Black Swan by Chris Knopf

cognition. So he dropped the matter and slowed the truck to a near crawl the rest of the way to the Swan.
    Â Â Â Â After piling out of the truck, to our great relief, I commandeered Anika's wheelbarrow from inside the hedge and used it to haul the gear out to the boat, where I spent the rest of the day deciphering the manufacturer's installation instructions. In the face of their best efforts to confuse and misdirect, and while in a semi-upside down contortion inside the engine compartment, I made the repair.
    Â Â Â Â The only hitch was the need to run the cable through an enclosed channel right above the rudder. This feature had apparently been added by the hull builder as a tribute to the steering gear maker's love for unnecessary complication. I tried a variety of means for about an hour, and was about to call Vince Foley back and ask if he had the needed piece of equipment, appropriately called a snake, when Amanda handed one down to me.
    Â Â Â Â "How did you know?"
    Â Â Â Â "I assumed the words, 'A fucking snake. Where am I gonna get a fucking snake?' had nothing to do with herpetology."
    Â Â Â Â "Where did you get it?"
    Â Â Â Â "I called Vince Foley. You owe me a hundred bucks."
    Â Â Â Â "Expensive snake."

    Chris Knopf 71

    "It's a seller's market."
    Â Â Â Â Buried as I was in the belly of the boat, I hadn't noticed the wind picking up until I felt a sudden tremor and heard a whistle coming from the mast, the sound transferred from somewhere above down into the bilge. By then I was done with the installation, a good thing. For the last hour I'd been choosing between loss of circulation in my left leg and loss in my right. Meanwhile, the experience had reversed the healing process in my broken hand, trading a dull ache for knife-like jabs of pain.
    Â Â Â Â Thus in a complicated mood, I emerged from the deep lazarette that led to the engine compartment with an immediate need written all over my face.
    Â Â Â Â "Vodka?" asked Amanda.
    Â Â Â Â The air had warmed up considerably and the sky was now mostly a uniform grey. According to NOAA, the system moving in from the southwest was scheduled to plow into a cold front drifting down from Canada, with the battle line forming across Connecticut and Rhode Island. In other words, right on top of us.
    Â Â Â Â The wind had continued to pick up, though still nothing extraordinary. It felt good, actually, rustling around the cockpit and swirling Amanda's hair.
    Â Â Â Â "So we're seaworthy again," she said, pulling her hair through the hole in the back of her baseball cap, which was clipped to the collar of her flannel shirt.
    Â Â Â Â "We won't know for sure until the sea trial, but I'm reasonably confident," I said, spinning the big chromed wheel from where I sat in the cockpit and feeling it move smoothly from one extreme to the other. "Better yet, I could see the failure point, which I've corrected. For want of a pair of stainless steel screws we could've gone ass-over fin keel."
    Â Â Â Â "If we hadn't had so adept a helmsman."
    Â Â Â Â "Exactly."
    Â Â Â Â "So now what?" she asked.

    72 BLACK SWAN

    "We wait out the blow, then get the hell out of here."
    Â Â Â Â There's one thing you'd think I would have learned by then: never project current circumstances indefinitely into the future.

    I heard a hoarse scream coming from the hotel. Moments later, I saw Anika running down the dock. Even through the gloom of the early evening, barely relieved by the dock lights, her face was an inflamed mask.
    Â Â Â Â "Oh God, oh God, oh God," she repeated, gripping the gunwale to steady herself as she looked into the cockpit. Amanda and I stood up in alarm.
    Â Â Â Â "Please come with me," she said to me. "It's terrible."
    Â Â Â Â "What?"
    Â Â Â Â "Myron. Oh my God, what're we going to do?"
    Â Â Â Â I told Amanda to