Scowling at his bad luck, Karlo was about to head over to the ice box to grab another beer when his 120-pound braided line suddenly went heavy. A moment later the fishing pole bent wickedly. The reel spun and screamed.
“Missy!” Karlo exclaimed, grabbing the rod with both hands and raising the tip. “Missy, get your butt over here! I got something! I got something big.”
NINETY MINUTES EARLIER
With her face shaded beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat and behind dark sunglasses, newlywed Missy Winkler stared out to the horizon where the vast blue sky met the deeper blue ocean. It hit home just how far they were from civilization. Not that Sri Lanka was a mecca of art and sophistication. What she’d seen of it on the drive yesterday from Bandaranaike International Airport to their 5-star boutique hotel was an impoverished island country.
Missy sighed, longing to be back in the air-conditioned suite in a bubbling Jacuzzi with a glass of chilled champagne. At least she had dinner to look forward to. She would prefer a French restaurant, or Italian; somewhere with class and taste and waitstaff who spoke English. Yet she knew Karlo would insist on something more “authentic,” like last night, which involved sitting on cushions on the beach, eating local seafood, and watching fire performers.
Which, to Missy, was about as touristy as you could get.
She heard Karlo grumble something from where he was casting his fishing line from the port side of the boat, and she called lazily to him, “How’s the fishing, pookums?” Lounging in a deckchair amidship, she faced starboard, still staring out at the forever-away horizon.
Karlo grunted something else that she couldn’t make out above the rumbling diesel engine pushing them along at trolling speed. Missy didn’t bother asking him to repeat himself. He’d been in a foul mood for most of the morning because he hadn’t caught anything. Despite being sixty years old, he could be a real sook, his moody behavior almost childish. If anything, she should be the insufferable, irascible one. She’d wanted to go to Paris or Milan or Athens for their honeymoon, and instead here she was in some dumpy little boat, God-knows-where off the coast of a third-world country, where she had to have three showers a day because of the damn humidity, and where half the mosquito population likely carried dengue fever.
Why did I ever agree to come here? she wondered.
She knew why, of course. Because Karlo wanted to, and Karlo, who was nearly twice her age and worth many millions of dollars, called the shots in their nascent marriage.
Missy said, “Maybe you should try different bait, love button?”
“It’s not the bloody bait. It’s the location. I thought you said you knew where the bloody sharks were, Chan?” he snapped at the charter boat’s skipper. “All the gamefish I could ask for, you told me. Blue and black marlin, sailfish, swordfish, yellowfin tuna, you told me.” He huffed. “Well, where the hell are they, mate? On vacation?”