Chicken heads on the poop deck

Sunday, 1 July 2007

Remy had kicked the man from the bank off the pier and into the dirty harbour water. He cast off while the suit was still flailing about in the muck, clinging to his black leather briefcase for dear life. As Remy’s boat pulled out of the quay he spat at the bank guy.

“I think I hit the fucker too, but he was floppin’ around like a kidney on a stick though... Hard to tell.”

Remy’s friend Paco just nodded and handed him a Bloody Mary.

“Goddammit Paco you shit eating savage what do I want this for?” He pulled the stick of celery out of the highball and through it over his shoulder where it bounced off the deck and plopped elegantly into the ocean.

Remy took a cautionary glance beyond the mast at the shrinking Harbour.

What swine. He thought. To talk about money in a Yacht club? Are they unscrupulous whores?

He held a mild condolence for the most recent Bank-man he’d had a meeting with though. Remy threw a handful of cash at him, pissed on his desk as the suit just sat there agape, urine cascading off his gilded blotter and filling up his lap, and then promptly set fire to his office door on his way out. Remy honestly felt that, even though he may have had a brief and passing moment where his decorum was compromised, the suit had got what he deserved . And so that was that.

“How far is it to Fiji from here Paco?” He yelled back over his shoulder. He sat on a banana chair at the nose of the boat deck and sipped his Bloody Mary.

Paco kicked chicken heads off the poop deck where Remy and the Yacht Club caretaker, a little Swedish man named Yen, had been doing some recreational shooting the night before, liqoured up on rum and smoking fat cigars that had left ash streaked all over the boat’s shiny white shell.

The yacht bumped and swayed slightly as the giant sails dragged it out into the blue, glassy eye of the ocean and every now and then Paco would hurriedly tighten a rope or let one of the sails loose to catch the razor-blade breeze. Paco looked up at the nose of the boat where Remy had risen to piss off the side of the boat. He looked at the Bloody Mary beside the deck chair and stooped down the ladder into the cabin to fix Remy a G&T chaser.

Remy dropped himself back into the banana chair and closed his eyes for a second. He sat up slightly, reached down and pulled a tan Gladstone bag out from underneath the deck chair and unlatched the top. The bag popped open like the jaws of a giant mutant carp. Inside was a sheet of acid, a bottle of Swedish absinthe, a bag of mescaline and a coffee can full of DMT. Tucked into the inner pocket was a bowie knife and a Luger PO-8 pistol.

Bah. It’s a girl’s gun but it’ll do. He thought. After all I may have to get rid of that chowderhead Paco. He asks too many fucking questions.

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