Tick Tock

crisis. But, nooooo, that wasn't good enough for him. Nooooo, he had to offend his mother and make a statement about his independence by going instead to a diner for cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers and French fries, cheeseburgers and French fries and onion rings and a chocolate milkshake, Mr. Big Shot with his own car phone and his new Corvette, intrigued by the blond waitress, flirting with her, when the world was filled with beautiful and intelligent and charming Vietnamese girls—who were perhaps the most lovely women in the world—who never called you “tofu boy,” never hot-wired cars, didn't think they had been abducted by aliens, didn't threaten to blow your head off when you wanted to look at their paintings, never stole yachts and set them on fire, gorgeous Vietnamese women who never talked in riddles, never said things like “reality is what you think it is,” didn't have any expertise with throwing knives, hadn't been taught by their fathers to use high explosives, didn't wear father-killing bullets as necklace pendants, didn't run around with big black smart assed hounds from hell with farting rubber hotdogs. He couldn't go home and eat com tay cam, had to write stupid detective novels instead of becoming a doctor or a baker, and now as payment for his selfishness and his arrogance and his bull-headed determination to be what he could never be, he was going to die.
    Just hold on.
    He was going to die.
    Just hold.
    Here came the big sleep, the long goodbye.
    Hold.
    He opened his eyes.
    Shouldn't have done that.
    Balboa Island, where no structure was taller than three stories, where half of the houses were bungalows and cottages, seemed as large as Manhattan, towering.
    Screws turning furiously, the fifty-six-foot, merrily blazing Bluewater yacht came into the island at extreme high tide, drawing less than two feet, virtually skimming like a cigarette racing boat, for God's sake, in spite of its size, came in between two docks (one of which was already decorated for Christmas), and struck the massive steel-reinforced concrete sea wall with a colossal shattering-ripping-screeching-booming noise that made Tommy cry out in fear and that would have awakened the dead if perhaps any of the islanders had perished in their sleep this night. At the water line, the hull, although as strong as any, was crushed and torn open at the bow. The impact dramatically slowed the yacht, but the diesel engines were so powerful and the screws provided such enormous thrust that the vessel surged forward, striving to climb the sea wall, heaving across the top of it, angling up at the bow, up, over the wide public promenade that ringed the island, up, as though it might churn all the way out of the harbour and sail through the front of one of the large houses that lined the island's waterfront. Then at last it shuddered to a halt, securely hung up on the sea wall and badly weighed down by the tons of seawater pouring through the broken hull into the lower holds.
    Tommy had been bounced against the deck and slammed sideways against the low port sill, but he had held fast to the railing, even though at one point he thought that his left arm was going to be dislocated at the shoulder. He came through the wreck without serious injury, however, and when the yacht was fully at rest, he let go of the railing, rose into a crouch, and crabbed sideways across the bow to Del.
    She was on her feet by the time he reached her. “Let's get the hell out of here.”
    The stern of the yacht burned brighter than ever. The fire was spreading forward, and there were flames behind the windows of the lower-deck staterooms.
    An eerie and chilling ululation arose from deep within the crackling blaze. It might have been steam venting or hydraulic fluid singing through a pierced steel line—or the crooning of the enraptured demon.
    The bow deck was canted three or four degrees because the boat was ramped up on the sea wall. They walked uphill to the pulpit, which thrust out of the water and was suspended over the deserted pedestrian promenade.
    All along the recently slumbering waterfront, lights began to blink on in the closely spaced houses.
    Scootie hesitated at the gap in the pulpit railing, but only briefly, then leaped down onto the concrete sward on the island side of the sea wall.
    Del and Tommy followed him. From the pulpit to the sidewalk was about a ten-foot drop.
    The dog sprinted west along the promenade, as if he knew where he was going.
    Del