The note was

  in a glass bottle on a nightstand screwed to the floor.  The flower was a Gardenia and smelled like just one of the ingredients in a famous princess perfume. 

     Our consensus is to 

                  disengage.

  Manifesto? 

  Maybe a declaration. 

  Who left it behind? 

  Eyes fell on the worn turf carpet.  "The definitive Republicans on the inter-team geopolitical strategy exercise behind the military exercises." 

  "Their boat left," a woman stood on the edge of the pier, arms crossed, long wool coat, and said in thick Brooklynese.  She chomped on her Wrigley's some.  Smelled her magazine-perfumed wrist. 

  What do we have to do now?  To the suggestion of an order.

  "All we have to do is let go..."  

  And let God? 

  Okay, but 

  I can't 

  "Easy!" A white-uniformed sailor let go of a silk rope.  Bottles of champagne were thrown out of the cabin at the yacht beside.

     Bon voyage

     Good LUCK 

     Adios amigos 

     Godspeed

  People looked at the kid that said that.  

  "Who are you sweetie?" A woman dressed to the nines sat on a lower bunk beside the child and asked.  "And more importantly, " another fancy-haired, well-dressed woman sat on his or her other side, "Why would he say that particular saying?" 

  They'd done it hundreds of times.  Been promised their families left behind would be given money.  They picked up scraps of papers with Pakistani, Lebanese, etc. scrawled on it.  Hopped and were pulled aboard recycled jets with cargo doors cut into the sides.  Lazily flown over structures like oil rigging sprawled all over Syria.

  Had been trained to memorize. 

  Memorize? 

  The landscape.  From above. 

  Some of the girls were pulling a wounded out of a dolphin carcass.  The jetskier lingered and loped in another practice run of letting go of controlling the thing by self.  "Looking good girl!!" A wave tipped the thing over.  Raft pulled up beside.  "You drowning?" 

  "Not chet.  Cold tho." 

  "They call it iced-in." 

  "They do?" 

  "Cha?" 

  "Already tangled." 

  Lifeguards blew whistles.  

  In the pool.  In the pool.  In the pool.  An Olympiad was pulled out of general population. 

  "WHY IN THE POOL?!" A little kid talked out of temper tantrum again demanded to know.  His mother, "My husband can't even swim." 

  "It's a way to avoid impact injury." 

  "Like what?" 

  "GET IN THE POOL!!!!!!" 

  "Like shattered bones."