Gary

“Gimme that thing,” she said, as she grabbed its handle out of my hand and flung it sideways, spinning, outward toward the sea. I watched it bobble, perhaps three times, like a fisherman’s float, before it was born away by one wave, and then another and another, until it fell over the horizon.
###”Now what?” I asked. “What was that about?”
###”About? It was about the fact that I hate you and the fact that we are going to die out here and the fact that your little plan of three drops of water each per day is not going to save us, okay, Tom Sawyer?”
###”Has it occurred to you that now we have no water?”
###”I hope you die first”, she said. “I hope you die today.”
###As was my plan, I remained calm. “You don’t mean that,” I said. “Help will come. We will make it past this. It rained. There was a storm. People know we’re not where we’re supposed to be. They are looking for us.”
###”Looking for our corpses. God. Shit goddam.”
###The sea was a mirrored reflection of heat in every direction and the sky was a reflection of the sea. All the world I knew at the point was silver and white. The thermos had been our last holdout of civility, a jug of iced tea someone’s mother had begged us to take along at the last minute. In retrospect, I should have thrown her overboard as soon as I saw the situation was hopeless, a mercy killing. Anything would have been better than what she had now become, this sea mammal in search of carrion.
###I had no misconceptions: she had plans to dissect and eat me at her earliest convenience.
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Of course we laugh about it now. We drink champagne on our marriage anniversaries from the the thermos with the absurd logo that led our rescuers to our little boat; and we tell our children the funny story about the spring-break afternoon Mommy tried to eat Daddy.