Free Tell Them Katy Did by Victor J. Banis

to see you, how’ve you been?”
    The world, their world, had shifted then, in that instant when the two of them exchanged those looks, those unmistakable looks, every man, straight or gay, knew them—the quick surprised smile, the flicker of an eyelash, the flare of a nostril, like an animal catching the scent. You could all but smell the testosterone, see the sparks flashing, hear the jungle drums.
    In a sense, the rest of it probably didn’t matter so much. Once you’d done it in your heart—in your balls, probably Larry would say—it was done, and that was it. Once you struck the baseball, the arc of its flight was inevitable.
    Larry saw in Jack’s eyes when he’d won the argument. He grinned and kissed him lightly, gratefully, and lay back down again beside him. At least he had the good sense not to gloat. To let the rest of it just happen. As it would.
    Jack watched the fish cloud become a shoe, a woman’s shoe. He didn’t mention this to Larry, though. Larry wouldn’t see it as a shoe. That much he understood.

The Princess of the Andes
    The Princess of the Andes was registered in Ecuador, but her owners and her crew were German. She was a freighter, and although the heyday of the ocean freighters was long past, The Princess managed each year to make a modest profit for her owners by trundling endlessly up and down the coasts of North and South America, carrying from port to port at modest rates whatever cargo she could gather—cattle or potatoes, cheap rum and tin-ware, dates and palm oil. So long as it was legal and paid an honest penny or two, anything was welcome.
    She carried some passengers as well in a dozen cabins, six on the upper deck and six below. These accommodations were not of the sort to be found on the more luxurious ships that cruised the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, but they were adequate and the food, though plain, was plentiful and well prepared. Perhaps best of all, the fares were cheap, which had been a deciding factor for Randolph Letterman.
    Randolph liked to take a cruise each winter, when the tourist business fell off at his little shop just off Hollywood Boulevard. Generally, he closed down for the months of December and January. He had come on board the Princess at the Port of Los Angeles, when the ship was filled with Mexicans and Central Americans taking advantage of the modest fares to return home for the holidays.
    Randolph was placed at the chief engineer’s table and did not really get acquainted with Captain Herrman until after they had discharged most of their passengers at Mazatlan. Indeed, for the first week of the trip Randolph found himself sharing a cabin with a Mexican gentleman who was coal black, but Randolph, who was sixty and said of himself that he had been around the dance floor a time or two, was fond of declaring that one had to make the best of things and take things as they came. He was no snob, which had enabled him to make a success of his little shop, and he was a good mixer who fancied he could find something of interest to talk about with anybody.
    “If you take an interest in others,” he liked to say, “others will take an interest in you. Practice makes perfect.” And, “It’s an ill wind…”
    After Mazatlan, there were only a few passengers continuing on, some getting off in Nicaragua and a handful more in Costa Rica, so that by the time they reached Panama City, Randolph was the sole passenger on the rest of the journey, through the Canal and as far as Haiti, where the ship turned about for the return voyage.
    “I hope you won’t be uncomfortable with no other company but ours,” the captain said when he seated Randolph at his table for dinner. “We’re only rough sailor men.” They were joined there by the first mate, the chief engineer and the ship’s doctor.
    The captain turned out to be a hearty fellow, short and thick-built. When he talked, he bellowed more than not. Randolph thought him a rather peculiar specimen but he