Last Resort by Richard Dubois Page A

runs through techniques of successfully piloting the craft.
    “If you pull too swiftly on de line de cat will capsize, and you probably won’t be able to flip it back over,” he says.
    “Has that happened to the other guests?” Gwen asks.
    “Just dis morning,” he shakes his head with a wry smile. “When dat happens one of us has to sail out on another cat to come to de rescue.”
    Gwen looks at me warily.
    “Maybe it would be better if you came with us,” I suggest. “I don’t trust my sailing coordination.”
    Gwen chuckles and pats me on the back. “Don’t feel bad, honey. At least this way we won’t end up floating in the middle of the bay.”
    Gwen and I hop onto the tightly stretched canvas as Lorenzo pushes us off from the shore. The moment he raises the sail the ocean breeze propels us at a gentle pace away from land. Lorenzo shifts the sail, leans back on the line and we accelerate. I feel the water slapping against the canvas that we sit on. Within minutes, we are much farther than the buoy I struggled to reach during my swim.
    Lorenzo sails near the other resort across the bay. Sunbathers dot the beach. A few shield their eyes from the sun to get a better look at us. Gwen waves to them. A few of them wave back. Lorenzo adjusts the sails to propel us along the craggy, arid coastline. Gwen hands me our camera and poses for a photo, smiling radiantly, long tendrils of hair fluttering in the breeze, the vastness of the open sea as her backdrop.
    “What’s that over there?” I point to the rocky isle across the bay that I spotted on our first night at the resort. The red light I saw flashing on the island sits atop a metal tower.
    “The light is to warn ships about de island.”
    “Does the island have a name?” Gwen asks.
    “Not really. Goat Island, I call it. Every once in a while a technician has to go dere to service de warning light. He told me a goat lives on dat island. It must have swum out dere one day—decided it seem like a nice place to call home.”
    “Or it couldn’t figure out how to swim back,” I add.
    “True, true. Dere is a current dat sweeps towards Goat Island. The goat is probably stuck, unable to swim back against de current. The technician told me he tried to coax it into his boat but no luck.”
    “The island is so small. I’m surprised it has enough food to eat,” Gwen muses.
    Lorenzo smiles knowingly. “Nothing is tougher den a wild goat. Dey don’t need much to get by.”
    Back on the beach, we thank Lorenzo for his expert sailing skills. We shower and dress for dinner. Jonas greets us as we arrive at the empty restaurant. “You have the honor of being our first guests tonight,” he leads us to a small table at the back sheltered by flowering bushes with a prime view of the sea.
    Alone with Gwen, I find myself at a loss of anything interesting to say. This was not something I expected. Throughout the day, we got along smoothly, except for the time I swam out to the buoy, but without anyone else around to help spark a conversation, or some physical activity like snorkeling to distract us, we become like two strangers. We deliberate over our dinner menu with the silent intensity of attorneys focused on a contract.
    “Do you remember how it was when we first met?” Gwen suddenly asks, breaking the silence.
    I pause for a moment, recalling that time. “Yes, of course. Those were the happiest days of my life.”
    “You were so funny—the things you used to say. You were so different from the usual dumb jocks I’d dated before. You were clever and silly. When I first met you, I thought ‘What an interesting new friend I’ve made’, and then before I knew it you were so much more to me. Remember that time we went to a picnic and got caught in a downpour?”
    I think back wistfully to that day. “The sky turned black. The rain came down in buckets. I was drenched straight through to my underwear.”
    “And we ran all the way back to my apartment,” she