We Should Buy A Boat (2020 NaNoWriMo Practice)

 [Ahead of an inevitably bumbling NaNoWriMo attempt, I'm writing a bunch of short stories to improve my fiction-writing efficiency. They're quickly written and largely unedited, so please leave vicious critique in the comments. This was written on October 10th, 2020.]

              He stared at the young man in disbelief.

              “A boat? You want to buy a boat?”

              He couldn’t have been older than twelve.

              “Yup! Nothing big, just, like, a small yacht.”

              Jeramiah Clarkson, of Jeramiah Clarkson and Sons, Inc., was not a man to balk. He’d been in the yacht business for forty years. He’d sold to all sorts. But anyone in the room with him at the moment, had they been interviewed afterwards in the style of one of the more popular reality TV shows of the time, would have described him as very much mid-balk for most of the conversation.

              He looked to one of his “and Sons,” Michael Clarkson, who had let this tiny potential customer into his office. He scanned his spawn’s face for some sign of mirth, a hint that this was a prank. There was none. His son only shrugged.

              “We ran the credit check, dad. He cleared. And he’s got the money.”

              “I understand your hesitation,” the small child with good credit said, “but this isn’t a joke.”

              At this, the fourth figure in the room, a large and quiet man in a suit, sunglasses, and with the kind of haircut favored by marines and balding sociopaths, placed an ominous looking black briefcase on Jeramiah Clarkson’s sleek, modern, chrome desk.

              It was a very nice desk.

              It was very ominous briefcase.

              The entire situation was becoming increasingly surreal by the moment.

              The hulking figure opened the briefcase. Inside was enough gold to purchase the majority of the showroom models in one fell sweep. The tiny millionaire smiled.

              “Like I said, not a joke. Now, can I go back downstairs and buy a boat?”

              Jeremiah was still staring at the gold. He was shocked even a man as bulky as that could carry that briefcase in one hand. It seemed a physical impossibility.

              “Ahem.”

              He started.

              “Oh, of- of course. Michael, thank you for checking with me. We’ll get you set up with one of our sales associates straight away.”

              “I’m already working with Margaret downstairs. They just wanted to double check with you. Again, I understand,” he said, looking at Michael forgivingly.

              Jeramiah stood up and led his guests out the door of his office to the balcony overlooking the showroom floor. Beneath, several yachts were arranged in rows, with glass desks between. Margaret was sitting at one of them, talking to a woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties. The showroom was quiet, so as he led the twelve-year-old with all the gold down the stairs he could just about make out their conversation.

              “…just out of the blue?’

              “Just out of the blue. With a briefcase full of gold and that… man. I was terrified at first, but he seems nice enough. And Aiden insists that he’s not in any danger. We were worried sick, and I’m just so glad to have him back that I don’t want to press the-”

              “Mom! It’s all cleared up! We can get the boat!”

              The kid, presumably Aiden, pushed past Jeramiah and rushed down the staircase.

              “That’s great, sweetie. I was just catching Margaret up on everything that’s happened. So, you’re set on… buying a yacht?”

              “Yep!”

              The woman looked up and saw the three men coming down the stairs. She stood up and reached out to shake Jeramiah’s hand.

              “You must be Jeramiah. Hi, I’m Molly, I’m a friend of Margaret’s from college. Aiden really wanted to buy a boat, so I figured we’d come here.”

              Jeramiah found he was only left more confused by this development. Somehow a child with a hulking bodyguard and a briefcase full of more gold than he had ever seen buying a boat was more palatable to whatever twisted logic his brain was trying to use if the child hadn’t been brought in by their seemingly perfectly normal mother. A mother who had driven them there in, a quick glance out the multi-panel glass windows forming the warehouse told him, a Toyota Corolla. There was nothing else in the parking lot.

              Aiden turned to Margaret.

              “We can get back to boat-buying now. Mom, I can handle it from here.”

              “Oh. Uh, of course, sweetie.”

              Aiden and Margaret walked off to look at boats. The hulking man followed them, leaving Jeremiah, Michael, and Molly to stare after them.

              Molly broke the silence first.

              “I’m sorry, I know this must seem awfully strange.”

              Jeremiah kept staring down after the itty-bitty oligarch.

              “It is, honestly. Very strange.”

              “It’s just that he was missing, you see.”

              Jeremiah turned to stare at the woman.

              “Missing?”

              “Yeah. He and two of his best friends vanished last month while we were at the beach. Aiden just turned up out of the blue two weeks ago. He won’t answer any questions about his friends or where they went. His bodyguard showed up with all that gold one morning about a week ago and hasn’t said a word. The police still don’t know about him. Aiden insists. I’m just so worried about him… you know, mentally. I don’t want to freak him out, so I’m just sort of going along with it.”

              Jeremiah was still staring at the woman.

              He could tell it was making her uncomfortable.

              He turned to stare at the wealthy child and his mountainous man again.

              “I don’t suppose you know if the gold is stolen, do you?”

              “I really don’t have a clue.”

              Michael chimed in on that one.

              “There’s no hallmark on the gold, so it isn’t traceable.”

              Jeremiah nodded. Something about this entire ludicrous situation was making him go numb. It felt easier to just accept this odd new reality than to question it.

“I suppose that’s fine then.”

As he stared at the trio in the distance, he saw Margaret pause in puzzlement, look over to Jeremiah, and wave him over.

He excused himself and walked down to them. Might as well. How much weirder could this get?

“Yes, Margaret? What is it?”

“I’m afraid he’s hit on a question I don’t quite know the answer to. Which of these boats would do best in the open ocean?”

That answers the weirdness question.

He looked at Aiden, his eyebrows raised.

“You want to go out on the open ocean?”

“Yes.”

“How far out?”

“About two-hundred miles off of Honduras.”

“Excuse me?”

“About two-hundred miles off of Honduras,” the child repeated matter-of-factly. “It’s about halfway between Honduras and Jamaica.”

“What is?”

“The island I need to go to.”

“And why do you need to go to an island about halfway between Honduras and Jamaica?”

Aiden clammed up suddenly, apparently catching himself. He looked over his shoulder at his mother in the distance, and then turned back. He gave both Jeremiah and Margaret a stern look.

Well, as stern a look as a twelve-year-old can give.

“Look, I don’t want my mom freaking out, so I haven’t told her any of this. Can you promise me you won’t either? I’m only telling you because if I’m going to buy the right boat from you, you need to know what my mission is.”

Jeremiah and Margaret looked at each other, shrugged, and looked back.

“Sure,” Margaret said. It seemed she, too, had just decided to accept this absurd new reality rather than fight against it with any sort of logic.

“She’s probably told you that I went missing, right?”

They nodded.

“Well my friends and I got sucked out to an island in the middle of the Caribbean. Doesn’t matter how. What matters is we found a whole bunch of buried gold, and this guy.” He gestured to the hulking, silent, sunglassed man standing behind him. “He’s a genie.”

“Excuse me?” Jeremiah’s logic-sick brain was flailing.

“He’s a genie. He’s my genie, specifically. For the moment. Tom wished for the gold to be infinite, Mark wished for enough food to survive, and I wished for him to take me home. Now I have to go back and get them.”

Something in Jeremiah snapped. The supposed genie remained utterly stoic. Something in Margaret snapped too, but apparently it was a very different something, because she immediately asked:

              “Why didn’t you wish for a boat?”

              “What?”

              “Why didn’t you wish for a boat to get you off the island? Why did you wish yourself home just to buy a boat and go back?”

              “I don’t know how to drive a boat.”

              “But-”

              “We only had one wish left.”

              “Molly, let it be.” Jeremiah had gone to sat down at the nearest sales desk. “Just give him a Troughrider and a recommendation for a local captain.”

              The kid smiled. “Yes! You guessed my next question.”

              Two hours later the display model Troughrider was being towed out of the warehouse while Jeremiah, alongside Margaret and Michael, watched from the balcony outside his office. Margaret was attempting to explain what she knew, but it was mostly self-soothing.

              “I had read about the disappearance on Facebook, and I’d messaged her a little bit, but then she just called me out of the blue this morning asking if I was working today. Do you think everything’s okay? Do you think we should call the police?”

              “I’m tempted to,” Michael said, “I bet the big dude is in the mob and this is all some surrealist laundering scheme.”

              Jeremiah looked over his shoulder at the small pile of tarnished gold ingots on his desk. They had been sandy when the kid handed them to him. He looked back down at the kid, his Genie, and his bewildered mother.

              “No, don’t call the police. Let’s just let this one go.”

              Jeremiah Clarkson decided it was time to retire.