One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the
corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, 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 had survived. How many
are there? You were lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."
"It's only me," she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up; nothing
did."
He was confused. "Then how did you get the rowboat?"
"Oh, simple," replied the woman. "I made the rowboat 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
stratum
of alluvial rock exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain
temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used
that for tools, and 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 rowboat 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 cabinet 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 inside a swivel mechanism.
"This woman is amazing," he mused. "What next?"
When he returned, she greeted him wearing nothing but vines - strategically positioned - 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-mail from here?"