Islands in the Stream

I said, "You lived in Washington DC?" She said, "Yes, my former husband was a Vice President at General Dynamics in Falls Church. I live in Georgetown now." I said, "You mentioned that my daughter looked a lot like Chelsea Hughes. That seemed to mean something to you. I'm interested, who is this Chelsea Hughes person, and why do you remember her?"

My partner looked a little disappointed. She had thought that I was about to pop the big question; "Your place or mine?" A woman as good looking as she was could find plenty of bed partners and I was wasting her precious time if I wasn't headed in that direction. That was the reason why she started giving "the look" to one of the lounge lizards who was lurking at the bar. It was like she was broadcasting, "Come save me from this nerd." But in the meantime she answered my questions.

She said, "Chelsea's father is Bill Hughes. He is a big-shot in security in DC." I knew Hughes. It's really a very small community at the top, and we all know each other. In fact, in my short happy life as a free-lance pen-tester I had actually subcontracted a couple of jobs through him. My partner continued with, "Several years ago Hughes invited me and my ex-husband to one of those low-life picnic concerts at Yards Park over by the Navy Yard. Hughes and his entire family were there. That's where I met Chelsea."

She seemed to be looking back in her mind's eye as she said, "She is the second of Hughes four kids and the oldest of the ones that he had with his second wife. I remember her because she was such a beautiful girl. Her mother is a great beauty and I was Miss Teen California myself. But neither of us could hold a candle to Chelsea when we were her age. Your daughter is a dead-ringer for her."

I looked with interest at the woman across from me. That seemed to encourage her. Maybe she mistook my deep concentration for newfound lust. Anyhow, she added, "The strange thing about Chelsea was that she was attending MIT, not a sensible woman's college like Holyoke, or Radcliffe. How could a girl THAT beautiful find a proper husband on a campus full of geeks?" She laughed merrily. It was clearly an inexplicable peculiarity on Chelsea's part that she would actually be INTERESTED in nerd stuff.

At that point the dude she had been playing eye tag with appeared and said jovially, "Can I join you two? You seem to be having a good time. And I am always up for a good time" - subtle!! I said, "Of course, I have to go anyhow. I need to make sure that my daughter isn't being kidnapped by some horny dude at the nightclub." I gave my new table-mate a meaningful glance. He totally missed it. Then I turned to my partner and said with sincerity, "It was a pleasure meeting you and I hope I see you again." She didn't acknowledge me either. She was too busy concentrating a fuck-me stare on her next victim.

I went outside and leaned on the ships rail. The water of the Gulf Stream was boiling in a silvery cascade, in the ship's powerful wake. The night was crystal clear, warm and fragrant with one of those huge Caribbean moons hanging on the horizon like a bright yellow dinner plate.

Meeting that woman might have been an odd coincidence. But it was not out of the realm of possibility. Logically, a woman who traveled in the Hughes's peer group might be on this cruise, since it was both expensive and exclusive. It was slightly MORE coincidental that I would run into somebody who knew Chelsea Hughes. But it wasn't totally out of the question either. The woman I had been talking to was destined to inevitably head for the ship's nightclub, which narrowed the odds down to perhaps thirty to one on any given night.

So I had a name. There was no reason to do anything with that knowledge, at least until Ariadne and I could drop the pretense of father and daughter. But I had some useful background. Ariadne was actually the daughter of one of the smartest guys I know. More important, rumor had it that his wife was a lot smarter and even more strong minded than he was. In fact, I had heard that his wife was one of the hottest Milfs in a City that prides itself on trophy women. That would account for my pretend daughter's massive intellect and killer good looks.

The critical factor, and the thing that really convinced me that Ariadne was Chelsea, was the MIT connection. Hughes does exactly what Ariadne does, he is basically a hacker. It is just that he is a white-hat and based on her iconic exploits Ariadne's hat was a whole lot grayer. Nevertheless, any woman who could make her way into MIT was clearly exceptional, in all of the things that Ariadne was good at. So, the evidence pointed directly at Chelsea Hughes.

I wandered back into the nightclub to tell Ariadne that I was going back to the room. She was dancing languorously, with the same fellow from last night; arms around his neck, head resting on his chest, PLASTERED to him. I couldn't see his hands but they looked to be a lot further down her back, perhaps resting on those marvelous buns. This was clearly more than simple pretense, designed to sell our story. She was reveling in the romance. But of course, she was a young woman and he was a handsome man and the "world-of-its-own" ambience of a cruise ship makes reality seem long ago and far away.

I had another unreasoning pang of jealousy. Geez!! This was getting ridiculous. I had no claim on a girl who was young enough to be my daughter and she owed me nothing. She had already saved my life, so-to-speak. The dark powers that she was wrestling with on my behalf would probably not kill me. But they WOULD leave me living under a bridge abutment for the rest of my short and miserable life.

I walked up to the two of them. The guy gave me a pleasant smile. He really DID seem like a good guy. Ariadne said, "Hi Dad, are you going back to the room?" I said, "Old people need their rest my dear. You two have fun." Ariadne said very pointedly, "I'll be back in an hour or so." I said, "I will probably be up but if I'm not I'll see you in the morning." It just killed me to say that. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't see her until MORNING. As I walked out I saw the two of them kiss. Ariadne was clearly caught up in the moment.

My wife of 24 years had jetted off to Paris and spent a week fucking a dirty old man. And now I was losing a woman to a very good looking and totally decent fellow on a cruise. I felt a lot worse missing out on the daughter-figure than I did the wife. So I got a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue on my ship's account. I wasn't paying for it anyhow. And I sat there on the couch drinking my woes away at $100 a shot.

An hour passed. I had just about reached the point where I was wondering which side of the balcony to jump off of. Then I heard the same merry voices coming up the hall. That was a surprise... right on time!! There was a much longer lingering moment and a louder moan and then the door opened. Ariadne stood there looking happy and excited, but totally un-fucked - thank God!!

She said lightheartedly, "Pour me some of that will you?" I poured her a glass and handed it to her. She plopped down on the couch and put her head on my shoulder. It was an affectionate gesture, not sexual in the slightest. She reached up and lovingly stroked my cheek. She said teasingly, "I see you scored." I said just as jocularly, "Not like YOU did." God!! I sounded like SUCH a pathetic little bitch. She stiffened, shifted around and said with wonder, "Do I detect a hint of jealousy in your voice?"

BUSTED!! - I said, "In the short time I have known you I have come to view you as a woman. As I told you back in Miami, that can be problematic. I loved Heather for 24 long years if you count the courtship. And then out of the blue, she just suddenly opted to run off with some guy who was never going to do anything but fuck her." I smiled grimly and said, "Forget about the resulting heartache, I think you can see that would cause trust issues. Since then, I have not experienced any emotions but emptiness and deep suspicion when it comes to women."

I looked at her with affection and said, "And then you come into my life and everything about you is just so beautiful and full of joy. More importantly, you CHOSE to protect me. I didn't make you do that. It was something you decided on your own. So it is natural to have feelings about you; want to trust you and get closer to you. But you are also half my age and the generation gap seems unbridgeable."

I grimaced and said, "The guy you were with tonight is perfect. He is handsome, seems to be very nice and fun. More importantly he is from your generation. The woman I was talking to is totally age appropriate, she is gorgeous and sexy and she is somebody that I would normally spend the night getting to know a LOT better. But all I could think about was you and what you were doing."

I added with considerable emotion in my voice, "So I go looking for you and there you are being romanced by the right kind of guy; a guy who I would want my daughter to be with. That is a perfectly understandable, appropriate and even desirable outcome of two beautiful people being together. But, it just tore me up. So YES I suppose I'm jealous; jealous of your youth and all of the possibilities you still have in front of you. More importantly I am jealous of every man who gets to hold you in THAT way."

She had been staring intently at me. Her eyes were luminous. Finally, she said, "When I took your assignment I also researched you in my special little way." That was a scary thought. A hacker who is as capable as Ariadne would know more about my life than I did. She could read things that I had never seen; like comments in school files, credit reports, and job evaluations.

She gave me a tender look and said, "What I found was a thoroughly decent, honorable and caring human being who did the best he could in the face of every kind of adversity. I also discovered how exceptional you are, strong, smart and creative. And frankly I fell hopelessly in love with a faceless man; as deeply as it is possible for a woman to fall. Since then, you have been everything that I ever expected and a whole lot more. Keep in mind, that my feelings for you originate from long before I met you in the flesh."

Then she looked at me keenly, like she was trying to convey an important message and said, "THAT is the reason why I broke cover and journeyed all the way from Boston to Key Largo. You need my help. But that is NOT why I am actually here. I am with you because I believe that you are my life partner. And the women in my family mate for life."

She added with a coquettish smile, "What you witnessed tonight was nothing more than me relieving a little of the stress that you are building-up inside me. It was covering our tracks; but honestly, that's not why I was doing it. I love to be romanced and you can't do that for me; YET. So I am enjoying a harmless little flirtation with a very nice guy."

Then she favored me a naughty grin and said, "Sometime soon, you will discover what REALLY happens when I give myself to a man. It'll be light-years different than what you've seen me doing so far. I only gave my soul to one person and that's you. That commitment has been in effect for much longer than we have actually been together."

She finished with, "Yes - you are old enough to be my Dad. And that might be more obvious now than it will be when I'm only 60 and you're 79. But I feel like our spirits are seamlessly aligned with each other and I know that is why you sense that you can trust me." Then she added, with sincerity, "I'm telling you to go with your instincts, because I will never betray you and I will be your friend, companion and lover for the rest of your life."

Wow!! We just sat there looking at each other yearning. I started to reach for her and you could see the blast doors slam shut in that magnificent mind. She said with steely resolve, "If I let THAT genie out of the bottle we won't come out of the cabin until we arrive back in Miami and that would not serve our present purposes. There will be a lifetime for us to love each other THAT way, once we convince the Darkweb that Tommy Meissner is indeed disappeared."

She pushed herself back and stood up and said, "Oh, by the way, in case you are wondering, you have already witnessed the most intimate I will ever be with another man. Your appeal is your steadfast strength, personal loyalty and devotion, which is all I ever wanted in a man and you can expect an equal measure in return from me. In the meantime, I think I am going to take an icy cold shower and go to bed. Do you need a cold shower too?" - girlish smirk.

I looked at her as honestly as I could and said, "No I don't. What you just told me is more gratifying and profoundly moving than all the sexual experiences I have ever had. I have looked in my heart and I see that I do indeed trust you. In fact, I trust you so much that I am NOT going to add the usual reminder about not betraying that trust. I know you won't do that because I know what kind of sincere and giving person you are. And I guarantee you that we will still be wheeling the booster out to the launch pad when I am ACTUALLY 79 and you are a mere child of 60. You will never regret giving yourself to me."

~

So, the endless unreality of the cruise wore on. I ran into my friend from the nightclub several times. She was always with some lean, suntanned and age inappropriate stud. She gave Ariadne a thorough looking over every time we ran into her. And Ariadne started going out of her way to avoid her. Perhaps my pseudo-daughter remembered something too.

The last stop before St. Lucia was Martinique. Ariadne, her newfound friend and I spent the day shopping and taking in the rum distilleries. It seemed like a perfectly paternal thing to do with my daughter and her guy. For his part the kid was a thoroughly good person. His name was Frank. He was a Network Manager for the Dairy Farmers Association, which is headquartered in Kansas City. He was 29 years old and had played basketball at K-State. He kept calling me "Sir," which made me feel slightly older than Methuselah.

He clearly found Ariadne very attractive. Naturally, she gave him a lot of girlish encouragement, holding his hand when they walked and generally hanging on him when they were standing together. And of course it killed me, but I found to my utter astonishment that I both understood what she was doing and more importantly trusted her.

That feeling was reinforced every time Frank got close to an intimacy line that Ariadne had unquestionably drawn. On one occasion, he was so bold as to slide a hand over her shoulder and rest it on one of her perfect round melons. Ariadne wouldn't speak to him for an hour. He appealed to me and so I sat down, as she was sulking at a separate table in the St James tasting room. I said, "Frank is sorry sweetie. He said he won't do anything like that again." Frank was hovering concerned in the background.

She shot me a penetrating and very meaningful look and said in a whisper, "Remember what I told you. My body is reserved for you, and you only." Then she said in a voice that Frank could hear, "Okay Daddy, I accept Frank's apology." Then she turned to Frank and said in a menacing voice, "That had better not happen again, you hear?" But she took the sting off of her statement by going over and giving Frank a sweet kiss. He wriggled all over like a happy puppy.

Ariadne's special little statement had given ME a giant hard-on. So I stayed seated at the table for another couple of seconds. I looked at her holding Frank's hand and chattering with him. She was wearing some kind of stylish short-shorts that were pure, expensive, contemporary chic. They showed off her fabulous legs, hips and butt in a manner that was very cruel to all of the horny old men in the surrounding area.

Some guys might like fashion-model bird-legs. But women with well-developed and muscular calves and thighs are irresistible to me. My ex-wife had a beautiful pair of legs. But, Ariadne's legs were sculptural masterpieces. They were muscled like she had grown up in gymnastics, or dance. But they were extra-long in proportion to her tiny body. They ended in a taut set of rounded hips and a bubble butt that screamed both strong, and fruitful.

She stood there waiting patiently holding her boyfriend's hand, with one of her stunning round hips shot out. That position showed off a gorgeous butt cheek in a manner that was not helping my erection problem. I finally got things under control and said, "Well, I'm going back to the ship."

Ariadne said, "Can you and Frank go back by yourselves. I want to do a little more shopping." Frank said eagerly, "I can stay with you." But Ariadne said a little too hastily, "No, I want to poke around without a man looking over my shoulder." Any prudent guy will remove himself from a woman's presence when she says something like that. So Frank and I took the launch back to the ship. I knew that Ariadne was headed for an internet café.

I was getting dressed for dinner when she came bursting into the room looking excited. She said, "I just checked. They are thinking about lifting the bounty. Most of them believe that you are dead. There are still a few holdouts but I spent some quality time encouraging them to get real." Obviously the Red Dragon had been working virtual space on my behalf. One of the most disturbing things about my new situation was how easily I could forget who Ariadne really was.

~

The next day the ship landed us in Castries City, capitol of the sovereign island nation of St. Lucia. We were barely off the coast of South America at that point and the weather was truly equatorial, meaning the sun weighed a ton and the ocean breezes could not quite kill the humidity. The greenery was more verdant, even more so than it was in the northern part of the Windward chain. And the smell was tropical.

Our room on the ship was air conditioned. That was the reason why Buster looked at me like I had lost my mind when I said, "Let's take a walk old buddy." But we were getting off. And leaving everything, including Frank, behind. It was a total disappearance. I didn't pack anything. Neither did Ariadne. We would get what we needed once we got onshore. Somebody else had paid for everything that we had bought up to that point and we could pick up anything we needed thanks to Ariadne's particular set of skills. So it was easy to just leave everything, except my dog.

Ariadne's family had a villa in the Cap Estate area on the northern tip of the island, west of Rodney Bay. Castries City is south and east of there. We flagged down a creole in a decrepit 1950s Plymouth. He seemed to be offering a taxi service, and God knows what else. His name was Jean-Claude. He had that classic island lilt and a machine-gun delivery, and for the entire trip up to the compound he never stopped talking about the people who lived there.

The villa was owned by three sisters and their families. One of them was Bill Hughes and his wife. That had already been established, since Ariadne was going to use it. The other two were sisters of Hughes's wife along with their husbands. Jean-Claude said that he had been a long-time close companion of the younger sister's husband, while that fellow was down here on St. Lucia. In fact, the guy had actually met his future wife there. The other sister was a millionaire businesswoman and it was her money that had bought the place. Jean-Claude told us that THAT sister was married to some sort of shadowy figure who the natives thought worked for the CIA.

We got to the place and it was indeed impressive. Jean-Claude dropped me, Ariadne and Buster at the gate. It was a mere fifteen-foot-tall specimen of wrought iron. Ariadne walked up to the keypad, which was part of the speaker built into the right-hand pillar. She entered an 8-digit identity code. The gate began to silently swing open and we walked down a tree-lined crushed white coral driveway toward a house that I still couldn't see beyond the trees.