the man. The rope bridge was swaying back and forth and, omigod, so was the man's oversize scrotum. A low-hanging, loose sack that resembled a burlap bag with a couple onions inside. Victoria turned away so quickly, she could have suffered whiplash.

What am I doing here? This isn't me.

On the other side of the bridge, the path opened onto a wide expanse of grassy lawn. The pool was fifty yards away, and they could hear the yelps and cheers from a water volleyball game. They passed nude couples on chaise lounges, soaking up the afternoon sun.

A panorama of bare butts. A smorgasbord of exposed navels and glistening loins. Breasts heavy and pendulous, perky and firm, round and conical. Nipples puffy and nipples flat, nipples like raisins, nipples like raspberries. Forests of pubic hair, some wild and untamed, others as carefully tended as a putting green. Then the slack penises, draped on thighs like dead squirrels on logs. An array of sleeping male organs, ludicrous in their frailty. Did God play a trick on mankind with those distended pieces of droopy, feeble flesh?

As they approached the pool and refreshment stand, smells of coconut oil mixed with grilling meat from a barbecue pit. An aroma both sensuous and carnivorous.

Then Victoria felt the beginning of a piercing headache. 'Maybe this isn't such a good idea.'

'That's what I've been saying. Junior's trying to throw us off. How can we cross-examine him when. .'

Just then, two petite women in their twenties with taut gymnasts' bodies jogged toward them. Perfect bods, Victoria thought. Slick with oil, defined deltoids, small breasts barely moving with each powerful stride.

Steve, of course, was mesmerized.

'When what?' she said.

'Huh?'

'You were saying something. How can we cross-examine Junior when. . something. When what?'

Steve turned to watch the women's perfect tight butts disappear into the foliage. Ten million years of evolution, Victoria thought, and men still act as if they had just crawled, web-footed, from the swamp.

'We're fine here, Vic. Just fine.'

Several couples played cards at poolside tables. Others waded through the shallow end of the pool toward a waterside bar. People were staring at them, Victoria thought. Staring at her. Appraising her.

This is insane.

'Steve, I'm really not comfortable here.'

He was looking around at the nude women sprawled on the chaises. 'I'm not shrinking anymore. I might even be growing.'

'I just feel so strange.'

'We have work to do.'

But his voice wasn't in work mode. Deeper now, his mellow mode.

How could he have relaxed just like that? To her, it seemed like a thousand eyes were drilling into her, and she felt herself blushing.

'Thank God my mother can't see me now.'

'Princess! There you are.'

That voice. It couldn't be.

'Join us for a pina colada, darling. Then for God's sake, get some sun.'

In the second row of chaise lounges, reclining like royalty, there she was. The Queen held half a coconut shell festooned with two straws and a little purple umbrella.

Naked! In front of all these strangers.

Just look at her! An all-over tan. Her tucked tummy flat as an ironing board, her siliconed breasts as buoyant as floating beach balls, her skin tighter than the head of a snare drum. The Queen's bare legs, stretched out on the chaise, were slim and evenly bronzed, all the way up to…

Omigod. My mother, my fifty-eight-year-old mother, has shaved her pubic hair into a champagne-colored stripe the width of an emery board. At the spa, they had a name for it. What was it?

'Wake up! Look's who here.' The Queen issued commands to the heavyset older man with hairy shoulders on the adjacent chaise. 'Grif, wake up and say hello.'

Uncle Grif! God, this can't be happening.

Victoria felt her throat constrict. Could she even speak? 'Mother, what are you doing here?'

'Oh, don't act so surprised. I was going nude in Monaco when you were still in boarding school.'

Landing strip.

That was the name of the neat little swath of pubes. Perfectly groomed in every way, her mother proudly displayed a landing strip, while she still had a jungle, a woolly rain forest.

Hal Griffin awakened and sleepily scratched his private parts. He extended the same hand toward Steve, who tried pounding-rapping knuckles-instead of shaking. 'Hey, Solomon, how they hanging?'

When Steve seemed stuck for an answer, Griffin barked out a laugh. 'Relax. Enjoy what you got now. As a man gets older, his dick gets smaller.'

'But his boat gets bigger,' Irene Lord chirped, happily.

Griffin looked tanned and healthy, a streak of reddish scar tissue on his forehead the only evidence of the boat crash. 'Welcome to Polynesia, Princess.'

Again she fought the urge to cover herself. 'We were expecting to see Junior, Uncle Grif.'

'And you will, but I have something to say first. Something important.'

'They just got here, Grif,' Irene said. 'Why not talk business later?' She propped herself on one elbow and tucked her legs under her firm butt. 'Princess, I hope you don't mind my saying so. .'