He shook his head, straightened up, and turned three-quarters of the way.
“Look at us. Look atme.”
She was breathing deeply. I could see her chest rising and falling even from a distance.
Dorian continued. “Everything I touch turns to gold. You’re an aging starlet who clings to what youthoughtyou had, but that you never really possessed in the first place. BecauseImade it all happen for you. And now…”
He advanced toward her and she stepped back, like she was scared. Her foot caught on something and she almost tumbled over. She glanced at what had tripped her, then back at him.
But he still had more to say. “We’re going back upstairs and you’re going to be a good little girl.” He grabbed her wrist. She winced in pain. “You will stop making a scene, and you will behave. Show a little gratitude.”
His face was inches away from hers. They stared at each other like this for a long while. I couldn’t breathe. And then, things got weirder. When he leaned even closer, it was to press his lips firmly onto hers. She jerked away but he pulled her to him, his hand firmly on the back of her skull. He kissed her again, forcing her. The three of us gasped; I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but it didn’t occur to me that Odetta needed help, that we could have changed the course of events. That we could have saved her. We were the little people here; we didn’t matter. But maybe we could have.
“Fuck you!” she said, pushing him away so hard he had to let her go.
He came back with a vengeance, pressing his index finger to hertemple, his face level with hers.
“Get it in your little head that I own you. You are no one without me. You never will be. Everything you can ever hope to have, you will have only becauseIallow it.”
Lou let out a strangled gasp, loud enough to make me jump. I glanced back at her for just a few seconds, and when I refocused my attention to the back of the yacht, Odetta was holding a large cylinder in both her hands, the thing that she’d tripped on just before. It was a fire extinguisher.
Dorian had no time to react. Odetta let out a raw scream. The girls huddled against me, in shock. We watched together as Odetta Olson smashed the metal cylinder into Dorian Fisher’s back.
We couldn’t see everything from our vantage point, but it wasn’t hard to connect the dots. He vacillated, then bent over the railing to catch his fall.
“You bitch!” he screamed.
She hit him again, her skirt billowing around her. This time it was Marnie who howled.
Lou and I turned to her with eyes wide open, the tension unbearable. At some point we’d started gripping each other’s hands.
Like I said, we didn’t see every last detail. I can’t explain how a slender woman like Odetta managed to grab both of Dorian’s legs. I don’t know how she gathered the strength to lift him up, while he hung limply over the railing like a wet rag. Maybe it was decades of pent-up fury that now erupted from her. Dorian was moaning. She kept lifting him, pushed up his feet. Now the whole top part of his body was dangling over the sea.
She gave him the final nudge, throwing him overboard.
The girls and I leaned back at once, like a gust of wind had slammed us against the wall. A moment later, Lou barely had time to twist away so she wouldn’t vomit all over us.
“We have to do something,” I heard myself say.
But I couldn’t move. And it wasn’t just shock. It wasn’t just fear. Particles of relief coursed through me. Because already I knew that I would have kept wanting him.Obsessingover him.
We heard Odetta Olson hurrying away from the railing, racing past us until she reached the staircase, her heels tapping up and up and up, the sounds fading away as she reached the light.
Lou was panting as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Do we think he’s dead?” she asked.
I yelped. Marnie stared ahead, a bland look on her face.
I leaned forward and stared at the spot where Odetta Olson and Dorian Fisher had stood a minute ago, but there was nothing to see now. Dorian was at sea, caught in the waves that crashed against the yacht like angry ink.
It hit me all at once, the gravity of what we’d just witnessed. My brain sharpened, the reality coming into clear focus.
“Do we call the police? Do we alert the captain? They have to go looking for him.” I gathered the hem of my dress and stood up. “He could still be alive. He can’t be dead. He can’t be, he can’t be.”
I turned to the girls, my chest so heavy that I wasn’t sure I could stand upright.
And then I ran to the edge, pressing my hands on the railing—where Dorian had just touched—and bent forward. My legs gave way and I felt myself flipping forward in slow motion.
