He could barely see the water in front of his boat through the heavy, but swift moving fog. He knew he was somewhere between two reefs. Shutting off the engine, Jake pulled the lever to drop anchor. At sixty feet, the chain stopped and Jake breathed a sigh of relief. He was in the channel with very little possibility of holing his little craft on an upthrust rock.

He sounded his deck horn to see if any nearby craft would respond. Only the brisk wind whipping the fog around responded, seeming to pick up as he faced into it. He leaned against the side railing, hoping the wind would blow the fog away, but glad that the water was relatively calm. The boat moved gently in the long, slow swell of the waves beneath it, the hydraulics easily holding the deck level as the surrounding hull gently rocked back and forth.

It was a warm evening – well, sixty-seven degrees, a higher than normal temperature for a brisk, late August evening. It was almost ten p.m. and if the sun had been visible, which it wasn’t, it would be disappearing beneath the southwestern horizon any minute. With any luck, the fog would lift enough so that he could spot the lighthouse, or, it would thin out so that he could see a few overhead stars. Either circumstance would enable him to determine which way to steer toward the safety of the harbor and a soft bed.

It was growing darker by the moment. He grinned at the thought of the fog ‘visibly’ becoming darker. It was becoming invisible instead, and therefore more dangerous. Jake tightened his jacket zipper up against his throat and pulled the narrow fur collar up to protect his neck. He sounded the deck horn again, like he had been doing every few minutes whenever he thought of it. He wasn’t trying to be rescued – he just didn’t want to be run down by a fishing trawler coming into port using GPS while he was waiting for the fog to thin.

‘I really oughta get that thing fixed,’ he thought to himself, then sighed, knowing that, until he was ready to sell this little craft, he probably wouldn’t get it fixed up.

It was after midnight when he got back to his hotel. There were several bags next to the check-in desk that Jake had to wade around.

“Anything in the kitchen?” he asked the thin, tired-looking man behind the check-in.

“I’m sure you’ll find something, Jake,” the clerk replied. “Don’t suppose you wanna help lug these bags upstairs… ta’ elevator’s out, agin.”

The odd little hotel was located on the western tip of Yunastka Island; the most western of several Aleutian Islands called the Islands of Four Mountains. The hotel was old and weatherworn, having been built thirty years before, during a time when development of the Aleutians as a tourist attraction, like Hawaii, seemed a good investment.

A small nuclear war, a giant tsunami and several volcanoes coming to life as a result of said war, a plague two years later and the resulting collapse of the U.S. government ended any entrepreneurial interest anyone had in the Aleutian Islands.

Over a period of several years, The Aleutians (and Alaska, itself), abandoned by the United States, became independent of any neighboring governments and currently lay unclaimed by any other nation, American or Asian. There simply wasn’t anything there that anyone thought they might want.

Transportation was privately hired if anyone wanted to travel, as there were no regular flights coming or going anywhere from here. As business gradually recovered and took over the running of… well, business, most of the world was able to continue where it left off. The Aleutians, however, lay stretched across the Northern Pacific, mostly forgotten by everyone but a few fishing corporations.

That was why Jake was somewhat surprised to see travel bags shoved up against the check-in desk. In order to get here, someone would have had to hire a private jet or a boat to ferry him or her out to this vast chain of islands.

“Who’s our guest?” Jake asked, stepping around the expensive looking bags and toward the door marked ‘Employees Only’. “Some rich old fart come out here to pit himself against the raw elements of nature?”

“Nope!” Caesar, the hotel clerk replied, suddenly more cheerful. “It’sa dame! Gorgeous, too! Young, blonde, makes a man hurt inside just t’ look at ’er…”

Jake grinned. “I know what you mean, old boy. I’ve known a few like that.”

“Not like this, I’ll bet,” Caesar challenged. “She is heavy with money! Arrived here four hours ago in a air limo, no less! Sez to the driver, ‘I’ll call you, Charles, when I’m ready to leave.” The last part was spoken in a high, falsetto voice to mimic the dame.

“The limo driver’s name was Charles?” Jake asked, not believing the tall tale his friend and fishing buddy was telling.

“Well,” Caesar replied, shrugging his shoulders, “I don’t really know that, but he sure didn’t wanna leave her here in this two-star diarrhea dive. She practically threw him back into his limo and told him to ‘scat’!”

Jake laughed. “Does this rich, blonde diva have a name?”

Caesar didn’t have to look at the registration console; he’d spend the last four hours memorizing her name. “It’s Burke – like in Burke Industries; Mrs. Barry Burke. Her first name’s Alicia. I looked it up. Barry and Alicia Burke. She was probably his trophy wife! Fucking cradle-robber was sixty-eight when he croaked last week! When you see ’er, you’ll know what killed him!” Caesar grinned victoriously at Jake.

“Well, I’ll not be stalking her tonight,” Jake replied, turning away and heading into the kitchen. “I’m too tired and hungry to woo some old geezer’s rich trophy widow.”

Jake was browsing through the wide refrigerator shelves for something to nuke when Caesar came into the kitchen.

“Jake, guess what?” he asked, grinning and pointing toward the ceiling. “Mrs. Burke wants to know if she can have some room service.” He snickered, then wiped his mouth with his shirt collar.

Jake found some cold hot dogs and got them out. “What’d you tell ’er?”

“I tol’ ’er,” Caesar snickered into his collar again. “I tol’ ’er I’d check the kitchen and see if anything was available.”

Getting a can of bean soup off an overhead shelf, Jake fed it to the food processor. When the red light came on, he added four hot dogs. “Well, ask her if she likes franks and beans.”

“I bet she was thinkin’ more ’bout caviar and smoked salmon,” Caesar replied. They both laughed.

A few minutes later, a ‘ding’ signaled to Jake that his dinner was ready. At the same time, Caesar came back into the kitchen.

“She’s comin’ down!” he gasped, not believing it himself. “She said, ‘Franks ’n beans sounds wonderful,’ and she’s comin’ right down! Oh my God! I was hoping I wouldn’t have to see ’er again, today!”

“But you said she’s beautiful,” Jake replied, grinning at his love-stricken friend.

“Oh, she is!” Caesar exclaimed.