Yachting with Russians

The mysterious owner of the luscious, off-white mega-yacht was new to Miami, the boozy bash on Biscayne Bay, with wispy women carrying around trays of food, a sort of informal debut. He owned the boat along with a Russian-American who grew up in Milwaukee but kept close ties by marrying a Russian woman and working for the family conglomerate, which includes a string of retail stores in Moscow and an airplane-parts manufacturer. While teenagers in Brazilian bikinis and UM party girls  drank like fish and danced provocatively on the starboard side of the boat, the Russian-American was laying out his family history, including the ex-wife living in a duplex he bought for her and their child in Sunny Isles; the angst of being under 40 yet with three decades of partying like the world would end already behind him. Suddenly, his interlocutor, a woman a hair under five feet, noticed two people overboard and in seeming distress. Rather than turn to her handsome new Russian-American friend for help, she bellowed in that way American women do at a fishing boat, directing it to help the two victims, clinging to what appeared to be an inflatable mattress. Spurred out of her semi-permanent state of controlled blankness, she ran to one of the Eastern European caterers, asking for the captain's help. But the owners did not want to heed the captain's advice to throw overboard a pair of life jackets. The owners' anxiety only grew once it was done, and their own inflatable vessel was deployed. "We don't need this kind of drama!" the mysterious Russian exclaimed. Finally, the yacht jetted away from the scene, and the velocity of the boat and the circulation of drinks and food drowned out all concerns. At the end of the journey, the Russian-American returned to the small woman, relaying that he had had to act as boat security when partygoers complained that men were trying to force girls into the bathrooms for sex. The small woman was glad to have been on the boat, but thought perhaps she had outgrown Miami boat parties.