Free Flagged Victor by Keith Hollihan

was right. But I could have cried and torn out my hair in frustration.
    Come on over and get us.
    I was sure that was what they yelled, but Chris disagreed.
    What the hell do you think they said, then? I asked.
    Chris shrugged. Maybe they said, We like burritos with lettuce.
    He could be such a motherfucker sometimes.
    Had they seen my rubber dinghy? It was the only possible answer.
    Let’s row over and get them, I said.
    But Chris refused.
    Come on.
    No.
    Come on!
    Forget it.
    Why not?
    Are you kidding me?
    I was not, in any sense, trying to kid him, and I wished he would stop kidding me.
    It wasn’t in my nature to be wilful or impulsive, but I felt half-crazed with desire. Stepping into the boat with ungainly haste, I picked up the ends of each oar and asked Chris, onelast time, whether he was going to join me. He laughed again. I suppose if I was a member of Ulysses’s crew, I would have been among the first to head for the Sirens.
    It took ten minutes to cross the lake. I felt more humiliated and yet more hopeful with each inch of progress. I didn’t dare to check too frequently over my shoulder, even though I feared the girls would flee before I arrived. Rowing evenly and steadily to the other shore, I kept myself skilfully on course by locking my eyes to the floating dock, where Chris was suntanning.
    When I reached land, I saw with relief that the girls were still waiting for me, and I couldn’t quite believe my good fortune. They seemed amused and pleased by my gallant gesture of having crossed an ocean to meet them. And they were indescribably beautiful. Lithe and barely dressed in the smallest of bikinis, they were perfectly tanned—tanned on their feet, on their toes, on the tops of their ears—without any variation of colour, an essence poured into the glass vessel of girlhood, contained in there without any spilling, the caramel of youth and endless summer. Both were thin. One was taller, with red frizzy hair, and cartoonish brown freckles on her cheeks, and jaw-droppingly rounded breasts. She seemed, despite her size and robust sexuality, the more innocent, cheerful, and therefore stupid of the two. The other was shorter, flatter chested though prominently nippled, with dark brown, almost raven-black hair, large dark sunglasses, a thin gold necklace, and a sarcastic and mocking line to her mouth, the kind of knowing humour that has always indicated intelligence and the excitement of danger to me.
    Nice boat, she said, and I knew she was making fun.
    Can you drive all of us in that at once? the other asked.
    I marvelled at the distinct but delicious differences between them. Although I naturally preferred the dark-haired disdainful one, I could imagine either of their breasts held in my hands and sucked by my mouth and knew I could finger-fuck each without prejudice, or both at the same time, and enjoy the variant qualities of slip and sticky, the change in pungency. I practically fainted with curiosity and need.
    At the same time, I was also efficient and competent. I managed to get them both on board—the initial victory of any pervert—and huddled up on the far seat before heaving the boat away from shore. It was awkward and slow to row the three of us back. But I was astonished, with each pull, to look up and see two bikini-wearing girls across from me. They had their towels bunched on their laps, but their toes were near mine, and their hands dangled in the water, and they laughed like sparkling beads of light whenever I said something funny. Their names were Leah and Susan. Leah was the taller of the two, the older and possibly stupid one, the one blissfully at ease. She’d graduated in the spring from the other high school and had, it seemed, no plans to ever go back to school again. Susan was from my high school, though I did not recognize her without clothes on. Despite being a year or two younger than me, she had the composed and intimidating aura of a fully mature woman.
    Chris perked up by