Ghost Lights

6

They were clean-looking guys with brush cuts, looking intently ahead of them and carrying the smell of fresh sweat and what he suspected was pine-scent deodorant. The armed forces weren’t as Caucasian as he’d imagined them, more Latino and black, but just as muscular and young. He stood in the sand beside the dock watching as they filed past, he in his shorts and tattered old sneakers, they in stiff uniforms and bulky black boots. He felt unarmored, a tiny pale civilian.

They dismounted from the dock in rapid succession, boots thumping into the sand, and ran past him and up the beach, leaving their two powerboats tied to the dock. A few hundred yards out on the water the mother ship was anchored, a line of flapping flags flying over her gleaming white bulk. He recognized only the Stars and Stripes.

“Nantucket,” he read, off the side. “Wow. She’s big.”

Hans, a few paces off with his hands clasped behind his back, shook his head with a tut-tut noise. “Smallest patrol boat in the fleet, except for the Barracudas,” he said. “A 110. Island class. 155 tons full load. Two diesels, two shafts, 5,820 bhp and about 30 knots. For guns, a 25-millimeter Bushmaster low-angle and two 7.62-millimeter MGs.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Hal.

Hans laughed joyously, as though Hal had told a good joke.

“I thought you did airplanes,” Hal added.

“Tactical sensor networks,” said Hans. “I like boats though. Kind of like a hobby.” He waved at a man standing on the powerboat’s massive bridge. Hal squinted to see him better; he was a small stick figure.

“I don’t get it,” said Hal. “How did you manage this?”

“They were already here. Humanitarian assistance,” said Hans. “This mission falls in the category of hurricane casualties. Even though technically it was only a tropical storm. Your friend is an American citizen, no? And an important businessman also. An asset. I impressed them with this. They are based in an operations center in Miami. The ones in light-brown are the Belize Defence Force cadets. They are just here to learn.”

“I didn’t think anyone would show up,” said Hal, still stunned and failing to adjust. “I really didn’t.”

“Of course,” said Hans, and grinned. He put his hand up for a high-five.

Dazed, Hal slapped it compliantly and then felt stupid.

Hans consulted his waterproof digital watch, which he had worn diving the day before and of which he seemed to be quite proud. “We weigh anchor at 10:00 hours,” he said. “So you have exactly ten minutes for preparation.”

“Oh. I’ll go get my shit, then,” said Hal after a few seconds, and struck out for his room at a jog.

He was dizzy and almost trembling from too little sleep and too many margaritas and lying awake in disbelief remembering the recent past — Gretel’s mouth, thighs, and hands all over him. They lay on their shucked clothes on the sand; they had to be careful not to get sand inside her, between them where it counted. He brushed it off her thighs and stomach, off himself. . but she was lighthearted and playful so he had tried to seem lighthearted too, though he was dead serious.

After they finished he had walked her to the flight of stairs outside the room she was sharing with Hans and the cornboys. Salt-encrusted and shivering, he had gazed up at her back and legs, flashes in the dark as she went up. Probably he had been beaming the whole time, he thought. He had felt like beaming. The room door had closed softly behind her and he had almost run back to his own room, bounding forward giddily. Like a kid.

He was not without pride, lying there, he had to admit it. He even fell asleep proud.

Then first thing in the morning Hans found him at the lobby coffeemaker and rushed him outside to watch the patrol boat cruise in.

Back in his room he drank thirstily, a whole bottle of water he found standing on the dusty metal lid of his air-conditioning unit. He grabbed his green backpack and a baseball cap, filled the water bottle again from the sink and took a fresh one from the shelf. You weren’t supposed to drink the water here but there were filters on the taps in the rooms. . he should feel guilty in the company of Hans, he thought, but curiously he discovered his conscience was more or less clear. Maybe it was Hans’s automaton quality.

The armed forces were present; he had flown down here on a whim and somehow now there were armed forces to do his bidding. Fortunately Hans would lead them, Hans would manfully take the reins. Hans would assume the armed-forces leadership. He, Hal, had no interest in armed-forces leadership.

He checked himself in the mirror. He had a tan, he noticed. Would Gretel come with them today? Would she see him by daylight and cringe?

He could hardly blame her. He had seen her as in control, seamless and perfect, mostly because she looked that way. But in fact she had been as drunk as he was, if not more, and she had the upper hand — laughably so. She was far younger, far better-looking, and married to a kind of Germanic Apollo who also happened to be an avionics genius. She must be regretting her rash act, her fleeting impulse. He could almost imagine the knot of remorse in her stomach.

He would respect that remorse. He would comport himself with discretion. Lowered eyes, deference.

•

But she was not there. It was only Hans, the armed forces, and him. The two of them stood with an officer on the forward deck of the Nantucket.

“Gretel is spending time with the boys today,” said Hans when Hal asked. “They are going to see manatees. In the lagoon.”

“Manatees,” said Hal, and nodded.

“It is also possible to observe dolphins, crocodiles and sea turtles,” recited Hans dutifully, as though from a brochure. “There are hawksbills, green sea turtles and loggerheads.”

It was high above the water, which Hal was not used to since the few boats in which he had been a passenger before this were small boats. Except for a ferry once, past the Statue of Liberty. In the ferry there had been kids running and eating hotdogs, gum stuck on the undersides of benches and vomit in the bathrooms. Overall it was none too clean. The Nantucket, by contrast, smelled only of bleach. And she was moving fast. Easy to see how in the armed forces, wearing a clean authoritative uniform with a machine like this beneath you, you might come to believe you ruled the seas.

On Hans’s other side was someone named Roger, who was apparently in charge.

“Now in the event we get a Medevac situation,” Roger told Hans, “that’s going to be at least an hour out for the Dolphin. Minimum. Sorry we couldn’t bring reconnaissance airpower on this one. Woulda been nice to have all the new toys to play with. But you know how it is. All dollars and cents. With UAVs, too much bureaucracy.”

Hal moved away from them, stood at the portside rail and gazed out over the ocean, the white-blue curl of froth rolling away from the ship. He could see fishing boats dotting the waves out toward the atolls, though they were too far away for him to make out the fishermen. But he imagined all their faces were turned toward him, in awe of the leviathan. Or resentment, if the engine noise was driving off the fish.

He was finding it hard to relinquish his doubt. To get past his own skepticism that this was real — the vast boat, the gunmen — he had to remind himself he did not need it to be real. Accordingly he could take it lightly, as though it might easily be nothing more than a drunk or a delusion. . if the hurricane had brought humanitarian relief, for instance, in the form of these men, such relief seemed to have missed Seine Bight with its muddy field of shanties. He recalled the light-brown earth dried in right angles where it had flowed around the corners of buildings that were now gone. He thought of sheds the size of closets whose particleboard walls were held to the plastic roofs with what looked like duct tape — sheds that apparently housed whole families, because half-naked kids were running in and out of them in every appearance of actually living there.

He had not seen any sign of officials or their vehicles, a vast white prow looming on the water or brand-new supplies being offloaded into eager hands. Maybe the humanitarian assistance had gone to settlements up the coast. Or maybe the humanitarian assistance had been the duct tape.

But clearly his information was incomplete. He glanced over his shoulder at Roger, who was nodding, close-mouthed and sanguine, at something Hans was saying. He had a humble, sun-chapped face with a beaklike nose. Such a face was homely and workmanlike. It seemed trustworthy.

Appearances were often deceiving.

The engines thrummed beneath Hal’s feet. Their noise was deep and steady, their vibration relentless. He was silenced. He felt he had left his personality on dry land. He should ask Hans how to address the men; their uniforms flummoxed him. When he felt the urge to ask a question his instinct was to preface it with “Officer,” timidly and with a sycophantic tone, as on the rare occasion when he had been pulled over for speeding. He did not like policemen; neither did he enjoy the company of soldiers, but he felt more respect for them. Many came from poor backgrounds and were lured by the GI Bill.

Safer to say nothing.

When one of them walked past him he received an impression, in the quickness of the step and the forward-looking, dogged progress, that the walking itself was in the service of a greater business; the detail, the formality of personal transit was a small machination for the sake of general welfare.

And the bodies of the men were budding, strong, confident.

Yet Gretel. Gretel had picked him.

Maybe she was simply unaware that there were other options. Much could be ascribed to ignorance, in the world.

And anyway the fitness of these bodies was only partly a reflection on the men themselves. It was a fitness achieved by the state, in a sense, or at least the cost of the fitness was borne by the state. Also the state-sanctioned deployment of the fit and muscular bodies (which were in no way similar to Hal’s body, sadly for him) was further augmented by a wide variety of complex and powerful weapons, explosives, and multimillion-dollar, high-tech delivery systems for same. When the state chose to spend roughly the same on its military as on all other things combined, the owners of these now-fit and muscular bodies were the beneficiaries.

True, their occupation could also bring sudden death. But so could many occupations. Sewage work, for instance. No one wept for the sewage workers. Or the electric-light-and-power men. Life insurance companies hated them. Were they needed? They were. Were they acclaimed as heroes when they died? They were not. Same with miners, truck drivers, roofers, all the guys with high premature mortality rates, or PMRs, as the insurance industry called them. Even doctors had a high PMR, the cause being suicide.

In Hal’s line of work, which was also conducted in defense of the state, a fit, muscular body was not required. As a result employees of the Internal Revenue Service often suffered from a wide range of their own work-related ailments, including migraines, coronary artery disease, chronic obesity, and carpal tunnel syndrome. These were admittedly less glamorous than battleground injuries. Yet the discomfort was real. And like the sewage workers and the electricity guys, if Hal were to be killed in the line of duty he would not be mourned as a fallen hero. Despite the fact that he had toiled not for private industry but in the unflagging service of his country and all that it stood for, no Taps would play for him.

IRS service did not, however, happen to carry a high PMR.

But finally it was hard to sustain resentment toward the Coast Guarders. Armed forces personnel were not as bad as cops, when it came to the aggregate probability of antisocial personality disorder. They had a different makeup. They were not homicidal so much as Freudian; they liked to feel the presence of a constant father. And their fringe benefits included fit and muscular bodies.

Still, one or two might be behind on their taxes.

He smiled privately at the horizon, a hair-thin line between two shades of blue.

•

The armed forces took small powerboats from Monkey River Town, loaded with personnel so that they lay low in the water. Roger was not coming with them. There was a Coast Guard guy of lower rank, in blue, whose name Hal did not catch at first. Hans told him he could call the guy “Lieutenant.”

There were others in camouflage, some in berets, all wearing mirrored sunglasses through which it was impossible to establish eye contact. His fellow Americans were bedecked in chunky black equipment, belts and holsters and field packs and canteens and knives; they wore headsets and spoke to each other in clipped undertones, as though everything they said was both highly confidential and extremely important.

The sheer weight of their accessories, Hal thought, could capsize the boat if they all moved at once.

The local cadets had no veneer of soldiery and hardly any gear either. Their beige uniforms hung loosely on them and Hal thought they looked eighteen or younger, thin and lost.

“How come they need all those guns? We’re just looking for someone in the jungle,” he whispered to Hans.

They rounded a curve in the river, which was so brown it looked more like mud than water.

“They are active-duty military. Of course they have guns.”

“What are they going to do? Shoot the trees?”

“They’re treating it like an extraction. For training purposes.”

“Uh huh.”

“By the way,” said Hans, close to his ear, “no photographs are permitted. This is an unofficial mission.”

“I didn’t bring a camera,” Hal protested, though at the same time it occurred to him that he probably should have. Documentation; proof. For Casey and Susan. “Are you kidding?”

Then the men hunched around maps, Hans among them. They appeared to be tracing routes on the maps with markers and pushing buttons on their watches. The Americans took a paternal air with the local cadets, who nodded eagerly at every directive. Hal tuned them out and gazed into the foliage growing over the stream banks. It was bushy and disordered, thick, unruly — it could hide anything. A wave of dismay rolled over him. There was no way they would find Stern.

That was all right though, in the end. Wasn’t it? He would have made an unimpeachable showing. If these Rambos could not locate Stern, Susan and Casey would never think to be disappointed in little old him.

•

After a while they tied the boats to some trees at a place in the river where there was a muddy embankment. It looked like a dirt path of some kind, mostly overgrown.

“This is the trailhead,” said Hans, and pointed at a place on the map. It was where Dylan’s brother had directed them.

“So we’re all getting out here?” asked Hal.

“There are several groups,” said Hans, as the Coast Guarders surged around him off the boats. “You will go with the BDF group. The trainees. It will be less strenuous.”

“Oh, good,” said Hal. He was being babied, but he could care less. “Little hungover, sorry to say.”

The Americans were using their black radios, or walkie-talkies, or whatever they were. Static squawked out of them, and nasal tinny voices. All of them huddled on the bank, nodding and talking; Hal grabbed his pack and stepped off the boat with barely room to walk between the broad impervious backs and the hem of reeds and bushes along the water. He stepped too far into these and soaked a foot, swearing, then skirted the crowd.

He felt lost.

“Mr. Lindley?” called one of the young cadets. He had a scar from a harelip. “Right here, sir. Just a moment, then we’re going.”

The cadet had an accent, but what kind Hal couldn’t say. Maybe he was a native Garifuna. Light-brown skin, dark hair, like all of them. Hal didn’t feel like getting to know anyone. Small talk, names and places, details. He wanted to trudge in peace, passively. Just let them do their duty. Whatever the hell that might be.

He found a low flat rock in the shade and sat down. It was all shade, just a few feet from the riverbank it was all trees, tall and thin-trunked, most of them. Underfoot was mud and tree roots, a few dead leaves. Young backs were turned to him, blue and beige and camouflage shoulder blades. He let his head flop back and stared into the green overhead, barely moving except for his toes in the clammy, wet shoes.

No sky through the treetops to speak of, only leaves. Strange how the green of these tropical places seemed so unvarying — as though every tree had the same color leaves. Was it the brilliance of the sun, washing out their difference? The quality of the light as it beat down on them? But in the shade they were all the same too, the same bright yet curiously flat green.

Then the men broke their huddle and were jogging past him down the path, a group cutting off along a trail to the right, another group getting into a boat again and gunning the engine upstream. The lieutenant was in charge of the cadets, apparently — the once-harelip motioned to Hal and they were striding after him up the trail.

Hal hoisted himself off the rock and followed.

“We got monkeys,” said the once-harelip kid, turning back to him and grinning. “You might see some of the howlers. Way up. Black things. They’re not so cute monkeys. They got big teeth. Kinda ugly.”

Hal nodded and smiled.

•

It was a long march, a long, hot, wet, relentless, rapid march, it seemed to him, and three hours in he was bleary with exhaustion. He couldn’t believe he was there, couldn’t believe that no one had warned him. Hard to keep up — more than hard, actually painful: a form of torture. Long time since he’d had this much exercise and it was practically killing him. It was all he could do to stay in earshot behind them. He was far past embarrassment; he was past even humiliation. He had no pride left at all, nothing left but the strain. He had to struggle just to put one foot in front of the other. Every now and then, from in front, came the sound of voices or a branch snapping. Sweat had wet his shirt through and through, and it was making him cold in the shade of the trees; his water bottles were almost empty.

Take pity on me, he thought, and shortly afterward they stopped for lunch.

They had reached a rough campsite, he saw, coming up behind them, a small muddy clearing. The lieutenant kneeled at a fire pit ringed with rocks, touching the ashes or some shit. Sniffing them? Hal wiped his dripping brow with the back of his hand and sat down heavily on a log. Not watching. All he wanted was rest. He had no interest in them or what they were doing, except insofar as it caused him direct physical distress.

Maybe if he asked they would just let him rest here, let him lie down in the mud and sleep, sleep, sleep while they kept on marching.

He put his head on his arms.

“A watch,” said someone.

Hal raised his head. It was the lieutenant, holding out a wristwatch.

“Do you recognize this?”

Hal took it, flipped it over. It was a cheap, bulky digital with a plastic band — no brand name, even. Dried mud between the black plastic links.

“No,” he said. “He wouldn’t wear one like this. He’s more of a Rolex type.”

“Could belong to the guide,” said the lieutenant, and turned back to the others.

They were passing around sandwiches, eating them standing up. Hal’s damp log was the only seat in the house. Someone offered him a sandwich, the cadet with the harelip scar, and he took it gratefully. Maybe after he ate he would be stronger, maybe it would invigorate him. He wolfed it down inside a minute, barely registering the contents. He drank the rest of his water and someone gave him a can of juice. It was quiet for a while as they all ate, hardly any birdsong, until a radio squawked and a low murmur of conversation started.

He got up to pee in the woods, picked his way over tree roots and ferns for privacy. Staring at a thin, light tree trunk with thorns up and down the trunk, ants traveling up and down between the thorns, he noticed movement far off, in the shadows — what? A dark shape — a long, low animal, roughly the size of a dog. Were there dogs in the jungle? It moved more like a cat, though. Jumped from a stand of bamboo to some trees and was gone. He wiped his eyes, which ached from tiredness or dryness or something. Hallucinations, now. He should go back to the boat. He was sick, possibly. In the tropics, viruses thrived.

He was no better than the neurotic bohemians.

•

The trail continued on the other side of the campsite but it was more overgrown. There were vines, and now and then a cadet took out a machete and hacked at one.

Hal dragged after the column, defeated. Sometimes he had to climb over a down log, encrusted with fungus, and pieces of rotting bark got into his shoes and irritated his ankles and heels. He had to stop to pull them out and then catch up to the others, who waited for him. There were biting insects, so he slathered on some bug juice a cadet handed back. He did not bother trying to hear their exchanges; anyway they were mostly lost up ahead.

After a while a light rain began to patter on the leaves and his shoulders. The cadets had ponchos on now. He had nothing. But his shirt was already soaked and he found he didn’t mind the rain; the insects bit less. Not too much rain hit the ground, anyway, it seemed to him, much of it trapped above them in the canopy.

It was late afternoon when they turned around. Hal wasn’t sure how it happened, but they turned, and he was so grateful he smiled as he stood watching them file past, waiting to bring up the rear again. The lieutenant told him they were headed back to the boats.

“That’s it?” said Hal.

“We’ve been walking six hours give or take,” said the lieutenant, nodding. “We got no sign since the campsite. We’re tracking thin air. We got a timepiece, that’s it. Plus there’s a storm moving in. And we don’t want you collapsing on us.”

“Me?” asked Hal weakly, and as he fell into step behind them wondered if they were turning around for his sake. He wanted to weep with gratitude.

•

It was night when they got back to the boats, dark and raining. Hal could barely see — was so blurry with fatigue he blundered along the trail, slipping, with his eyes on nothing but the back of the man in front of him. That was his fixed point, that was his everything. He heard greetings in front of him, saw the shine of water beyond the light of the boats, but registered nothing more in the dark except the fact that he could sit down now, he could sit down. His legs shook violently as he sat and someone put something on his back, a blanket, then put a hot drink in his hands — a hot drink. How? But he did not think, he only drank and rested his bones. It was hot chocolate, possibly. Sweet and thick.

Hans was beside him, sitting in the boat, a clap on the back.

“. . sorry,” said Hans. “But C Team believes it located a guerrilla training camp. In that sense the mission has been an exceptional success. And they have you to thank.”

“Gorilla?” asked Hal, barely above a whisper.

“Guerrilla. Guatemalan guerrillas. Possibly Mayan.”

“I see,” said Hal, and something vague went through his mind about Rigoberta Menchú and the Peace Prize. The killing of civilians; the Guatemalan refugees, straggling to Mexico. . but he was tired, too tired. He couldn’t think of it now. He drank, half-dropped the empty cup at his feet. He wanted to slide down, lie down on Hans’s lap. Maybe he could. But no. Other side: a clean slate.

Fumbling, he spread out the blanket on the seat beside him, where Hans was not.

“. . in troops,” Hans was saying. “Possibly airpower.”

“Humanitarian?” asked Hal weakly, but he was already lying down, arranging the side of his face on the blanket. He felt the hardness beneath it against his cheek, but it did not stop him.

• • • • •

As he trudged up the dock to the hotel he had the dawn at his back, bands of pale pink over the sea. Exhaustion was making him woozy, unsure of himself; it took over everything. He might still be dreaming. There was a crick in his neck. Old man. The palm fronds dipped a little in the breeze off the ocean, almost bowing. . he and the palms deferred together, it seemed to him, his bent neck and their dipping fronds.

The beach was deserted except for a short wide guy in a baseball cap, raking sand. Hal went by him and pushed up the hill, passing beneath a coconut palm. A falling coconut could kill you if it hit you on the head. The neurotic bohemians had said so. Everywhere there were hazards, waiting.

He turned and looked back at the sea but there was a mist above the surface and he could barely make out the powerboat anymore. Was he losing his vision? A ridiculous thought. But there was something unreal about all of it. As though eyesight could be stolen, like an object. . he felt a sudden panic and rubbed his eyes. It was a mist, that was all. Fuzzy whiteness.

He kept going toward the buildings. He’d been jolted awake a couple of minutes before by the harelip cadet, who put a small, hesitant hand on his shoulder as the engine throttled down in the shallows. He was groggy, having slept, almost reeling from it, but at the same time there was an edge of anxiety. If he lay down in the hotel bed he was afraid he would toss and turn and have to get up again. The morning light might seep in.

He wanted to talk to Casey, but what would he say to her? His exhaustion, the blur of it. . first he needed more sleep.

Passing a fence he heard the light, plastic tic tic tic of a ping-pong ball hitting the table. He knew who it was. The cornboys were early risers, and this did not surprise him. He would not talk to them, though, he would avoid them neatly. No question. Their English was limited to single words they pushed out with a kind of belligerence. The last time he’d encountered them all they did was jab their fingers at items they were holding or wearing and assert the brand name. “Coca-Cola.” “Swatch.” “Nikes.”

The more he pondered it the eerier it got.

He brushed past clusters of pink flowers on vines growing over a white trellis—stapled there. Wait: he leaned in close and saw the tendril of vine was stapled to the wood. Was it plastic? He had the suspicion the whole place was fake, was a façade — now that he thought about it, the cornboys in their eeriness were a little unreal, as all of it was turning. .

The tic tic tic of the ping-pong ball, no one at all on the beach but the man raking sand, scritch scritch scritch. If not fake, the place must be abandoned. There was only a silence behind those faint sounds — like everyone had filed out of here in the night, faded away and left it empty in the gray of early morning.

Even Gretel was fading from him, the best part of it by far, by far. . receding already like smoke, a wishful invention. But he would always have the shine of the memory. And a shine was all it was, a glow. No one could see it but him.

Still it shone.

At the moment he would actually be comforted, he realized, to run into the bohemians. He knew they were real. The way they got on his nerves would be a reassurance at this point, make the world more solid. With the bohemians complaining and bickering he was not, finally, far from all that he knew. It was too early for them now, however. Unlike the Germans they did not rise with the sun. But later they would be up, drinking their black coffee or espresso or whatever it was they drank. . it would be good to see them. Ground him. Something like that.

Until then, pass the time — past the dreaminess, how it unsettled him — maybe he should lie down by the pool.

There were clean white towels in a cart on the deck, beneath a blue-and-white-striped awning. He helped himself to two, then another. He lay down on a chaise and covered himself with them.

•

“Excuse me. Sir?”

Coming awake again he realized the sun was higher in the sky but hidden, shedding a cold metallic light from behind the grayness. It was overcast. The towels had fallen off him and he was shivering. He sat up, dizzy. Wretched.

“Sorry, sir.”

“Sleeping.”

“I apologize. But they said you are looking for me.”

Hal stared at the interloper. It was the man raking sand. The unreality. . as though he would look for this man, as though he went around looking for sand-rakers.

“Who?”

“The manager. Mr. Lindley, right? My name is Marlo.”

It was a fog. He sat tiredly on the side of the lounger. Marlo. Yes.

“Right! I was looking for you. Before the armed forces.”

He leaned down, wanted to touch the water in the pool and splash it on his heavy face, but then the edge was further than he could reach. He let the arm fall, defeated.

“He said you wished to talk to me?”

“I was trying to find Thomas Stern. You worked for him.”

“You are his lawyer?”

“Lawyer? Never. Friend — friend of the family.”

“Please. Come with me.”

Hal stood up unsteadily.

“Please. This way.”

He was missing his belongings. What had he done with them? Wallet in the back pocket. Otherwise. . he felt unmoored. He was floating. Why not: follow some guy named Marlo.

They went down a path from the pool, through a gate and a yard where the sand-raker said something to another yard guy, an unshaven youth in overalls with a lawnmower. They trudged on through the service area, where guests were not usually welcome, past bags of fertilizer on a pallet, ladders against a wall, rusty tools on a bench, boats turned upside-down and equipment under a tarp. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but he had to watch his feet to keep from stumbling. Needed something.

A Bull Shot, was what came to him — he needed a Bull Shot, beef broth, vodka and a shot of Tabasco. His mother used to drink them. During a certain era she drank Bull Shots and served cocktail sausages.

“Here. It takes ten minutes, maybe fifteen. OK?”

He must have nodded because now Marlo wanted him to help push the boat off the sand, a small boat with an outboard motor. The man was already wading out, the bottom of his white pants swirling around his legs in the water. In the boat, nothing but wooden benches — no padding and no shade.

He didn’t have it in him to object, so he bent down and grabbed the back of the boat and heaved. Then he took his shoes off and stepped into the water after it — his pant legs were soaked right away and he sat down heavily on the back bench, feeling the wet material and the grains of sand against the skin of his calves. Marlo was beside him, pulling the cord, so he groped his way to the center bench.

Head spinning, he was on the water. Again.

Neither of them said anything over the noise of the motor and the thump of the prow against the waves. Hal felt thirsty — a throat-cracking thirst came on him in an instant. Afraid his throat would crack he found himself looking under the rough benches for water bottles — anything! — and seeing nothing but an oar and a plastic bucket, he closed his eyes.

His mother stood at the corner of a bar they had in the rec room in the basement, a basement that opened with sliding doors onto the backyard patio. He remembered trays of the miniature sausages in pastry wrappings, toothpicks stuck in them with colored flags of cellophane, flags of yellow and orange. But something thirsty about it — the dry air. . his father in a Hawaiian shirt, standing over the barbecue.

“Nadine, dear. Here. Have a Bull Shot,” he heard his mother say. Nadine was the lady from across the street. She was getting a divorce, he had heard his parents whispering about it. She wore bright, aqua-colored eyeshadow, far too much all the way up to her eyebrows, which Hal, nine at the time, fixated on until his mother told him to stop staring. Hal had firmly believed the eyeshadow was the reason for the divorce. He remembered his conviction on this point, asking his mother why Nadine didn’t just stop wearing it.

Even now he recalled the texture of the eyeshadow, how it made him notice the lines beneath the turquoise sheen on the lady’s skin, their fine cross-hatchings.

Susan had gone with him to the funeral — his mother’s, not the eyeshadow lady’s — shortly after their own wedding, twenty years later. He had held her hand at the side of the grave, which was surrounded by a carpet of something like AstroTurf. He held her hand and felt this contact was the armor worn by the two of them. Armor was what it was, the pair bond, marriage: something enclosing them that offered protection. But it was not metal, finally, it was far too flimsy. . at different moments in a life you had these companions, blurring around you like figures in stop-motion photography: mother, father, friends of his youth, wife, daughter. Gone.

Not one of them forever.

He was riveted by the pain of this flashing away, this dimming. He would die from it, die from being alone.

He opened his eyes.

“I am so thirsty,” he said to Marlo over the engine noise, in the vain hope he might be able to help. But the man only nodded and smiled, probably no idea.

Then they were sputtering to a slow glide. Glancing down he saw the boat was over the shallows again, simple sand beneath them through the light water. No coral, no seaweed. He turned around — he had spent the whole ride facing backward, facing where they’d come from. There was a small beach, some trees — an island, he guessed. A small island.

“Where are we?” he asked Marlo.

“Mr. Tomás’s property,” said Marlo, as the boat cruised in and the hull scratched over the bottom.

Hal looked up the beach. He could make out what seemed to be piles — piles of what he did not know.

“You go,” said Marlo, and gestured.

He had no idea what he was doing here but got out of the boat anyway, waded up the slope of the beach still clutching his shoes. He tried to cross the sand barefoot but there were sharp things in it, little sticks or twigs or something, that hurt him. He had to stop, wavering, hopping to keep his balance as he put the shoes on. Off balance, he almost toppled. The sensation of his wet feet inside the shoes was unpleasant: cold toes and gritty sand.

All he could do was walk toward the piles. Nowhere else to go; there was nothing else here. He felt a prick of fear. Maybe Marlo had brought him out here to kill him. Why? A good question. Still. Hal was middle-aged, exhausted and weak — a natural victim. It was just the two of them.

He turned around and gazed back at the boat, where Marlo stood cupping his mouth with his hands. He was lighting a cigarette.

Up the beach a little further were the collapsed walls of a building, its concrete foundation. What was Hal supposed to be noticing, for chrissake? He was too tired for games. Tired and stupid. He wasn’t a forensics investigator. He was no Sherlock Holmes. He noticed nothing, did not even want to have to pay attention. Splintered plywood, chunks of plaster, waterlogged Sheetrock with yellow stains browning at the edges. That was it.

Then someone came out of the trees, a man zipping his fly. A dark, lean man with a full beard, shirtless and half-emaciated, his ribs showing over a concave stomach. A mountain man or hippie. His white painter pants were filthy.

“Who the hell?” said Hal, not meaning to. Then it struck him: this was the man on the boat, the bearded man on the boat he had seen from the scuba island.

“Wait,” said the man. He was American. Small mercies. “God! I know you.”

Hal gazed at him. His eyes were a startling blue against the brown of his face. The beard was brown but blond strands were woven through it; the nose was straight and peeling across the bridge from the sun.

He heard himself laugh nervously. He clutched his arms around himself, then let go.

Yes: he had seen this man standing up in a boat, the day of the scuba dive. It was him.

“T.,” said the man, stating the obvious, and stuck out a brown hand. “You’re Casey’s father, aren’t you? The tax man!”

Hal hesitated to take the hand, recalling how it had recently zipped the fly, and was startled when Stern clasped him into a warm embrace.

He felt a tinge of hysteria, then confusion.

“I’m tired,” he said, drawing back. “But I’m really thirsty. Do you have some water?”

“Sure, come with me,” said the newly brown, bearded Stern.

Wary of where he put his feet — there were rusty nails in the disintegrating Sheetrock — Hal followed droopily over the piles of debris, back through the trees. A sandy trail had been cleared, just wide enough for single file. Thin trees on each side, shiny miniature leaves. A minute later they were in a small clearing. Ahead of them was an unfinished structure of wood built around a tree; Hal saw a camp stove, a tent, a dark-green metal tank. PROPANE, read a red label on the side. There was a folding chair and he sank down into it. Stern was already handing him a cup.

He drank it down, all of it, with closed eyes. His blood was rushing in his ears.

“Have more,” said Stern. He took the cup from Hal, filled it and handed it back.

Hal drank the second cup and realized his head was aching again but that he felt better. It was water he had needed, water and sleep.

“Is your head hurting? Your eyes?” asked Stern.

“Yes,” nodded Hal. “Yes.”

“You’re dehydrated. It’s a dangerous condition. Just keep drinking, small sips but steadily.”

“They’re afraid you’re dead,” said Hal, after a few seconds sitting there nodding and dazed, stroking the near-empty cup with a thumb.

“Dead? Oh,” said Stern. “I kept planning to call. I needed someone to look after my dog for a while. I was just about to call.”

“We picked her up. She’s OK,” said Hal.

“I knew the kennel would take good care of her. Place costs a king’s ransom.”

“She’s at my house,” said Hal.

“Oh, good,” said Stern. “That’s great.”

“But they’ve been really worried,” said Hal.

It was a letdown after everything to be sitting with Stern, the plastic water cup in his hand. Stern took it to fill it again, leaned over to a jug, a five-gallon plastic jug with a spout. Water gurgled as Stern tipped it forward.

Hal sipped and felt himself shiver and then laughed, a bit wildly. He could hear it but not stop it.

“We had the armed forces looking for you,” he said. “It was a search-and-rescue. Organized by Germans.”

Stern looked surprised and then barked out a laugh of his own. Hal laughed harder. They were fools, laughing. Uncontrollable, stupid laughter. Hal bent forward, tears running from his eyes. He shook his head to stop himself laughing. Eventually it petered out.

“I miss them. I miss Casey,” said Stern, nodding to himself. “Susan too.”

“She’s having an affair,” said Hal. It slipped out.

“Casey?” asked Stern.

“Susan!”

“I see,” said Stern, and glanced at him sidelong.

“With that paralegal who works in your office. That young, preppy guy named Robert.”

“Robert? Huh,” said Stern, shifting in his seat and turning his face upward. He squinted a little at the sky. “Well. I never liked him.”

Hal felt a surge of gratitude.

“You know, it wasn’t so long ago that your daughter told me,” said Stern, “that I should avoid wearing those shirts with the blue pinstripes on them and the solid white collars. You know the kind I mean?”

“Those are bad,” agreed Hal. “She was right about that.”

They sat quietly, Stern gazing into the distance with a kind of enraptured tenderness.

“And here you are,” said Hal. “You’re not wearing one. Are you.”

They smiled at each other again. A bird squawked.

“I do need a shirt, though,” said Stern, musing. “I ran out of them.”

“I see that.”

“I’ve been working,” said Stern, almost apologetic.

“But,” said Hal, “I mean — what happened to you?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Stern. “You should rest first, though. I’m serious, I think you’re pretty dehydrated. Come with me.”

He got up, gesturing for Hal to follow him. At the wooden hut built on the tree — a kind of tree-house, Hal guessed — he lifted a piece of coarse cloth that was serving as a door and put his hand on Hal’s shoulder, guiding him through. Hal saw a sleeping bag on the rough floor.

“Lie down there for a while,” said Stern. “You need to be out of the sun. It’s cooler than the tent. I’ll get you something for the headache.”

Hal did what he said, lay down on the sleeping bag, which smelled a little of mildew but not bad, exactly. A few seconds later Stern was back with two small pills in his dark hand. Hal took them.

“Thank you,” he said, and slowly crumpled sideways.

• • • • •

When he woke it was dark out again. He had slept through the morning, slept through the afternoon. He could barely believe it. Time was wrong for him now, out of kilter since the invasion of the armed forces.

He scrambled to his feet. He felt better, almost normal, though there was still a dull throb at his temples. The ache was less urgent. Through a window in the tree-house, if you could call it that — a gap between the planks — he saw the glow of a campfire in the dark and the silhouetted figure of Stern standing a few feet off, back turned.

He lifted the cloth and went out.

“Thomas,” he said. “Did the boat go? Marlo?”

“Call me T.,” said Stern, turning. He was standing in front of his camp stove, a two-burner thing, Hal noticed, connected to the propane tank by a thin tube that snaked out of it, curling. . it was balanced on an empty crate. T. held a large spoon, with which he was stirring something in a saucepan.

“T. OK then,” said Hal, reluctant. “I didn’t mean to sleep the whole day. I can’t believe it.”

“You needed it,” said T.

“So where’s my, uh — Marlo?”

“Marlo left.”

“He left? He stranded me?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” said T. “You’re with me. He had to get back to work. We thought you needed the rest. Dehydration, if it lasts long enough, you know — it can have serious consequences. How’d you get that far gone?”

“I don’t know,” said Hal. “I think — I wasn’t paying attention. Basically.”

“Making chili,” said T. “From a can, but it’ll do. Got a kick to it. Want any?”

“Sure. Thank you,” said Hal, and made his way around the fire to the folding chair. He was starving, he realized. Also thirsty again. He looked for his plastic cup. It was back in the tree-house, so he went to get it.

“Make yourself comfortable. There’s a bottle of wine sitting on the cooler,” called T. as Hal came out again. “Cheap and red. Probably not the best idea if you’re still feeling the dehydration, though.”

“I’ve been drinking too much lately,” said Hal. He downed another two cups of water before he reached for the wine.

Slopping cup in one hand, the folding chair in the other, he went around the propane tank and the cooler and plopped the chair down in the sand to sit facing T. It seemed polite, though awkward.

In the trees around them there were the slight sounds of birds, maybe crickets. An insect landed on Hal’s arm, a mosquito, possibly, and he slapped at it. He could hear the faint plash of waves through the screen of trees. They were low, scrubby trees not much taller than he was — more like overgrown bushes, really. He let his head fall back on his neck: above him the sky was huge. The stars were more visible tonight. They went on and on.

“So how did you end up down here?” asked T. He was slicing an onion.

“I should be asking you the questions,” said Hal. “Are you kidding? I came looking for you, of course. To help Susan. And Casey. You vanished into thin air. Your business, you know — it’s not doing so well. You’re losing money. For starters. What gives?”

“You know,” said T., and shrugged, “the usual.”

“The usual?”

“Change of priorities. I went on a river trip.”

“I know all that, the Monkey River. That guy who you were with? The guide or whatever? Dylan? His brother is worried sick about him. We found his watch at your campsite, maybe.”

“Delonn. Not Dylan. But yeah. That’s — I need to talk to his family about it, sooner or later. I’ve been keeping myself to myself. Marlo’s brought me some food and supplies while I lay low. Maybe not the best idea. Tactically. It looks bad, if anyone’s looking. But what happened was, our first night out, he was in his tent, I was in mine — we each had our own tent, you know? — and I must have been asleep when it happened.”

“What happened?”

“He died.”

“He died?”

T.’s face was in shadow. Hal tried to make out its emotion.

“A heart attack, I think. A stroke, maybe an aneurysm. Something quiet, while he was sleeping. He was an older guy, Delonn. Maybe in his sixties. Still. There’d been this — earlier he had problems breathing, but he didn’t seem worried about it.”

“Jesus!”

“He was a tough guy, you know, pretty rugged. Carried more weight in his pack than I did. I found him in the morning and what I ended up doing was, I dragged the body back to the boat. I was in shock, I think. I panicked. The boat’s propeller broke after that and I ditched the boat. And the body with it. I tried to hike out on foot. Stupid, but that’s what happened. I got lost for a while. Finally I made it down to the coast. I don’t know if it was days or weeks, honestly. From there I hitched a ride to Marlo’s place and he brought me here. Short version.”

“It wasn’t in the boat, though. I mean, the body.”

“I know,” said T., a little vaguely. “I noticed that. Yeah. That’s a complication.”

Hal sat for a second, waiting. He wondered if T. was lying to him. Here, though, he seemed better than he had before. Hal liked him more. Maybe only because he was familiar — after all, Hal had practically even been willing, just a few hours back, to cozy up to the bohemians.

In a strange land you found yourself seeking. Afloat among the aliens, your standards were relaxed.

Anyway, like him or not, T. could still be a liar.

“Shouldn’t you probably tell someone?”

“Marlo was going to meet with whoever there was,” said T. “He was going to say I was recovering, that I would talk to them soon. I didn’t know. . anyway, but. It should be me. I should go talk to them, I should face the music. You’re right. Of course.”

“And you didn’t call anyone. How come you didn’t at least call Susan?”

There was a pause. T. seemed distracted, pondering.

“You like onion? Because I can chop it fine or leave it in these big chunks.”

“Whatever.”

Hal watched as he tossed the onion into the tin frying pan, pushed it around with the spoon.

“My wife,” said Hal a bit stiffly, “is devoted to you.”

“I’m sorry for letting her down. Hard to explain. Call it a mid-life crisis.”

“But you’re what,” said Hal. “All of, like, twenty-six?”

He took a slug of his wine. It was nice. The guy looked older at the moment, that was true, with the deep tan, the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and the uneven beard that gave him the look of a homeless individual. He could pass for forty, if you didn’t know.

“I’ve always done things too early,” said T. “When I was seven I was already thirteen. When I was in college I was already in my thirties. Youth passed me by.”

“Please,” scoffed Hal. “Give me a break.”

“It’s a mind-set, is all I mean. Partly.”

“My age, now,” said Hal, “that’s when you have a mid-life crisis. Fact I may be having one as we speak.”

T. poured the chili out of the pan, dividing it between a bowl and a can marked CHILI.

“I only have the one bowl,” he said apologetically, and held it out. “Here.”

Hal took it gratefully. He was ravenous. T. was eating too but more slowly, spooning his chili out of the can with a deliberation that seemed incongruous to Hal — almost graceful, even. He looked underfed but apparently was in no hurry to remedy the situation.

Gnats landed on Hal’s neck, or maybe they were sandflies — they bit lightly — but they were nothing to the hunger. He polished off the bowlful inside a minute.

“Bit more left, if you like,” said T., and handed over the frying pan.

“So what are you, uh, actually doing here?” asked Hal, after he’d scraped it up. “On the island?”

“I was having a hotel built,” said T., putting down his can and crossing his legs, leaning back. He held a scratched plastic mug with a coat of arms and some writing on it; Hal squinted to read it in the light of the lantern. There were four yellow lions on a red background. Faded words read CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIGHTWEIGHT ROWING CLUB.

He rowed for Yale.

“You didn’t row for Cambridge, did you?” Hal asked him after a few seconds, and quaffed.

“What? Row? — Oh, this? This isn’t mine. This, actually, was Delonn’s. It was in our camping stuff. I ended up with it. I didn’t really mean to.”

Hal was feeling the wine already.

“You go to Yale?” he asked.

“I went to a state school. Where my father went before me.”

A relief. Somehow it had seemed to Hal, back in L.A., that Robert the Paralegal was a pale imitation of T. — that maybe Susan saw in him a reflection of her employer, to whom she gave such fealty. Maybe Robert was only a stand-in for T., had hovered at the far edge of his suspicion. Now he found out even T.’s WASP credentials were nothing much. Somehow it was consoling.

In point of fact he himself was a WASP, if he wanted to be literal about it, and specifically a WASP with some recent German background. His mother, long ago, had flirted with genealogical research and once told him the branches of their family tree sprouted nothing but Englishmen, Germans and a few glum, dead Swedes.

Still, it was the WASPs and the Germans that most alarmed him.

“Sorry,” he said, “digression. You had a hotel here?”

“It was under construction. The storm destroyed it, though.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Half-destroyed it, technically, but it was totaled. So I’ve been demolishing it.”

Hal watched as T. poured wine into his plastic mug, emptying the bottle. Luckily Hal’s own vessel was still nearly full.

“Didn’t know you were quite so hands-on,” he said jokily. “What Susan said, you were mostly the brain trust. Not so much on the brawn side of things.”

“I’ve been giving it to the ocean. Piece by piece. I figure it could be an artificial reef. You know, like the old tires they sink in some places, or the wrecks, and then the fish come and inhabit them.”

Hal looked at him. He seemed sincere, but maybe there was something absent about him. Maybe he wasn’t all there. Like mother, like son, finally. It made perfect sense, of course, with the sunburnt castaway look and the whole tropical island, spurning-society deal.

“Wait. So this is why you haven’t called anyone? This is what you’re — you know, with your business losing money and all that this whole time? So you can personally, like, lug the wreckage of your hotel into the water?”

“Well, when you put it that way,” said T. lightly, smiling, and then gazed past him. “I mean, losing money — so yeah. It’s OK, finally. All my life I thought that was the worst thing that could happen to you.”

“Uh huh,” said Hal. He waited.

“I thought money was real.”

Poor guy.

“Well, I tell you,” said Hal mildly, as though speaking to an infant. “Admittedly I’m biased, being an IRS man. But I can’t think of a lot of things realer than money. I mean, to most people money is life and death.”

“So that’s two things right away. Life. And death.”

“I don’t really follow you.”

“They’re both more real. Living for money is like living for, I don’t know, a socket wrench. Unless you’re going to do something specific with it, it’s a complete waste of time. Obvious to some people, I realize. But I just now figured it out.”

“Sure. Hey, I get it. You’re talking to a civil servant here. So obviously I’m no high-earning capitalist. I’ve seen what money can do, though. Take income tax revenues. Social programs.”

“That’s not what income tax revenues do,” said T. softly. “Social Security has its own—”

“Not primarily, maybe—”

“Primarily, taxes pay for weapons. Weapons and war. Always have, always will.”

A straw man. Statistically, it was far more complicated than that. Hal could break it down for him. Basic protester stuff.

“Well, tech—”

“I know. Weapons, war, and please don’t forget the D.O.T.”

“As a percentage of—” started Hal, but the guy was shaking his head.

“Hey. Can I show you something?” he asked. “I’ve also been building the tree-house. I’m using some of the hotel materials for that. This is an island caye, palm trees and sand, which is what made it buildable in the first place. You know, some of the cayes around here are only mangrove, no real ground to build on. Mostly water. This one is island but it has a lot of mangrove vegetation too, kind of a mangrove-swamp thing on the east side, and the west side is solid ground. Right here we’re phasing into mangrove, and those are mostly scrubby. But I found one tree that was tall enough, that was it. Come here,” and he rose and Hal followed him, both with their cups of wine in hand.

There were rough steps up the tree with the lean-to beside it, pieces of wood hammered clumsily onto the narrow trunk. Whatever else the guy was, he was no carpenter.

At the top there was a platform, several layers of plywood with holes cut in them for the topmost limbs, which stuck out like grasping arms. Hal pulled himself up behind T., unsteady.

“Is this thing safe?” he asked.

T. shrugged. “Enough.”

They both stood looking out over the mangroves, over the low tangle of vegetation eastward to the open ocean. Nothing around them but air; at only twenty feet up they were the highest point for miles.

Hal saw a huge ship far out on the water, dazzling with light.

“Cruise ship, huh,” he said.

“You can see from here to the utter east,” said T. softly. “All the world ends in sea.”

The wind picked up the branches of the trees that ringed their clearing, swept through and subsided again.

“Right,” said Hal.

So the guy was maybe not doing too well, mental-wise. It happened. He had been in an extreme situation — lost in the jungle, pretty much. He had a little breakdown, or maybe an epiphany; he found God, he saw the error of his ways, he renounced the accumulation of capital. Good, fine, and even excellent. More power to him. Let him become ascetic, live in a small hut with zero Armanis. At last Susan could stop working for him.

Hal’s new fondness was a pleasant enough sensation. The man who used to be Stern had a gentle demeanor now, or that was what it felt like. Maybe Hal could even serve as his advocate with the Belize authorities, if it turned out he had committed a crime. If he had, for instance, murdered the tour guide, say, and that was why he had spiraled out of control and was building tree-houses and forgoing personal grooming. Hal could stand beside him like a brother.

He drank his wine and felt the cool breeze on his face and the warmth in his throat.

“Not a bad place to be,” said T. “Is it?”

But wait, maybe this was why Marlo had asked if he was a lawyer. When he first woke him up by the pool, Marlo had asked if he was a lawyer. Maybe the guy knew he needed a lawyer. Maybe Marlo had already called for one.

“Not at all,” he concurred, and looked up into the dark blue. It was light up here, the wind lifted you as though you could soar or fall, and let it, you wouldn’t mind. Stars were visible, but soft and washed out by the water in the air, not like infinite separate pinpoints he’d seen once in the desert.

They had gone camping in Joshua Tree one weekend, Susan and he, not so long after the accident, because they had to get out, they had to go anywhere, they had to escape, and it was the closest empty place they’d heard of. Casey was in rehab then — the physical therapy kind, not the drug-using. They’d driven east on the interstate out of L.A., through the miles and miles of industrial sprawl and car dealerships flying their advertising blimps in the gray, smoggy sky along the crowded freeway. Finally they pulled up outside the visitors’ center and sure, there was concrete, just like at home, the concrete parking lot; but beyond it there was sand and sand and mountains and sky, and there was air all around them, plenty of room to breathe. The spiky cactus-trees were everywhere, the low mountains, the campsites with gigantic boulders.

What he remembered now from that trip, besides the stars, was how they hardly spoke, he and Susan, they hardly talked at all. But it was not bad, it was not a measure of distance, or it hadn’t been back then. It was restful and good, peace in the wake of a long struggle.

Their borrowed tent had a transparent window in the top of it. He had lain there on his back at night, on top of his sleeping bag, and gazed out at the stars while Susan slept beside him. He thought they’d never looked so clear, and there had never been so many.

Casey would like this tree-house, he thought; Casey would love it here. She had looked into flying, flying in a glider. There was a program that could take her up in the sky. She hadn’t done it yet, but she still could. He would call her and say do it, do it. To know that lightness. . it was not the running, not a vision of her once in a race, say, her slim young legs flying, though there had been times like that and he remembered them well enough. Field Day at school, when she was in the hundred-yard dash: he loved to watch her but she complained both before and after the race, even holding her purple ribbon. She did not like running. Hard to believe while he was watching her go, it so closely resembled joy. . or flying a kite once, on a beach in Cape Cod, her feet kicking up sand on him. There were cliffs near them and the water was far too cold for swimming.

But that was not what distressed him, the memories of running. Only the simple memory of her face — her face without tension, without strain or grief.

“My daughter would like this,” he said.

“She would,” nodded T.

“I wish I could just take her — take her anywhere,” said Hal, with a rush of agitation. He saw Casey in flight, swooping. “Anywhere she wanted to be.”

He was staring out at the cruise ship. Its lights were like the lights of the ballroom in the resort — was it last night? No, the night before — dancing with Gretel. The nearness to the water made the lights blur and shimmy, part of the very same liquid.

“You know,” said T., and Hal realized T. was looking at him, reaching out to rest a thin hand on his arm, “she’s going to be all right.”

“I don’t know,” said Hal, but it came out like a sigh. Something about the guy’s bearing reassured him — his confidence, his certainty. He said Casey would be all right. So she must be.

“I promise.”

No need to move.

Only around the cruise ship was the water dappled with light; other than that it was blackness. Hal did not want to take a step, in case the platform broke beneath him or he fell off the edge, but this was fine for the moment. This was where he was now.