A Billion Ways to Die Read Online Free PDF

anything.”
    There were two boats offering viable postings. I memorized the names and we moved off toward the next phase in the process: hanging around the bar, nursing drinks and asking if anyone knew our target cruisers.
    It wasn’t long before a bearded guy with thin, curly hair, and his wife, who looked identical from behind, latched on to us. They’d launched their trip two years before from Seattle and had traveled to the islands via the Panama Canal. The guy’s name was Ed and he was joyfully drunk—for the first time, he claimed, since Catalina Island. His wife was reasonably sober, but didn’t contradict him.
    “We’d just come off a summer squall,” she said. “Forty knot blow. Ten footers. Confused seas. Heaved to and just rode it out. Ed had the helm for thirty straight hours. I thought I’d have to cut his fingers off the wheel.”
    “You’ll be cuttin’ my fingers offa this,” he said, holding up a beer mug filled with something far more colorful than beer.
    “We prefer our storms at anchor,” said Natsumi.
    “Smart woman,” said Ed. He looked at me conspiratorially. “You get her in Bali Bali?”
    “I got him, at a brothel in Kuala Lumpur,” said Natsumi.
    Ed’s wife grinned.
    “Give me the address,” she said. “I might have a trade-in.”
    Ed felt that deserved a toast.
    “We just need to get to Puerto Rico,” I said. I asked them if they knew any boats headed that way.
    “No, but That’s A Moray goes back and forth all the time,” said Ed. “You know Jersey and Dizzy?”
    “Jersey and Desiree Mitchell,” said his wife. “I saw them here earlier. Jersey’s big,” she held her hand about a foot over her head. “Frizzy hair like Ed’s, what’s left of it. I love him, he’s a nut.”
    “She prefers frizzy haired nuts,” said Ed.
    “They own a furniture store on the island,” said Ed’s wife. “Do their own shipping and handling. How’s your back?” she asked me.
    Ed grabbed my shirtsleeve and started pulling me into the crowd. I let him, not knowing what else to do. Natsumi followed. A few minutes and some awkward tousling later, he deposited me in front of a tall woman with long, dirty blonde hair, a limp tank top, white shorts and a huge shell-festooned necklace.
    “This is Dizzy,” Ed said to me. “You gotta take it from here.”
    “Take it where?” asked Desiree.
    “Puerto Rico, I hope,” I said, introducing myself as Jonathan Cornwall, and Natsumi, when she came closer, as my wife, Natalia.
    “Desiree,” she said. “You looking to crew?”
    “Absolutely,” I said. “Whatever you need.”
    “Do you cook?” she asked.
    That stumped me. I sure as hell didn’t. Natsumi came to the rescue.
    “I do,” she said.
    “Good. We need a cook for two passengers paying tourist fare. And a helmsman. You can do that can’t you?” she asked me.
    “You bet. How long’s the boat?”
    “Forty-eight feet. Custom cutter-rigged sloop.”
    She ran through all the crew requirements and I was fine with everything, even if I’d never wrangled two foresails, a cutter’s distinctive feature.
    We agreed to report at sunrise the day after next and be ready for anything from scrambling eggs to piloting the boat out of Cruz Bay and into the rolling Caribbean Sea. The pay was short, but so was the trip, and most importantly for us, it provided entry into Puerto Rico without the inconvenience of clearing customs.
    We were about to drift back into the crowd when Jersey showed up. As stated, he was a big man, his collarless shirt unbuttoned to his navel, revealing some fleshiness around the middle. His hair was a kinky grey ball partially constrained by a woman’s hair clip. A glaze of sweat reflected the bar light off skin baked a perpetual island brown. My hand felt like a child’s when it disappeared into his grip.
    “Most entirely excellent,” he said, when Desiree introduced us as the week’s crew. “It’s the ultimate milk run. We only need crew because