The Stranger in the Lifeboat

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nothing for all of them, not when it mattered.
I glanced at the Lord, who was eating his piece and looking at me the
entire time. He swallowed and smiled.
“I am here, Benjamin,” he said. “Whenever you wish to talk.”
This evening, just after sunset, I noticed Nina and Yannis sitting next to each
other. Who you sit next to on this raft means little, given how compact
everything is. You are always on top of somebody. It’s strange how quickly
we’ve grown accustomed to the cramped space, twisting our backs to allow
each other passage, shifting legs so that someone can stretch out. I imagine
Lambert, Geri, and Yannis are used to huge rooms in huge houses. How odd
this must be for them, no real estate to themselves.
Still, Nina and Yannis were sitting close not for practical purposes but for
companionship. Yannis had his arm behind her, resting on the raft’s edge. At
one point she leaned her head against his shoulder, her long rivulets of hair
brushing against his chest. His hand squeezed against her arm, and he kissed
her forehead.
I instinctively turned away, out of privacy or envy, I am not sure which.
We burn for water, we growl for food. But what we yearn for most is
comfort. A soft embrace. Someone to whisper “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
Perhaps Nina and Yannis are finding that in each other. I find it in these
scribbled notebook pages, Annabelle, in thoughts descending from my brain
to my fingers to the pen to the paper. To you.
I find it in you.
It seems clear now that I will die on these waters. If so, I want the world to
know a few paragraphs about me, about my life. I have no reason to expect
this notebook will go anywhere that I won’t. But when all your big ideas are
gone, you cling to the small ones. Perhaps something will happen to bring
this story to light.
Here, then, is my life summation: I am an only child, born in Donegal,
Ireland, in the small northern town of Carndonagh, hard by the waters where
the Atlantic Ocean and the Sea of the Hebrides converge. My mother, like
many Irish kids, used to play golf on a nearby course. She became so good
that at age eighteen, for winning a local tournament, she was given a ticket