The hurricane came unexpectedly.
The ship went down and was lost. The man found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, nothing to do and no supplies. Only bananas and coconuts.
So for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice and longed for his old life. He fixed his gaze on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.
One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. It was a rowing boat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. She rowed up to him.
In disbelief, he asked her: “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”
“I rowed from the other side of the island,” she said. “I landed here when my cruise ship sank.”
“Amazing,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone else survived. How many are there?
You were lucky to have a rowing boat wash up with you.”
“Its only me,” she said, ” and the rowing boat didn’t wash up; nothing did.”
He was confused. “Then how did you get the rowing boat?”
“Oh, simple,” replied the woman, “I made the boat out of materials that I found on the island. The oars were whittled from Gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.”
“B-B-But that’s impossible,” stuttered the man. “You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?”
“Oh, that was no problem, replied the woman. “On the other side of the island there is a very unusual rock formation exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into iron. I used that for tools and I used the tools to make the hardware.”
“But enough of that,” she said. “Where do you live?”
Sheepishly, he confessed that he had been sleeping on the beach the whole time.
“Well, let’s row over to my place, then.” she said.
After a few minutes of rowing she docked the boat at a small wharf. As the man looked to the shore, he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
While the woman tied up the rowing boat with an expertly woven hemp rope, the man could only stare ahead, dumbstruck.
As they walked into the house, she said casually, “It’s not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please; would you like a drink?”
“No, no thank you,” he said, still dazed. “I can’t take any more coconut juice.”
“It’s not coconut juice,” the woman replied. “I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?”
Trying to hide his amazement, the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk.
After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, “I’m going to slip into something comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the bathroom.”
No longer questioning anything, the man went into the bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge were fastened onto it’s end.
“This woman is amazing,” he thought. “What next?”
When he returned, she greeted him wearing nothing but vines and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckoned for him to sit down next to her.
“Tell me,” she began, suggestively, slithering closer to him, “we’ve been out here for a very long time. You’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you’ve been longing for all these months – you know…” She stared into his eyes.
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You mean–?” he replied, “I can check my e-mails from here?”