Five
The next morning, I woke up and lay in bed, listening to the soft noises of the boat sitting at anchor, willing myself to get up and make coffee. I c****d my head when I heard a soft little noise, a new noise, every time the boat rocked.
I got up to investigate, climbing out of the cockpit and looking at the starboard side. There, sitting on the deck between a stanchion and the toe rail, was a husked green coconut. This wasn’t a beautiful coconut, husked with a sharp machete into a pleasing shape, the idyllic drink served at a resort on a tropical beach. This was the rough-hewn bare nut of the coconut, which rolled gently from side to side on my deck, no flat bottom to keep it upright. The boat swayed, and I watched the coconut thunk against the stanchion.
When I looked up, I saw J
