Baby licked Max’s chin and he looked down into the dog’s beady black eyes. Even Lola’s dog looked at him as if he were capable of providing a miracle. As if he could pull it out of thin air and save them all, adding to his burden. Tightening the noose.

He placed the Styrofoam on both of the dog’s sides. Then he wound the tape around Baby’s belly and back and the hunks of foam. When he was finished, the little dog looked like a silver tray with legs. It probably wouldn’t save Baby’s life, but it would keep him afloat.

The door to the head opened and Lola staggered out. Her face was as white as paper, and her lips were almost without color. She glanced toward the galley as she moved to the couch. The yacht swung hard to port, and she dropped down on her knees and crawled the rest of the way. From outside, unseen rain and sea smashed against the windows.

Max held on to the dinette and waited for a break in the turbulence before he walked to the couch. “This is the best I could come up with,” he said, and set the dog in her lap.

“Thank you, Max.” She lay down on her side and held Baby close to her chest. “I knew, deep down in your heart, you liked Baby.”

“Yeah, he’s grown on me.”

“Like moss?”

“Yeah, like moss.”

A weak smile touched the corners of her mouth. “Me and Baby and moss.”

“Maybe I’ve decided I like you a little bit more than moss.”

“Yes, I know.”

“How’s that?”

“You kissed me like you like me better than moss.”

A wave hit the Dora Mae starboard aft with enough force to knock Max to his knees. He hit hard and slid across the floor. The lights flickered and popped, then the engines shut down, pitching the cabin into darkness so complete, Max couldn’t see an inch in front of his face.

“Max!” Lola’s panicked cry filled the inky blackness.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Are you still over there on the couch?”

“I don’t know where I am. Where’s Baby?” A few tense moments passed before she spoke again. “Here he is,” she said a few inches from Max’s feet. “Will the lights come back on?”

The emergency generator hadn’t kicked on the first night, and he doubted it would tonight. “Not unless I restart the engines.”

“Don’t go outside.”

“Honey, I wasn’t planning on it.” Through the darkness, he crawled toward the galley and found the duffel bag on the floor. As he pulled the bag toward the couch, his eyes adjusted somewhat, taking in the varying degrees of black and gray. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Just my elbow. I think I’ll live.” She was quiet a moment, then asked, “Max, do you think…” She didn’t finish, but he figured he knew what she was going to ask.

“Do I think what?”

He could barely hear the sound of her voice over the howling wind from outside. “Do you think we’re going to make it?”

Lola and Baby crawled back up onto the sofa, and Max sat on the floor, resting his back against the arm. “There’s a chance.” He told her the truth. Too many times in his life he’d thought he was a goner, but he was still here. Still alive and still breathing.

She grasped the sleeve of his T-shirt and twisted it within her long fingers. “Have you ever been close to dying, Max?”

More times than he could count. “A time or two.”

A few moments passed, then she spoke just above the sound of the angry sea. “I almost died once. It was scary and I don’t want to go through that again.” Her head was close to his right shoulder, and he could almost feel the warmth of her breath on his arm.

“What happened?” He unzipped the duffel and pulled out a flashlight.

“My heart stopped in the bathroom at Tavern on the Green.”

He shone the light on her shoulder and it illuminated her mouth and the top of Baby’s head. The little dog had a bad case of the shakes. Max looked down into the shadows cast across her face, and he wondered if she had some preexisting heart condition, of if she’d taken too many drugs. Again he asked, “What happened?”

“I’d gorged myself on lobster and mashed potatoes with extra drawn butter, then I did my usual fingers-down-the-throat thing,” she said as if she were talking about something she’d done quite often. “My electrolytes went all haywire and zapped my heart. It wasn’t the first time I’d passed out, but it was the first time I stopped my heart.”

“You almost died from puking?”

“Yes.”

Max had such an aversion to vomiting, he couldn’t imagine anyone doing it on purpose. “You were sticking your fingers down your throat? What the hell for?”

He watched her mouth as she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, “To stay thin, of course. The waif look was in, and I am not a natural waif.” The bow of the yacht rose and plummeted, and her grasp on his shirt tightened. She stopped talking until the Dora Mae leveled out once more. When she continued, he could hear the fear in her voice. “Once I saw a girl overdose at a party at the Nepenthe in Milan. Heroin. A lot girls do heroin to stay thin. Not me. I starved myself or barfed.”

“Jesus,” he whispered into the dark cabin. “Why didn’t you find something else to do for a living?”

“Like what? I have a high school education. Where else could I make several million a year without a day of college?” She chuckled, but it sounded dry and without humor. “Not all of it was bad, Max. There were parts of it that I loved. Parts that were amazing. I met some wonderful people who are still my friends. Saw some incredible places. I was given the chance to be a spokesperson for great causes, and it opened doors for my lingerie business.” The wind outside howled and Lola leaned her forehead into his shoulder. She continued to talk as if talking would keep them afloat. “Other parts of the business were addicting. The money. The travel. The clothes. The attention. That’s hard to give up, Max. Going from a somebody to a nobody.”

As the yacht was tossed about, she told him a bit about recovering from bulimia and how her disorder hadn’t been about something missing in her life or an abusive childhood, but rather her desire for perfection.

“Aren’t you afraid it will come back?” he asked.

“Sometimes, but I can’t obsess about that, either. I just have to eat like a normal person and make sure I don’t have any erratic weight gains or losses.” Baby wiggled and she raised a hand and scratched his head. “I have to remind myself that control and perfection are illusions, and that I am okay with my body,” she said. “I don’t have to be perfect.”

“Lola, you are perfect.”

“No, but I’m learning to live with my thighs.”

“Your thighs are perfect.” He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with Lola Carlyle, of all women. And under any other circumstance, he wouldn’t waste his breath. “When I met you, one of the first things I thought was that you’re more beautiful in person than in the magazines.”

“You’re sweet, Max.”

He didn’t think a woman had ever accused him of being sweet before. He thought about it a moment and decided he didn’t mind Lola Carlyle calling him sweet. And if they weren’t in the middle of a storm, he wouldn’t mind showing her just how sweet he could get. “I don’t like bony girls,” he said. “I like women. Women with breasts and hips and a butt that fits in my hands.”

“You have big hands.” She laughed, but her laugher died as the yacht took a hit to the port side. Max braced his feet, and Lola let go of his shirt to grasp the couch. When the Dora Mae righted, she grabbed his shirt once more and finally confessed, “Max, I’m really scared.”

“I know.” He covered her hand with his and squeezed.

“Talk to me. As long as I can hear your voice, I know I’m alive and I’m not so afraid.”

Under most high-stress situations, Max preferred silence, but if talking helped her, he would talk himself blue. He owed her that much. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we’re rescued?” he asked.

“Call my mamma and daddy? I know they’re just out of their minds worrying about me,” she said. “Then I’m going to get my naked pictures off the Internet.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’m going to hire someone to blackmail Sam into closing down that site.”

Max thought there were probably more direct ways to go about it, but he didn’t offer any suggestions because once they were off the Dora Mae, Lola was no longer his concern.

“What about you?” she asked. “What is the first thing you’re going to do?”

“Eat prime rib.”

“Before you call your father?”

“My father died when I was twenty-one.”

She was silent a moment as the rain pounded against the door and windows. “I’m sorry, Max. How did he die?”

“He was an alcoholic. Believe me, it’s not a very nice way to go.” His father had been the one person Max had tried his hardest to save. Tried and failed, and he didn’t need a psychiatrist to get inside his head and tell him the reason why he lived his life the way he did. Why he risked his own life for people he didn’t know and a government that used him for its own needs. He knew.

“I’ve seen what alcohol and drugs can do to people,” Lola said, breaking into his thoughts. “I know that sometimes there is nothing anyone can do to help.”

Max laughed, more bitter than he intended. “God knows I tried, but nothing I did changed the outcome. When I was growing up, he was drunk most of the time. That sort of life is tough on a kid.”

“What did you do when he was drinking?”

“Now, those are some pathetic memories,” he said. Memories he wasn’t going to talk about. Not with her. Not with anyone. He took her hand from his shirt and brought it in front of him. He shone the light on her smaller hand cupped in his, and he ran his thumb across her palm. The yacht rocked toward the starboard bow, and he turned her hand in his and squeezed. “I played a lot with neighborhood kids,” he added. “When I was old enough, I joined the Navy.”