My Journal

By Harriman Nelson

20C

I was in my lab, checking out even more new pearls that my clams had presented me with when Lee came in and turned on the monitor and tuned it to the topside deck.

The procurement team had returned. The Zodiacs were stuffed to the gills with supplies, and a rented cabin cruiser (I knew it was rented because ‘Atta’ Boy Rental’s was emblazoned on the side) tied up alongside.

Crewmen were soon busy helping the team, and the pilot of the rental offload its merchandise.

I was almost smacking my lips in anticipation.

Suddenly there was a distraction, and the deck crew began to wave and whistle toward one of the tour boats that had broken through the police boat barricade that had protected us all day.

It wasn’t the ‘Chipee, I love you!” refrain from one of the girls that had provoked the men’s attention. It was her seductive removal of her bikini top, which she waved in the air.

Her friends followed suit and were soon equally as topless.

It was with some difficulty that O’Brien, topside,  got the deck crew’s attention back to the job of securing and lowering the supplies below to the hold. In fact, he needed a little encouragement from Chip to quit gawking at the girls himself, especially as some of them jumped into the water and began to swim the short distance to Seaview.

“I think you’d better restore order, Captain,” I said as the first of the girls climbed up the rope ladder to the deck.

“Yeah, but it sure was nice while it lasted,” he sighed.

By the time Lee, eyepatch in place, emerged on deck, the fawning females had surrounded Chip, taking ‘selfie’s of them kissing him and rubbing their hands on his chest and other places while O’Brien, valiantly trying to resume order, was having an equally difficult time as some of the girls were doing the same to him and the crew.

“Enough, girls, please,” he was saying, or trying to say, in the effort not to harm public relations.

“Atten hut!” Lee ordered. For the men, it  was no problem to obey. They were trained to obey the skipper implicitly despite even the worst, or best of circumstances, depending on one’s point of view.

“I’m sorry, girls,” Lee lied, but continued firmly, as befitted his position, “but you’ll have to get back to your boat. We’ve got to finish up here and submerge. We wouldn’t want any of you to get hurt.”

“You can hurt me anytime, gorgeous,” one of the few girls who still wore her bikini bra, said, abandoning O’Brien and headed toward new prey. “You look familiar.”

“He’s the captain, you idiot,” one of the girls hissed.

“And as captain,” Lee said, “I’m taking back control of my boat, even if I have to have all of you forcibly removed. You don’t really want me to ask the police to arrest you, do you for trespassing?”

“You wouldn’t!” the girl said.

“Try me.”

“We were just trying to be nice,” one of Chip’s piranha’s said.

“And we thank you for the sentiment,” Lee said, “it’s been…intoxicating. You’re all quite lovely. But we have to get back to work. Officer?” Lee called out to one of the officers on the nearest police boat.

“Blimey, he means it!” one of the girls said.

“C’mon, we’d better go,” another said.

The girl with the bikini bra removed it, and dragged it across Lee’s face, then put it atop his head. “A little souvenir for you, luv. Maybe you can cut it up and use it as a more fashionable eyepatch.”

Then she jumped into the water, as they all did, and swam back to the boat.

“All right, back to work,” Lee ordered the men, taking the bra off of his head,  “and get that lipstick off your faces.”

The ‘aye sir’s’ weren’t exactly enthusiastic.

“Cold showers wouldn’t hurt, either,” he added and returned to the Control Room and quickly headed aft.

I couldn’t help thinking that I could use a cold shower myself.