CHAPTER I
Now and again, Nick managed to pull off some good thing on the turf. He had a certain genius for happy speculation, the quick, unerring instinct of a good thing. He could not for the soul of him restrain a good thing. When he'd say 'good thing', in the course of the night, the others would for a moment feel wondrous lucky and pleased. The feeling generally lasted as long as a bottle of Jack Daniels would, among four jocks and a cook. Tom was born to be a happy fellow, if the enjoyment of the 'good things' of this world could have made him so. He wasn't much of a drinker, but a few measures made him really happy. Jack Daniels was surely one of the 'better things' of this world. On this evening, the others couldn't make it. Bob was away on a cross-country hike, Pat had business matters to attend to, and Stan, well, Stan had a wife to-be to chase. As the sleek maroon amphibian skimmed the frothy waters and slid into the private lagoon off the island with no name, Nick yanked the earphones off his i-pod, flicked open the hood of an attaché case, took a quick peek at the night sky outside, and pulled out a shiny black cylinder that went into his hip pocket as easily as the Jack Daniels slid down Tom's throat, nearly a thousand miles to the east. Tom's strangeness wasn't the result of prison camp experiences. He'd simply get too comfortable for anything like that. His little den often resembled a zoo full of oddballs, including gamblers, bums, drunks, and some ugly crackpots. Outside, hung a flaky placard, with the message ‘We're oddballs who can't be pigeonholed.’ Yet the scene wasn't always as bad. During a televised special nearly three falls ago, a correspondent from the Times had sauntered in, only to leave after downing a whole bottle of Jack. The headline of his report had read ‘The most happy fellas.’ Tom coughed a little laugh, realised how stupid it seemed to be laughing by himself, and then went on to guffaw so hard he'd rolled off the old chester, and almost into the fireplace. Luckily, he hadn't bothered starting up a fire, or there would've been quite a mess. The others weren't going to make it after all. – J.S.
posted by restless rhetoric at 9:53 AM
