Chapter Eight
The next day, Clarity woke up and stared at the calendar in their cabin, crossing out Monday. Today was Tuesday, and their cruise was entering its fourth day. They were reaching the island of Anegada, twenty two miles off the Coast of the island of Tortola. Around mid day, the engines of the ‘Lady Moura’ stopped working. She walked towards the kitchen galley, stumbling into Ribalaigua.
“We´ve run out of fuel,” said Ribalaigua. Bartleby had reduced the cruise´s fuel and maintenance costs to a maximum to pay for the pussy liners, and the result was engine breakdown due to lack of fuel. Bartleby didn´t seem worried and told Ribalaigua to prepare lunch.
“We´ll have fuel,” said Bartleby, “we´ll have fuel.”
After several hours, around four in the afternoon, Bartleby summoned Flower to the living room area of the ‘Lady Moura’, an area with ornate embossed leather wall and ceilings, a mahogany library carrying three volumes of the dictionary of mechanics and a book titled Islands of the Western Pacific, a cabinet, credenza and sideboard, and the statue of a roman goddess which could have been Lady Fortuna. Clarity stepped behind Flower, low key, but loyal to her friend.
“I know about your calls to Oleanne,” said Bartleby.
“That was the idea,” said Flower, “we were enquiring about your transaction, and it´s quite opaque.” He ran his hand across the back of the statue.
“The people of Oleanne like you,” said Bartleby.
Bartleby opened one of the portholes of the living room. Out in the distance, a supertanker was visible, harboring the flag of Tambrera O, the favorite drink of Chubby Caddy. The tanker had several tanks filled with diesel fuel. The flag was the agreed signal with the correspondent of Oleanne. The ‘baby shower’ was ready to take place. His eyes squinted past the incoming sun towards the supertanker through the porthole. A small, motor-powered boat was crossing the distance with the ‘Lady Moura’ and approaching the fishing boat. The engine failure was the excuse for the supertanker to approach them, as agreed with the call center of Oleanne, in case the Coast Guards of the British Virgin Islands decided to inspect them. He turned to Flower.
“I want to introduce you to someone who gives better perks than I do. Are you enjoying your time as Sugar Baby?”
“Yes, it´s been quite a learning experience. You haven´t slept with me, which was agreed, I´ve gotten some new clothing, which is nice, and I´ve met genuine pussy liners, which is sort of a bonus. But I´m missing my real big shopping bag, and I requested that to the shopping bag requesting area of Oleanne.”
Bartleby ignored her plea. A few minutes later, a heavy set man, carrying a disheveled shirt, bermuda shorts, and timberland shoes entered the room, followed by two corpulent henchmen. He walked straight to Flower and extended his sweaty palm.
“I´m Chubby Caddy, your new Sugar Daddy.” Flower was speechless. He added, “I like your selfie.” Flower felt she was being demoted, for Chubby Caddy was not as good looking as Bartleby. Her position as Sugar Baby was meant to last a few more days, and this assignment of Sugar Daddies was not intended to fit in the ethnographic diary she was keeping, describing her cultural experience. She argued for several minutes that the Oleanne gift card allowed her to get off the ‘Lady Moura’ and shop in Tortola, and that she was entitled to having a single Sugar Daddy during the few days that entitled her to be a Sugar Baby.
“This is not in my Sugar Baby contract,” said Flower, “Mr. Bartleby is my Sugar Daddy, and I´m doing quite well here,...” Anton entered the room and picked up Flower, lifting her like a feather, carrying her towards the motorboat. Bartleby glanced at Clarity while Ribalaigua came in, serving rum and coke for Bartleby.
“I´m not sure what to do with you,” said Bartleby, looking at Clarity.
“She could work for Oleanne customer service, for their call center,” said Ribalaigua. Clarity eyed the bartender with a look saying thanks. She told Bartleby that she worked as a genuine teleoperator in Malibu, and Bartleby agreed to the proposition of the bartender. It was certainly better than being thrown overboard. Bartleby told Clarity to walk inside a corridor leading to the bar.
The henchmen of Chubby Caddy walked to the bar area and picked up all the empty bottles of the bar shelf, leaving the bar rail intact. The empty bottles, placed by Sandy, held several hundred liquor supply requests from hotel resorts and bar owners in the British Virgin Islands and other islands in the Caribbean like St. Martin, Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, and Mosquito Island, St. John, Montserrat, St. Vincent, and Barbados. Clarity´s task was to match the requests with hundreds of boxes holding spirits, waiting in the dry docks of the supertanker.
Twenty minutes later, Clarity watched Flower inside the flybridge of the supertanker, as Chubby Caddy officially labelled her his Sugar Baby. Clive had stayed on the 'Lady Moura', somewhat oblivious to the transaction. As Sugar Daddy, Chubby Caddy was brutally honest with Flower, saying that he was going to share her naked with women in various positions. Flower looked beyond the flybridge of the tanker. The boat of Chubby Caddy was kind of big for her to be a Sugar Baby here. The fit wasn´t as good as with Bartleby, she claimed.
“Positions of responsibility?” asked Flower.
“No Greek positions, greek sex positions,” said Chubby Caddy. The liquor distributor ran his hand across his chin, reflecting upon the implications of that.
During several hours, Clarity performed the inventory of the liquor boxes onboard the tanker, matching the amounts and brands with the list requested by resorts and bar owners throughout the Caribbean. This ‘baby shower’ was a large scale transaction, and Bartleby, through his work at Tambrera, had provided the contact of Chubby Caddy, a provider of illegal liquor, to the Shawab, a distributor of liquor in the Caribbean, using client information from Cobbler. Someone was providing the Shawab with this information on Cobbler´s liquor clients, taking liquor market share away from Cobbler, and Clarity wasn´t sure who it was. She inquired with the tanker´s crew, who told her that the next step after inventory was delivery.
“How is the alcohol going to be delivered?”
A retainer of Chubby Caddy told Clarity that there were several powerboats inside the tanker, which would be used for delivering the liquor. After her task was done, Anton led Clarity to a small cabin, where she found Tiffany. Tiffany told Clarity that the transaction´s logistics and supertanker navigation waypoints were being led from Oleanne´s call center in one of the British Virgin Islands, a residential home of the pussy liners before each was assigned their Sugar Daddy. Tiffany didn´t seem comfortable or happy, not only because she couldn´t get in touch with Cobbler. Bartleby was resisting her plea for him to leave his role as middleman working for the Shawab, and become an honest executive with her as partner, married partner. Tiffany was intent on getting married and she liked Bartleby´s initiative and professional competence as marketing executive. She also thought that she could change the behavior of Bartleby and turn him into a neophyte of the Mysteries.
“He´s afraid of the commitment needed to be with me,” said Tiffany.
“I think he just likes to be a Sugar Daddy,” said Clarity, “this transaction has been planned by him, there´s a lot of money involved I would think.”
“That´s the point, he´s not rich, he´s not a Sugar Daddy.” Then, thought Clarity, Bartleby had used Flower to become a Sugar Daddy. She hoped that Cobbler was tracking them and that he would find a way to deliver them from their ‘cruise’ inside the tanker. She thought about the flag harbored by Chubby Caddy´s ship.
“What does the flag on the tanker mean, the large Tambrera O flag?”
Chubby Caddy, explained Tiffany, was also an aspiring neophyte, and he looked to the Shawab, a real neophyte, as his spiritual role model. Harboring the flag of an alcohol brand like Tambrera, meant that Chubby Caddy had overcome the temptation of excessive consumption of alcohol and was headed for spiritual bliss, which came after pleasure, according to the proper steps of initiation. Before pleasur
e came knowledge of the lesser mysteries, but that was being bypassed by the Shawab and Chubby Caddy, something looked upon as dangerous by genuine initiates. It was precisely the certainty that she was an initiate, which had led Cobbler´s girlfriend, Optesia, to disappear, according to Tiffany. She had a quarrel with Cobbler and shortly after decided to be with the Shawab.
“As Sugar Baby?”
“No, as a disciple,” said Tiffany, “somebody led her to high levels of sexual bliss and that led her to ignore Cobbler and trust the Shawab.”
Initiation, thought Clarity, was more than spiritual, it was also sexual, highly sexual. A thought entered her mind. Sexuality, not money, made the world go ‘round.