weather couldn't hold forever any more than the champagne. Still, Sean couldn't believe they were really going to die in a lifeboat in mid-ocean, even though he didn't see how they were going to avoid it either, and when he had his sense of humor about him-especially when he was stoned, which was a good deal of the time-he spent long hours composing meticulously typed letters to the New York Times exposing Baalow Nee for the crook he was and parenthetically mentioning their predicament. These he committed to empty champagne bottles and cast in the direction of New York City with great gusto.
After the fifth day, however, the joke started to wear thin. Andrea, who had kept her seduction plan in high gear all the while, marked off number thirty-nine before going to sleep on the fifth night, and suddenly had a fit of discouragement. She cursed out loud and Sean woke up, forcing her to pee over the side quickly to cover up her notches on the gunwhale. They were going to have to start eating the smoked octopus soon, and then Sean would find the notches anyhow and get pissed off and absolutely refuse to fuck.
She was rapidly realizing how loony it was for her to keep up the facade of blithe sensuality necessary to her seductions. She began to feel like Sheherezade, constantly having to devise new techniques to keep the king's fancy engaged. But the more obvious it became that there wasn't any mortal way for them to help themselves, the more determined she became that they weren't going to lay down and die without giving the mystical solution a chance. She only hoped they wouldn't run out of KY before they reached number 100, because what with drinking only limited amounts of alcohol each day and being constantly exposed to the sun and the elements, they were both getting dehydrated, and without the KY her cunt would get rasped to a frazzle in three seconds. She resolved to use it more sparingly.
She spent many hours trying to figure out how in the world fucking could possibly do them any good. She imagined the wildest things. Maybe the Guru had planted a bug someplace in the boat that allowed someone in the radio room of the True Enlightenment to count off their fucks and he'd come get them or send somebody after them when they'd reached a hundred. Maybe in some mystical telepathic fashion he could just tell when they were fucking and where they were. She worried about whether a fuck counted if both of them didn't come. Then she cursed herself for being so silly as to think about all this in the first place. But she was going to get to 100 come hell or high water, and in the middle of the fifth night she discovered a way to make things go faster.
Sean was, as usual, deep in an exhausted, stoned, and partially drunken stupor. She greased herself up, rolled him over, sucked him for quite a while until he got fairly hard, then crammed him in. 'If he ever wakes up and catches me,' she thought, 'he'll throw me to the sharks.' To her surprise she found fucking this way quite pleasant. She took it very easy, letting the rhythm of the rocking boat do most of the work, and built herself up to a peaceful but nonetheless powerful orgasm. She put things back where she'd found them and went to sleep.
Her new technique stood her in good stead for a while, augmenting the countless strip-shows and head-on attacks and protestations of unmanageable sexual appetite with which she managed to bewitch, beguile, and bully Sean into an average of seven or eight fucks a day in spite of himself. She took to copping as many as three or four freebees every night, at the price of having to listen to Sean's wild tales about how the cumulative effects of exposure and a life on rich food and champagne were giving rise to the most unusual and vivid sexual dreams… also his complaints that she seemed for some reason to wake up unusually tired, and napped frequently during the day. But disaster struck on the tenth night when the inevitable happened: Sean woke up in the middle of an orgasmic fantasy to find himself shooting his wad into Andrea's honey-pot and, amid a ceaseless jabbering diatribe about nutrients, forbade her ever to fuck him in his sleep again.
But even with this setback and Sean's consequent refusal to give it to her all the following morning and well into the afternoon, on the eleventh night she pulled aside the case of octopus and cut the ninety-seventh, ninety- eighth, and ninety-ninth notches in the gunwhale. And when Sean took their position the twelfth morning she was possessed of not a little excitement-along with not a little apprehension-at the thought of consummating her appointed task some time during the day. What if they hit a hundred and nothing happened? That would be the ball game as far as she was concerned. Their potato chips were soggy, their champagne was hot, they had enough food for perhaps another week if they stretched it, and then they'd start to starve and drink sea water and go crazy and jump overboard to wrestle the sharks.
And what did she expect to happen? Was a big balloon supposed to float down out of the sky? A yellow submarine from the depths, maybe? Or-this had to be it-a whale had been assigned to come gobble them down and they'd ride back to New York playing dominoes with Jonah.
After Sean had got over his usual first-thing-in-the-morning swearing streak and general dissertation on the hopelessness of their situation Andrea rolled some joints and stripped off her clothes and proceeded to the greasing ritual. She was slightly bitter at the fact that she'd used up just about all the KY-there was no more than an inch and a half in the bottom of the tin, looking thicker and greener and muddier all the time-on her insane project, because fucking would be one of their few remaining pleasures if they really were going to be marooned in mid- ocean for what little remained of their natural lives, and even that would be limited now. She handed Sean a joint.
'Not again,' he said, as he took a toke and watched her preparing for action.
'I've got to have it,' she insisted. She rubbed up her clit and grabbed for his crotch.
'Not before I have some breakfast,' Sean replied. 'No way. Jesus, I guess it's the goddamned octopus. I hate octopus, but… '
'Waaaaaaaah!' Andrea screeched, throwing her head back and forth and writhing around in the bilge. 'I've got to have it right now! Right now!' She clawed at her cunt and humped up and down. 'I cant stand it! I'll go crazy without it!Give it to me right now!'
'Jesus,' Sean thought, 'she's cracking up.' He knelt beside her and tried to quiet her down.
'Don't stroke my head, stupid! Fuck me! I'll be okay if you just fuck me! I know I will!'
Sean was bewildered and confused but he didn't know what to do except humor her. He took his pants down and pressed his limp rod into her crotch.
She calmed down immediately. 'Oooooooh. Yeaaaaah. That's right… ' She stroked his cock for five minutes till it produced an adequate erection and shoved it in. She humped like crazy, got really excited, and came three times. Afterward she was herself again. She got up and searched the horizon hopefully.
'Damn,' Sean said, scratching his head and making for the octopus. 'That was weird. I'm really worried about you.'
He moved the case.
He stared.
'You bitch!' He examined the notches on the gunwhale, grouped neatly in fours with slashes through them. 'Ninety nine! And that was the hundredth!'
He glowered at her.
He burst out laughing.
He started to cry.
'Okay, Miss Seductress. You're gonna get it now.'
Andrea was wiping her cunt off with her jeans. 'Huh?'
'I said, you're gonna get it now. All these tricks and acts and games and ploys-to get me to do something I didn't want to do, to get me to make a fool of myself fucking you because Baloney put one last funny joke over on you-I'm gonna rape the shit out of you!'
Andrea didn't know whether to be scared or what, but she could sure as hell see Sean meant it. For the first time since they'd been cast adrift he ripped off his pants and his cock sprang to instant erection and he came after her.
'Wait a second! I've got to grease up again! I wiped it all off! You'll kill me!' She dove for the KY can.
Sean dove on top of her and struggled to turn her over as she plunged her fingers into the goo for the hundred and first time.
From inside the can something bit her. At least it felt like a bite. There was something sharp in there. Something metal. 'Hey!' she screamed as she felt around and grasped one cylindrical object about three inches long, then another, at the bottom of the can.
Sean froze. 'What?'
She fished the things out. 'I'll be fucked.' She smiled. 'What would you say these were?'
Sean grinned and shook his head. 'Offhand, I'd say they were spark plugs.'
