Tampa Bay Noir

Only You by Lisa Unger

Clearwater Beach

You. Long limbs graceful, incandescent in the moonlight. The surf, lapping lazy and warm against the sugar shore. The sky. A void. Stars dying, galaxies spinning, light-years ago, their glimmer reaching us only now when it’s far too late. Our toes disappear in the silken sand, salt on our skin. You’re so still, so near. But always out of reach. Even now.

“You shouldn’t have come back here.”

Was it just a week ago now? You. Surprised to see me.

“Why would you come back here, Scottie?”

But you already knew the answer. There’s only ever been one question, one answer between us. Silly, isn’t it? When the universe is so vast. That the only important things are so small.

This place is apart. A world separate from the rest of it. Didn’t it always seem like that to you, even when we were younger and we didn’t know anything else? We’d never been anywhere, really. We were just Florida kids, living in bathing suits and flip-flops, always dragging a damp towel, or a fishing rod, or a bucket filled with shells, or some long-suffering sea creature we promised to return to the wild, and sometimes did and sometimes didn’t.

You, a sylph in a simple black sheath that draped off your thin shoulders. The gossamer strands of your haircut blunt and elegant, shaping your jaw. Your eyes a question at first, an almost-pleasant memory lingering there, and then a final, sharp accusation.

That night, just a week ago, you weren’t happy to see me.

He walked up behind you, broad where you are narrow. Dull where you are bright. That possessive hand at the small of your back. You turned and smiled at him, the glare you had for me all but fading.

“Oh, honey,” you said, voice going soft, pleasing. “You remember Scott, don’t you?”

His smile seemed earnest, blue eyes slanted as if searching memory. “Oh, right. From the summers. Hey, good to see you, man. You look great.”

That’s right. From the summers.

We all grew up here. Your father and his — founding members of this yacht club. My father the bartender, forever. These days maybe we’d call him a mixologist. But then, he was just Brian — the slow smile, the easy way he had with that shaker, the guy who could make anything they wanted and happily would.

“Wait a second,” he said, reaching out a hand.

Vineyard Vines oxford, Brooks Brothers blazer, Rolex dangling. Oh please. All the stories we try to tell each other with our possessions.

“Scottie Rayder, right?”

I waited for him to add, the bartender’s kid, or, the camp counselor — something like that, something to make me small. They always try to do that. Make you less than who you have become. I readied myself with a polite smile, returned his firm grip.

“Holy cow,” he said instead, running a hand over the close crop of his blond hair. “I heard you’re killing it. Your software company. Gaming, right? Enigma is the big one, isn’t it? The puzzle.”

His openness, his sincerity. It took me aback.

“That’s right.” I offered him a nod. “And you. A surgeon, right?”

A smile I recognized, a faux-humble squint.

“Hey, you need a new hip, I’m your man,” he said with a grin that was almost — almost — self-deprecating.

“I think I’ll try to hold onto the originals,” I answered, patting my pockets. I’m a big fan of the light banter that’s always been so easy here. Words slip off the tongue, polite laughter bubbles like sparkling wine.

“That’s a good plan,” he said with a practiced chuckle.

This conversation or one just like it has been uttered a thousand, a million times within these walls. The bar top glistened, the music — jazz, Charlie Parker maybe — ambient. Glasses, bottles stood sentry on shelves. Jewelry dangled on delicate necks and ears, wrists, glimmering.

You. Stiff, shoulders tense. Your smile was brittle. Your eyes glazed with impatience. Body turned just slightly toward the door. You couldn’t wait to move away from the conversation.

“Good to see you again, Scott,” you said. “I’m afraid we’re late to join our friends.”

Just shy of rude. Cold, certainly. Not like you at all.

He looked at you quickly, questioning, then nodded. The well-trained husband. Your fingers laced through his, and he gently led you away, casting a glance back. I offered him a farewell wave. Bradley. The one you married.

I wonder if he remembers, or if he ever knew, that you and I were in love. Once. About a light-year ago.

The house. The one I’m building here. It will be the biggest — by far — in the county, directly on the sand of North Clearwater Beach. Nine thousand square feet, ten bedrooms, eight and half bathrooms, a thirty-three-foot-high entry foyer, five balconies. A gym, a meditation space, a formal dining room that has more square footage than the house where I grew up just miles away. A gleaming state-of-the-art conference room. The master suite will overlook the infinity pool, which will appear to flow seamlessly into the ocean waters beyond. A restaurant-grade kitchen with gleaming Sub-Zero/Wolf appliances, another smaller “family” kitchen, the impractical but oh-so-gorgeous marble from Italy for all the countertops. Sauna, steam room.

It’s obscene really, absolutely bloated. It will be nestled here in this tiny gated section of the beach where gigantic homes sit, oblivious to the state of the planet, on a tiny slip of land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Intracoastal Waterway.

“I thought you were a minimalist,” mused my father, in his late seventies now. He’s long retired, living comfortably nearby. He loaned me $200,000 to start my business and let’s just say it was a good investment for him. My mother didn’t live to see what I’ve made of myself; she passed, as you know. That’s the last time I saw you, at her funeral. I saw you in the back of the crowded church, dabbing at your eyes. You loved her, and she you. You offered your condolences, stiff and distant.

“I am a minimalist,” I told him. “It’s the only house I’ll need.”

“Other than that apartment in Manhattan?”

“Well.”

I tried to get him to move in. But he wouldn’t.

“I don’t want to live in a museum, son.”

The old man is so practical, so down-to-earth. I think the house actually embarrasses him.

“It’s so much, Scottie. Why do you want it so big?”

Because, honestly, that’s all some people ever understand.

Tonight, the bar and dining room fill, volume swelling. Exuberant, loose. One booming voice in the corner draws eyes filled with respect. That shock of snow-white hair, those crystalline-blue eyes, presidential jaw, a good three inches taller than everyone else. His slim wife in attendance, smiling, sculpted blond bob, face pulled taut in that way of older wealthy women who’ve had too much work done. Your parents. I’ve yet to say hello.

“And I told him...” I don’t hear the rest, just the boisterous, conspiratorial laughter that follows.

“I remember you.”

She shifts into the seat beside me, where I hold the corner over by the wall, watching, my martini waning. Raven hair, a smattering of freckles, full cheeks, and a pouty mouth. Veronica. She is poured into that blush-pink dress. The diamond on her hand is the size of a Volkswagen.

“Good to see you, Ronnie,” I say. It is. She always made me laugh.

“Scott.” A nod. “Home visiting your dad?”

“Actually, I’ll be around for a while. I’m building a house.”

The bartender, crisp in white and black, wild jet curls pulled back, smart goatee, brings a glass of something sparkling in a flute that she didn’t order.

“Mrs. Roth,” he says easily. “The usual.”

“Thank you, Sean.” She smiles at him, friendly, familiar. “You’re good to me. Since when do you call me Mrs. Roth?”

There’s none of the distance between staff and members that there used to be here. Now it’s all hugs and handshakes. The walls have come down, haven’t they? The lines blurred.

“Since you got married,” he says.

“Oh, so — I’m suddenly worthy of your respect?”

“You’re an old married lady now.”

“That’s right.” She sips from her glass and winks.

“Scottie here is building a house,” he says. “He tell you?”

“He was about to say. When we were interrupted by the help.”

“Ouch.” He winces but then grins.

She tugs at his cuff.

The three of us used to get high together down on the beach. After the members left, the tent erected on the beach for events maybe still up, lit underneath by glittering strands of tiny bulbs. We’d light up and talk about — nothing. Which member was the biggest asshole, how hot it was, how heavy the chairs were that we had to carry down to the water’s edge, what we were going to do with our lives. Then we’d strip down to our underwear and swim in the black warm water. North Beach flows up into Caladesi Island, a nature preserve. No ambient light at all, so the sky was — is — alive with stars. The world would sway and sing. Sean always had weed back then, the good stuff. From the peaceful glaze in his eyes, I’d say he is still up to his old ways.

“Why would you come back here?” she asks. Blunt. Always says exactly what she means. You never realize what a lovely quality that is in a human being until you discover how exceedingly rare it is. “Aren’t you like crazy rich now? You could be anywhere.”

She glances about the room and sees you. Her eyes linger, maybe on the line of your neck, the sweep of your black skirt. There’s a dance on her face, a wiggle of her eyebrows, a flash of something in her eyes. Then she presses her mouth into a tight line. What is it between the two of you? Always a subtle antipathy.

“Oh.” She rises, lifts her glass to mine. “Some things never change.”

When she walks away, Sean stands drying a glass with a bright white cloth, shaking his head.

“Wanna get high later?” he asks, not looking at me.

“Sure.”

You. Dancing. Having a good time, or so you’ll have them all think.

I could be anywhere. Except I’m always here, waiting for you to see me.

It’s only my second visit to this old club since I came home, but Sean already knows how I like my martini. Which is to say ice-cold Grey Goose vodka, one olive, a whisper of vermouth. I love this place — it smells of Old Florida, wood and salt, a hint of musk, candle wax, something else — sun-bleached memory. It’s all towering ceilings and crown molding, wainscoting, walls and walls of windows that look out onto the serene mangrove bay. Nearly a century of commodore photos line the walls, all men, all white. Thick-carpeted stairs, solid-wood banister, gold finishes. It’s run-down, a little, in a way that only makes it more beautiful.

Sean puts another martini in front of me, number two. I catch my reflection in the mirror, pale white skin, black suit, hair slicked back. Long fingers on the stem of my glass. Nothing about me communicates my extraordinary wealth, except perhaps an aura of indifference. The energy of needing nothing.

Enigma, the game I developed. A small robed figure, hooded, faceless, with a red heart on his chest, tries to find his way through a web of city streets, underground tunnels, forest-scapes, twisting canyons, mountain paths. The color palette is gray scale with jewel accents — bloodred, jade, sapphire. Enigma is searching for his heart’s true home, the hearth fire burning, the embrace of loved ones, the place where he is understood. There are demons — dragons, ghouls, life-draining wraiths — with which he must contend. When he dies, it’s a bloody affair.

“I still haven’t figured it out.”

There’s a young man next to me now. A stranger. He has the look of someone yoked by expectations. It resides in the dark circles under his eyes, his cuticles raw and bitten.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“The game,” he says. “I’ve been playing for years. And I still haven’t figured it out. I give up, go back to it. Give up again.”

When they do figure it out, they can’t believe it.

“You will,” I say. This may or may not be true. “Just keep trying.”

“Any hints?”

“The answer is closer than you think.”

I drain my glass and walk outside. Summer has waned, the heavy blanket of heat and humidity lifted, the salt air cool on my face. The high moon colors the cumulus clouds silver, in a velvety blue-black sky. A great blue heron stands in silhouette, long and elegant on a piling to which is tied an enormous yacht. There are other more dramatic places — the elegant squalor of Manhattan, of course, the wild light show of Shanghai, the self-satisfied beauty of Paris, the cool gray loftiness of London. But there is nothing quite like this place, nature’s canvas, peaceful and unassuming.

A gleaming, brand-new, fifty-foot Hatteras — the most self-indulgent of all luxury items, an absolute gas guzzler, an insult by its very existence to world poverty, the environment, good taste — sits tied off on multiple pilings. It’s mine.

I feel, more than hear, you come up behind me.

“This is where I kissed you the first time,” I say.

You blow out a breath. Disdain, something else.

“And where you broke my heart,” I go on into the silence.

“Looks like you got over it.” Your voice is tinny, distant.

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t think about you at all.” It sounds like the lie that it is.

“Come by the house later,” I say. Does it sound easy, casual? “Sean and I are going to get high.”

“I’m married,” you say. “I have a child.”

There’s a tightness to your voice, as if you’ve taken offense; as if you can’t imagine I’d suggest such a thing. The good wife. The pretty mother. I know well the lovely little story of your life, the one you post about daily on your Facebook page.

“You were always good at slipping away,” I say, turning to you. “As I remember.”

You soften, laugh a little; we share a storybook of wild memories. Our misspent youth.

“Betsy Lynn.” Your husband; he’s come looking. You are the jewel in his coat. “Hon, you ready?”

“Of course,” you say. “Let’s go.”

“Night, Scottie.” Another robust handshake from your handsome Bradley. “Good to see you again, man.”

But this time there’s an edge. He does remember me. He knows what I was to you. I smile.

“Good night, Brad.”

“They’re never going to accept you, you get that, right?” Sean blows out the gust of smoke he’s been holding in. His eyes glimmer with mischief, smile wide and peaceful.

Accept me? As if. My membership to this yacht club where I used to work was easy to secure. Just a phone call from my attorney, and the doors swung wide. No trial membership. No seeking of sponsorships. Just a nice big check, the golden key to any lock.

Accept me? People will bow at your feet if they think you can help them with something, anything — donate to their causes, buy their properties, use their contracting companies, drive off in one of their new cars. Acceptance is not the goal here. Acceptance is what people think they want.

We’re on the bow of the Hatteras, still at the dock, the club closed and empty now of members and staff. The pool glows chlorine blue; the lights stay on. This was when it was ours, at night after everyone left and the pool was clean, the camp room tidied and the kitchen closed.

“Can I say something?” asks Sean.

“Sure.”

“I don’t get it. Your game. I don’t get it. It’s not that fun. It’s not like Fortnite. That shit’s epic, man.”

I have to admit, I’ve always been pretty chill. I think I get it from my dad. These days more than ever, I just don’t give a shit.

“It’s not for everyone,” I concede.

He takes another long drag before handing the joint off to me.

We drift along the Intracoastal, easy. Moonlight glinting on the black water. It’s high tide and we know these waters, how shallow they get, how fast. Right outside the channel, a snowy egret balances on one leg, delicate, its clawed foot just barely beneath the surface of the water. Its white feathers glow, its gaze impervious.

Sean is easy at the helm. Kayaks, skiffs, bow riders, opti sailboats, big yachts like this one; we’ve done it all. We used to run the big ones home for drunk members. Sometimes member kids with a little too much freedom would invite us for pleasure cruises.

Once — do you remember, Betsy Lynn? — you and I ran your father’s boat aground. Making out, not paying attention, we wound up in the shoals by one of the tiny barrier islands. There was hell to pay. But not really. We got a lecture about trust and responsibility. And: “Scottie, you should know better. You grew up on these waters. This is a million-dollar boat, son, not a bath toy.” Your old man liked me; he grew up with my parents. If that historic prom night had gone a little differently, he liked to quip, I might have been his son.

Sean steers the boat to my new dock, so close that the club is still visible as he effortlessly brings the monster to a halt. I’m living on it until the house is done. Our house. The kind we used to dream about.

Edna Buck — white-haired, besuited, bejeweled gossip columnist — has already done her piece for the local paper. Hometown Boy Makes It Big, Comes Back to Roost. And you thought your kids were rotting their brains with video games! Just look at tech billionaire Scottie’s new beach bungalow!

You. Standing on the dock, hands in the pockets of your white shorts. Blue and white — striped T-shirt, topsiders. Hair back in a high ponytail. You didn’t dress for me. You never had to.

You’re one of those women. Effortless. Creamy skin and golden hair, the symmetry of your face, the magnificent proportions of hip to waist to bust. You’re the trophy. The prize that goes to the right man for a job well done.

I think you could have been more than that. Don’t you?

“Sleep in one of the state rooms,” I say to Sean.

He hops from the stern to the dock. You step back, barely acknowledging him.

“I gotta get back,” he says. “Mom waits up.”

“Give her my best.”

“Great night, man,” he says with that old smile. “Glad you’re home.”

“Me too.”

Home. It is — this sleepy beach town, now overrun with tattooed Airbnb tourists from the sticks, aquarium, beach day crowds. Tiny motels leveled, giving way to towering behemoths with hundreds of rooms, surf shops, parking garages. No matter where I go in the world — isn’t it odd? I always want to come back here and feel that humid salt air on my skin, watch the palms sway. Florida is the butt of a national joke, ripped to shreds by the intellectual elite. But those of us who really know it, we keep the secret of its savage beauty.

You climb aboard and I show you around. Your blue eyes don’t register anything but vague acknowledgment.

“Same layout as my dad’s,” you say. “Much newer, of course.”

“He still has it?”

“No.” It comes out as a scoff. “They got tired of it — all the work, the expense. They’re downsizing these days.”

There’s a note. Something wistful. “That’s what happens, I guess.”

You run a tender hand along a silver cleat.

“Get and get and get,” I say.

“Then purge,” you finish. “Free yourself.”

You turn to the hulking shadow of the house. It’s a dark mass, dwarfing the other large houses around it, houses that glow with lit landscaping, warm lights burning in windows. They fought the construction of the house, my neighbors. Too big, they complained. A monstrosity, more rooms than a B&B. But I won. Of course I did. I don’t lose often. Except when it comes to you.

“It’s huge,” you say, staring at it. Your back is to me and I can’t see your face. So I imagine it as it was earlier this evening — a little angry, suspicious, something else.

I climb down the stairs and step off the swim platform of the boat onto the dock. We walk across the silent street that separates the dock from the property, pass the house. We stroll across the wooden walkway that leads to the beach. You always loved those, remember? The more rickety and overgrown with sea oats, the better. Then the jewel at the end, the sugar sand, the silky blue-green of the ocean.

The gulf is usually lazy, languid, with waves that can barely be bothered to lap, much less crash, against the shore. But there’s a storm out at sea, a no-name, threatening Texas and Louisiana. So the surf is wild. We stand a moment side by side. It’s a time warp; we’re twenty-two again, everything ahead of us.

I try to take your hand, but you pull it away.

“What do you want, Scottie?”

Your eyes are sad. I see it now, the disappointment in it all. All the things they tell you you’re supposed to want. How once you have it, you’re left to wonder what, if anything, comes next.

The world is crumbling. The planet dying, people diseased by greed, by technology, medicating to avoid the pain of their empty lives. But here we are, all the same.

“I want to go back to that night. I want you to make a different decision.”

You just laugh. You were the one with the brains, the real talent for code, for numbers, for science. I was just a Florida cracker in flip-flops and board shorts. You did my math homework while I snorkeled, raced the optis with the sailing students.

You should have been the one to go, and I the one to stay.

“Betsy.”

We spin to see his thick shadow at the base of the walk. The soft reverence, the sweetness, are gone from his voice, replaced by the timbre of the bully he always was. You draw in a breath and start to move toward him, but I grab your wrist.

He moves quickly until he is in front of me, you between us, pushing back on his chest. He’s a steamroller. You’re a blade of grass. But he stops.

“Betsy, let’s go.” Voice granite-cold.

“Who’s with Piper?”

“Your mother.”

“You called my mom?”

She won’t be happy, a stern, cold woman. Never kind to you, a drunk. One of those who drinks slowly all day just to feel normal. It never shows until after dinner when the five o’clock cocktails take it up a notch. She never liked me. I saw right through that patrician facade to the piece of white trash she was at her core. The cruel, careless things she said to you. How you used to cry.

How they all conspired to keep you here with them. She by undermining your self-esteem since childhood. Your dad, a titan in business, a weak enabler of her dysfunction at home. And him, Big Brad the college football star, golden, reflecting back to you the person you thought you should be. Hypnotizing you with your own warped, subliminal expectations.

“Don’t go,” I whisper.

But you’re already gone, disappearing into his shadow.

The next day while I idle at the club, I see her with a gaggle of her tween friends. Piper.

She’s your very image. And then as I stand there watching her drink a milkshake, laugh at something her friend said, another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

When he comes to the boat later that afternoon, all his polish, that bright smile, has rubbed away. He has an aura of wild desperation, hair mussed, tie loose, the purple shiners of a sleepless night.

I’ve seen this look before. The man about to lose everything. I saw it in grad school as people flailed under the mammoth workload. I saw it in 2007 when the market crashed. When my company went public. Dropouts. Debtors. Naysayers, short sellers proved horribly wrong. How I love the bitter truth, the authenticity of that look. I feel it in my gut. We all know what it feels like to lose, to fail. The agony of defeat.

“Drink?”

“You left them,” he says from the dock, not climbing aboard. I sit on the aft bench, cross my legs, and lean back. “You can’t just come here now.”

The truth is, I didn’t know.

You never told me.

That night on the dock, you said that no, you weren’t coming to MIT. Your father needed you to help with the business. You mother was ill; she was fighting breast cancer then. You were, in fact, staying here, you said — to be near them, to be with him. We couldn’t be together anyway, you told me, as cold and stern as your mother ever was. We were too different. Surely, I could see that.

All of it lies.

You two. Betsy and Bradley.

Married with a baby before I could blink the bitter tears from my eyes. I was too stupid, my ego too gigantic, swollen, and injured to understand what you did.

You let me go. Let this little town keep you here.

I wept over the wedding pictures on Facebook like a lovesick teenager. How happy you were.

How stunning. You were so tiny, you didn’t even show. Maybe if you had, I could have done the math. Figured it out before it was too late. I decided to hate you instead, hate myself for not being the man you wanted to marry.

Enigma. There are seven layers to the game. He is a traveler, lost and far from home. They say it’s addictive, that people lose sleep and days at work, make themselves ill trying to get Enigma back where he belongs.

“That’s true,” I say to Bradley now. “I left.”

He nods as if we’ve come to some agreement. He turns back to look at the house, then back to me.

“You could have gone anywhere,” he said. “Why would you come here?”

People say that a lot, the folks who never left, those who think that there might be something else, somewhere else. Something better. A thing they missed. I want to tell them that there’s nothing out there that you don’t already carry within you. But that’s not a thing people want to hear. They’d rather believe that there’s something more and they simply failed to find it.

“I’m just back to take care of my dad,” I say. “He’s sick. Did you know?”

“No.” He looks a little less ruffled. “I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” I say.

The niceties, the phrases that roll off the tongue, a verbal dance designed to keep things shallow and easy. It’s a relief. That’s how people like it mostly, surface — not too deep.

“Just — just,” he says, working for it, remembering why he came. “Just stay away from them. That’s my family.”

When we were young he was bronze, with flashing-white straight teeth, a surfer’s body — lean and muscular, fluid. Nice enough on a good day, but with that blank entitlement of privilege, so blessed that he didn’t even know it. He was easy with boats, on a board, he had a way with the weather — knew when a storm was coming. He’s a dimmer version of himself now — softer around the middle, a little gray in the hair, tiny lines around the eyes. Still beautiful, of course, still broad and well-built. I feel bad for him, though I’m not sure why. He was the kind of guy I wanted to be — not the skinny, bespectacled nerd that I was, the son of the club bartender, the camp counselor, but not the child of a member.

He stands a moment, waiting for my response, which is just a vague nod I’ve mastered. It implies consent without being a commitment. He seems satisfied, if a bit confused by my calm, then walks off. I text you.

Biff was just here. Warning me off.

That’s what we used to call him, remember? When you used to make fun of guys like him. I watch the little dots pulse on the screen, but you don’t answer. You never do.

A few minutes later, there’s a text from Sean.

Wanna go to a party tonight? Should be fun. At Ronnie’s.

We’ve fallen back into the ease of our childhood friendship. It’s like putting on an old baseball glove. It’s as if I’ve been around the world, and I have, been to hell and back — that too. Then in a box in the garage of my childhood home, I find it. When I slip it on, that old glove, the grooves of my hand are worn in deep. I never left.

Sure.

Will you be there, Betsy Lynn? I’m betting you will be.

A towering “Mediterranean-inspired” McMansion — barrel-tile roof and terra-cotta walls, a double-height outdoor foyer with a wrought-iron lighting fixture hanging overhead. We ring the bell and it chimes deep inside the home; after a moment Ronnie’s at the heavy wooden double doors.

She looks back and forth between us. She slits her eyes at Sean.

“Scottie,” she says, turning to me, fake smile, “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” I say, though I’m guessing from her demeanor that she didn’t.

I hand her a bottle of Veuve, which I know to be her very favorite.

“How sweet,” she says, accepting it and standing aside. “Welcome.”

Her eyes linger on me, something unreadable there. Then she glances back into the crowd. I don’t see you. If you’re not here, I’ll beg off quickly. This is not my scene.

The place is packed, lights dim, music loud. EDM throbs from mounted speakers in the corners. There’s a bar set up by the pool, with a hip, goateed mixologist dispensing something pink in martini glasses. The room is a field of smartphones, faces turned as often to those screens as to each other. People crush together for selfies; laughter is raucous, conversation a dull roar. Sean lights up a joint, hands it to me, and I take a deep drag. The hard edges of my awareness soften.

Enigma travels alone through the layers of the game; he has no friends, no allies. On level four, he might earn a lavender pouch and in it there are various weapons — a wand that hypnotizes, a cloak that makes him invisible, a watch that turns back time just ten seconds. The place where most people lose over and over is at the disco, a glam nightclub where a strobe flashes and beautiful creatures whisper and stroke, wind their lithe bodies around him. They offer mysterious drinks and plates of cakes and if he can’t avoid them or ward them off, this is where he’ll stay until his lives run out, the player powerless to save Enigma from his own appetites.

I wander away from the party and down to the dock. The water whispers, lapping against pilings, the halyard on the sailboat across the water clangs. Homes on the Intracoastal glow all around me — the typical Florida hodgepodge of towering new construction and flat split-level ranches from the sixties. Modest bungalows like my parents’ place, in the shadow of gigantic modern additions to this man-made island. I can see in windows, sliding doors — a man and woman recline on a couch watching a game. Some kids gather around a firepit, tossing rocks into the water. A woman sits at a kitchen counter with a glass of wine, staring at her laptop.

Voices. Loud. They lift over the din of the party. And then someone’s storming down the path leading to the dock toward me. A couple others trail behind, reaching.

He was always an ugly drunk, the kind who got nasty after that third beer. I saw the bruises on your arm the other night, the way you folded your arms across your middle when you saw him approach us on the beach.

“So this is what you do?” he asks when he’s in front of me. “You just show up where you’re not invited?”

“Stop it,” you say, holding his arm. “Let’s go home.”

You are exquisite tonight in white — a simple top, jeans, silver thongs on your feet. The golden wisps of your hair. I only see you, in all of this. Your eyes rest on me — there you apologize and plead.

I’m so focused on you that I don’t even see the blow coming. It lands squarely on my jaw and I go down, the world wobbling and tilting, the dock hard and splintering under my palms. More yelling — from Sean, and Ronnie’s husband. Then some other guy I don’t know pulls Bradley away as he struggles, roaring. He’s drunk, obviously, all his darkness right on the surface. You and Ronnie bend and help me up. My hand comes away from my mouth red with blood.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Scottie,” says Ronnie. Her brow is creased with sorrow and concern. She touches my arm. “Please go.”

I nod. Yes, that’s obviously best. The pain, it’s not that bad, not compared to other pain I’ve felt. Later it will hurt, though. My teeth are intact, I think. Ears ringing. I’m not much of a fighter, not in that way.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

He’s yelling your name. Everyone’s staring, come to gather on the patio to look at us.

“Come with me,” I say softly.

You look back at the party guests, who now avert their eyes. Whispering. Muttering. Someone issues an uncomfortable laugh. We can still hear him yelling.

You take my hand and we run around the side yard to my waiting car, a black Tesla gleaming like spilled ink. I don’t feel bad about leaving Sean; he’ll understand and Uber home. It is the unwritten rule among men; if she says yes, it’s okay to disappear.

I make a smooth turn in the cul-de-sac. I expect to see him run out after us. But no. You cry softly in the passenger seat.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, my voice low in the dim leather interior.

You look at me a moment, almost blank with disbelief.

“Why didn’t you guess?” you say. “How could you not have known?”

You’re right, of course.

“You always wanted me to read your mind.”

“But you never got the hang of it.”

You lace your fingers through mine, hand shaking, a tear trailing down your face. We’re back there on the dock, that moment when you told me to leave. And I, angry, hurt, let my ego drown out my instincts. The truth is that I never believed someone like you could love someone like me. I always thought you’d leave me for someone who came from money, who won that genetic lotto of beauty. You were just saying what I had been expecting to hear all along. If I’d just asked a few questions, who knows what path we’d have walked together.

Enigma. All he does is choose paths — the lighted way, or the dark one, the high or the low. He knocks on doors and sometimes they open. More often they don’t. If the player makes it to the final level, everything he needs to know about the game has been revealed, all the tricks and pitfalls have been navigated. He must draw on what he’s learned to find his way. The stakes are highest here. One misstep and he has lost. He must begin again, all progress erased.

On the beach, our beach, the place we fell in love, where I made love to you the first time, where we’ve logged hours hand in hand, where we likely conceived the daughter I have never known, you fall into me. As easily as if we have not been apart for the last thirteen years. Thirteen years that passed in a blur of aspiration and acquisition, a kind of blindness, an emptiness of heart and spirit that looks to most people like outrageous success. Every gift and luxury falling to me like rain from the sky. And all of it ash until this moment.

When Enigma finally finds his way on that last level, he walks down a long tunnel which morphs into a forest path. He passes a still, glistening lake that sits surrounded by towering pines. The sun dances on the water, and the soundscape is dominated by wind and birdsong. When he comes to the final door, he finds it locked. Surprisingly, this last moment is where many people stay stuck. They can’t figure out how to open the door. They look all around the scene for a clue, something that might act as a key. But the area all around them has stopped interacting — there are no more doors, or hidden passages, no more buried treasure, or wands, or bags of tricks.

It is only a very few who come to realize, in that final phase of the game, that the heart on Enigma’s chest holds the key to the last door. When the player clicks on it, the key — golden and shining — floats into the air and hovers a moment. Then it’s in his hand. He fits it in the lock, looks back at the player, and disappears. There’s little fanfare, just a swell of music and he disappears inside the door. Some people rage at the simplicity of it all, the utter anticlimax. Others describe feeling a profound sense of peace, of accomplishment. Enigma, I have come to understand, is all about what you bring to it. Some people don’t like that idea very much.

On the sand, my jacket laid out beneath us, we make love under the silver full moon. The warm gulf water laps languid and sweet. And the shell tree — a fallen tree that reaches out over the water, on which people hang their collected shells to make a wish — seems to sway and glow. Your skin, your hair, your breath, the feel of you in my arms. This, sad to say, is the only thing I ever really wanted. You always kept your eyes on me when we made love, your hands in my hair, on my back. Our legs wound together like wicker.

It’s the first time; we own ourselves now. Choices are ours to make. I’m still unworthy of you. But this time I’m staying anyway.

Afterward, you pull on my shirt and we sit, staring at the black clouds that drift like wraiths in the night sky.

“Now what?” you say.

“I don’t know,” I admit. It’s complicated. Even I can see that, he who has had no complications in his life — just wanting and getting. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”

You smile and issue a little laugh; it’s a sad, knowing sound. Nothing will be easy moving forward. But maybe, when the dust settles, we’ll be happier than we’ve ever been.

“That’s what you always said. As if the world should bend to our will.”

“And why shouldn’t it?” I say. “Eventually.”

This time your smile is wide and free, like it used to be, with a whole new path ahead of us.

I don’t see him until it’s too late, a figure slipping from the darkness. He must have walked up the beach after us. Now he’s a towering shadow, breath labored. A ghoul. A monster.

None of us say a word.

The gun glints in the moonlight as he raises it and fires. I shield your body with mine.

How many shots?

The sound is deafening, drowning out the world. I walk through the blue doorway of your eyes. There’s only silence.

You. Long limbs graceful, pale in the moonlight. The surf, lapping lazy and warm against the sugar shore. The sky. A void. Stars dying, galaxies spinning, light-years ago, their glimmer reaching us only now when it’s far too late. Our toes disappear in the silken sand, salt on our skin. You’re so still, so near. But always out of reach. Even now.

Extraordinary Things by Sterling Watson

Pass-a-Grille

Lee Taylor had seen extraordinary things. Not wars, earthquakes, or tidal waves, not the biggest things, but the small ones, some of them delights, some so coincidental that they defied all but his own capacity to believe, and some of them dangerous. He had seen the green ray, and manatees mating, and there was the time the two joggers, beautiful young women, had stepped on the corn snake and their tanned skin had gone instantly pale. And the time he’d stood on the bluff above Troy Springs at sunrise and seen the giant alligator gar, a living torpedo, slip out of the dark water of the Sewanee River into the crystalline spring, and then back into the dark.

It had been his fate, he told people, to see these extraordinary things and have no proof of them because he saw them alone. He told the stories. At parties, to friends, sometimes to women he was interested in at least temporarily. Politeness reigns, mostly, so most people listened politely. When he noticed the onset of boredom, a yawn, he’d say, “No, really, this is true. It really happened.” And polite people, good people, would focus on Lee and his tale, and hear him out to the end.

The woman had called Lee and asked him to meet her. She’d said her name was Helen Trenam, they’d met before, and she thought he’d recognize her when he saw her face. “Would you meet me? Please.”

There was something in that please, a breath of excitement, a hint of come hither.

Excitement had been missing from Lee’s life for some time now, and so, although the strangeness of the woman’s call put him on his guard, as it would any sane man, he said he’d meet her. He made his voice as neutrally pleasant as an excited man could, and said, “Well, sure, all right. I’ll meet you. But... I assume you’ll explain all this a little more fully when I see you.”

“Of course,” the woman said. “You have a right to a full and complete explanation.”

With that, she had him. The thing about Lee’s right to an explanation sounded a little lawyerly, and Lee’s country grandfather had told him to fear God, women, and lawyers, but she had him. This was already an extraordinary thing, and it only promised to grow in that direction.

Lee parked on Pass-a-Grille Beach and looked up at the Hurricane roof bar. Up there, the potted sabal palms waved their fronds in the famous gulf breeze, and the copper parapet reflected the gold of another memorable sunset. Memorable because a volcano in the Yucatán had erupted and the airborne debris was doing something to the light. The volcano had been dormant for seven thousand years.

Laughter and music drifted down. The music was easy listening, but the laughter was high and giddy and desperate. It had been bottled in frozen Detroit and windy Chicago and flown to Florida to be released in pricey hotel rooms and restaurants and bars, and now suddenly, late on a Sunday, it had to be rationed. Lee crossed Gulf Way and took the elevator up to the roof.

He didn’t see a woman who looked like she might be looking for him in the naked-as-you-wanna-be crowd. A man the size of a sumo wrestler sat at the bar in a brown polyester suit. Empty seats on both sides of him. Lee took one of them.

The man turned, smiled, extended a meaty hand. “Hey there, buddy, how you doing? My name’s Frank Dross.”

Lee had learned a long time ago that people who sat alone in bars were expected to talk to any and all who might sit near them. Though by no means a chronic habitué of bars, he was often a man alone, and he’d learned the ropes, how to keep it friendly, avoid politics and religion, and offer nothing too personal. He’d told some extraordinary stories to strangers in bars.

Lee shook the man’s nine-pound hand. “I’m fine.” Although not your buddy, not yet anyway. “Name’s Lee Taylor.” He shifted on the barstool so he could keep an eye on the elevator door.

The bartender brought Frank Dross a second bourbon. “What’s your poison?” Dross said to Lee. “Let me stand you one.”

Lee thanked him and ordered Bacardi and lime. It came with a paper umbrella. The bartender was a trim, cheaply handsome kid with a copper-penny tan and a seen-it-all expression. His name tag said, Fred. Tacoma, Washington. The Hurricane’s policy was that everybody in Florida came from somewhere else, and they had a lot of name tags to prove it. Lee’s would have read, Lee Taylor. Vanished, Florida.

Lee and Frank Dross talked small for a while, Lee only half-involved, one eye on the elevator. They stopped talking when a cheer erupted from the crowd. The T-back bikinis and Speedos parted and a guy in a sandwich board — and very little else — moved into the center of the Hurricane. The board was white with black lettering. The shoulder straps could have been old seat belts. The guy was about thirty-five with an average face. He’d spent enough time making love to his NordicTrack to look pretty good in a pair of Calvin Klein silk boxer shorts, a paisley bow tie, flip-flops, and the sandwich board. The boxer shorts still held their packaged-at-the-factory creases and an Inspected by Number 17 sticker.

“It’s like when you go to the doctor,” Lee said to Dross. “You go to the Hurricane in your sandwich board, you wear your new Kleins.”

“Bet you he’s wearing a jockstrap under those shorts,” Dross said. “Bet he ain’t swinging under there.”

Lee said, “Courage has its limits.”

The guy in the sandwich board was pulling it off. His embarrassment was crimson, even in the falling light of a memorable sunset, but he was managing a sort of determined, boyish grin. The grin was killing women all over the roof. Lee could see that plainly enough.

Thongs and sarongs drifted toward the guy, forming a circle. Men were backpedaling toward the copper parapets, looks of confusion or grudging admiration on their faces. Hoping the guy would flame out, but thinking, Hell, he might set a standard we’ll all have to meet.

A fortyish redhead in a lobster-red bikini was the first to step forward. Her thighs had somersaulted through the pep rallies of yesteryear, but now they’d grown some cottage cheese. She started reading the sandwich board aloud in a Joan Rivers voice.

Dross turned to Lee. “It’s brilliant,” he said. “I pronounce it brilliant.”

Lee had to admit it was the best idea he’d seen in months. Maybe not brilliant, but very damned good.

A hand-lacquered résumé, the sandwich board told the guy’s life story. It was entitled: The Visual Aid of Love. The perfect antidote to the nauseating small talk of life-seeking-life in the temperate zone. The text began: What’s my sign? I’m an Equestrian. If you get the joke, I want to talk to you.

It gave the guy’s job (CPA, small firm, specializing in corporate tax accounts), his salary (middle six figures), his car (Lexus, understated off-white), his hobbies (board sailing, jet skiing, jogging, good literature — Patterson, Ludlum, Nora Roberts — and long walks on the beach at sunset with YOU...). There was some stuff about his philosophy of life. (I believe in maximizing my potential, minimizing my negative effect on others, and letting YOU do the same thing. I believe we can work this out together.) It ended with his address and phone number and... (I’m secure in my masculinity. Anyone want to buy me a drink?)

The bouncy redhead finished reading the résumé aloud, and the crowd cheered again, even the guys.

Frank Dross turned back around and faced the rows of glittering bottles. “Thing is,” he said, “you can only use it once. Guy comes in here tomorrow night in that thing, the women’ll throw his ass over the side. What’s he gonna do for an encore?”

“He’s got imagination,” Lee said, watching three women offer to buy the guy a drink. “He’ll think of something.”

“Expecting somebody?” Dross raised his glass and gestured at the elevator. “The way you keep looking over there.”

“Maybe,” Lee said. She was late. He was beginning to think maybe not.

Across the bar, a whippet-faced brunette lifted her chin sharply when Lee said maybe. Dross shot the cuffs of his brown polyester coat and winked at her. She peered at him like she might have to speak to the management. Then Dross said, “Look at that one,” gesturing his glass again at the elevator door.

Lee looked. She was beautiful in ways that only a few women could ever be, and she was the type who kept it forever. Someday she’d be ninety-five, and all of the women in the assisted-living facility would hate her for the glory of her bone structure. But that would come later. Now she looked late thirties, about Lee’s age, with honey-brown hair, long legs, and big brown eyes. And she was staring right at Lee Taylor. “I’m looking,” Lee said as the woman walked toward him through the maelstrom of sex, alcohol, and thwarted expectation that was the Hurricane roof bar on a Sunday at sundown.

Lee gave Dross a last glance as the big guy lifted himself to offer the woman his pew. Lee heard ice clatter against Dross’s front teeth but didn’t see him fade away into the crowd.

The woman sat next to Lee and delicately pushed Dross’s empty glass aside. The cheaply handsome bartender asked her what she’d have.

“White wine, Chardonnay,” she said without looking at Lee.

The youth glanced at Lee’s umbrella. Only partly cloudy. “Come on, man,” he said, “justify my existence back here.” Lee smiled, gave the umbrella a nose nudge, and poured the sweet hot Bacardi onto his tongue.

The woman turned her wineglass on the bar in the wet ring left by Frank Dross’s bourbon. Still not looking at Lee, she said, “Don’t you recognize me?”

Lee examined the side of her face. From any angle, she amazed. The polite thing to say was, “Well, you do look sort of familiar.”

And then a door opened in his mind, opened just enough so that a little light shone on the past, and then opened wider. In full brightness Lee saw his chemistry class, freshman year. It was one of his extraordinary stories.

The lectures were held in an amphitheater that seated two hundred. Numbers were painted in ominous black on the backs of the seats. Each number represented a student. A bored graduate assistant sat at the front of the room taking the roll by recording numbers not obscured by the bodies of aspiring young chemical geniuses. In chemistry, Lee was far from a genius.

At the University of Florida you had to have a major, or at least you had to answer the question, “What’s your major?” when asked by a fellow student. As a freshman, with no idea when or how he’d actually declare a major, Lee had understood one thing: “I’m majoring in premed” sounded good to girls.

He’d made the mistake of announcing this to an academic adviser at registration and the guy had put him in this teeming chemistry class. The guy had Lee’s high school transcript in front of him, and he’d explained to Lee with a stern and worldly expression on his face that Lee’s record was spotty at best. So the guy had stuck Lee in this cattle-call chemistry class where Louis Pasteur could not have found a legitimate premed major.

Lee was never sure if his adviser had reposed faith in Lee’s ability to mature in his understanding of the periodical chart of the elements or if the guy had just played a little joke on the freshman from Panacea, Florida. Whatever it was, soon enough Lee saw that he had no particular aptitude for chemistry. The lectures were showy demonstrations of explosions and beakers of liquids that changed colors dramatically when they were mixed. The showman lecturer was, Lee later learned, a drudge whose research career had fizzled years ago, but the guy knew how to dazzle.

Lee and the other two hundred students were assigned to discussion groups taught by grad students. So it was the big show on Mondays, and then the small group meetings on Wednesdays and Fridays where the mysteries of explosions and lurid liquids were analyzed in detail. Lee never caught the analysis, failed the weekly quizzes, and barely made the deadline to drop the class before receiving a well-earned failing grade.

After that, dropping things was easier, and he drifted through classes he didn’t get, some he got but cared nothing about, and discovered Gainesville’s bars and strip joints. In the middle of the spring semester, he left Gainesville after declaring himself a building-construction major, and with that credential in hand, went home, then drifted down to St. Pete Beach to work as a carpenter’s helper in the construction trade.

But the extraordinary thing was what happened one day early in the fall down in the pit of the big amphitheater where the students gathered after the lectures, some to ask questions of the lecturer, most to chat with friends or, lacking friends, to try to meet someone.

Lee was standing in the crowd of fifty or so eighteen-year-olds when a girl approached him. She was pretty, well dressed in the mode of those days, and should have been happy for all she had won in the genetic raffle. She was not happy. Her first angry words to Lee were, “You said you weren’t coming.”

After all these years, Lee did not recall much of what he had said during their brief encounter. He recalled his embarrassment, his face reddening, his palms suddenly moist, as the girl came closer until her face was inches from his and he could feel her sweet breath on his lips. He’d probably managed only fragments of sentences that, had he finished them, would have meant, I have no idea what is happening right now. I have no idea who you are. I am beginning to think I have no idea who I am.

Her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides, the girl kept saying to him, “You promised me you wouldn’t come! You promised!”

The girl’s anger and the volume of her voice had cleared a space around them so that, like two dancers of exceptional skill, they stood at the center of a circle, their faces close together while the girl repeated her strange accusation, and Lee backed away sputtering his confused innocence. He remembered searching faces in the crowd for the sly smile or laughing eyes of an accomplice. Some gesture that would tell him that others were in on this, that it was some kind of prank. Maybe this was some sorority or fraternity foolery. But even as Lee considered this, his young mind objected that it was too early in the semester for the traditional rush. If this was a prank, it was the invention of freelance deviants.

The girl repeated her complaint — that Lee should not be here, that he had broken a promise — for what seemed a long time but really could not have been more than a few minutes. Then she stopped as abruptly as she had started and, face bright red, eyes streaming tears, turned and shoved her way through the crowd.

Lee never saw her again. Not in the chemistry class or anywhere else.

Later, back in his dorm room reflecting on the incident, he had rung through the possibilities.

There was the prank option.

Or the girl was just, well, nuts.

Or he was nuts. His fevered mind had sent him on a trip to a mad fantasyland.

Or this was some sort of acting exercise designed by the theater department.

If it was theater, the girl was the best teenage actress in America. Lee had heard that actors lived their roles, but he couldn’t convince himself that the girl was acting. Her anger and her fear were real, and someone had caused them, someone she had cared about a great deal. Lee’s reflections always led him to the same conclusion. There really was a boy out there somewhere who had promised this girl he would not be here, and she had believed Lee Taylor was that boy. The most extraordinary and the most frightening explanation was that Lee Taylor had a double.

Years later, when late one night he had told this extraordinary story to a stranger in a bar, the man, a scholarly type with the weary manner of those who had looked unabashed into the mysteries of the universe, had pulled off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “My friend,” the scholar said, “you ought to look into the myth of the doppelgänger.”

“Oh yeah,” Lee had said, baffled, “I should do that.” He borrowed a pen from the bartender and asked the scholar to spell the word. Lee wrote it, doppelgänger, on a cocktail napkin and tucked it into his pocket. Then the scholar said, “In the myth, it’s sometimes true that the doppelgänger is a menacing figure.”

The woman beside him at the Hurricane bar sipped her wine and turned to face him. “It’s been a long time, but I thought you’d recognize me. I was pretty sure you would.”

Lee looked at the glittering bottles across the bar. For a couple of months now, maybe three evenings a week, he’d found himself sitting at this polished zinc bar drinking something with a paper umbrella in it and watching the sun set memorably. Happy to think of himself as dormant. Waiting to see what the next phase would be. Maybe this woman, Helen Trenam, was that phase.

He had picked the Hurricane for this meeting because it was too loud and too young for anything too serious. It was unlikely that here a meeting with a stranger could get out of hand. He membered Helen Trenam saying she owed him a full and complete explanation. “That day in chemistry,” he said, “you were just messing with me, right?”

“Oh, no,” she said, “far from it. I was as real that day as anything that’s ever happened to you.”

A lot of what had happened to Lee Taylor had been of questionable provenance, but now was not the time to go into that. Now was the time to fall into this woman’s unfathomable brown eyes and drown.

She stared into Lee’s eyes for a while, not blinking, certainly not afraid of anything she saw in them. She set her glass on the bar with a delicate finality. “You’ll see when we talk some more, but not here. Let’s go for a walk on the beach. It’s been awhile since I’ve had sand between my toes.”

Lee found that the prospect of seeing her bare toes, and maybe even more of her, was more than enough to get him up off the barstool, and headed for the elevator.

They walked across Gulf Way and through a gap in the low retaining wall that the city fathers believed would stop a mild tidal surge. Then on down a sand pathway through clumps of sea oats to the beach. It was fully dark now and Venus was rising out of the gulf, her brilliance shaming the pale stars of the early dark. A warm land breeze had begun to blow, and Lee knew it would grow stronger as night deepened. He followed Helen Trenam to the waterline where she leaned down and removed her sandals. Her knee-length turquoise silk skirt ruffled in the wind, and her feet, small and shapely, were the treat Lee had promised himself. She pulled her white cotton blouse from the waistband of her skirt, unbuttoned the bottom of it, and tied the shirttails in a knot, exposing a band of tanned flesh to the night wind. She waved her hand vaguely toward the south, the jetty at the end of the beach, and said, “Let’s walk that way. It’s nice out here tonight, don’t you think?” Her voice was low and calm, strange for a woman who had called a man she had seen only once for a few minutes years ago and asked for a rendezvous.

“Sure, it’s nice, very nice, but, uh, shouldn’t you tell me what this is all about?” Give me that full and complete explanation?

She stopped walking, turned to him, moved close, their bodies almost touching, and gripped his upper arms with her strong little hands. “You’re right. This has been a mystery for too long. That day in chemistry... was a cry for help. Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I...”

“I was in trouble. I went to you for help, and you didn’t... you didn’t do anything.”

Reason failed Lee. What could he say to this? “Why didn’t you say you needed help? What was happening to you?”

“I couldn’t. He was watching. He was there.”

“You said I promised I wouldn’t be there. What did that mean?”

She let go of Lee’s arms and started walking again along the surf line. Lee glanced behind them at her small footprints in the sand.

“I know it’s strange. You must have thought I was crazy.”

“Yeah, I considered that, and that I was too. But I finally decided the best explanation was that you really believed I was some guy you knew. Some guy who had promised not to come. Believe me, I had to work through a lot of possibilities to get to some certainty — I mean, you know, provisional certainty — about that.”

She laughed quietly. “Yeah, provisional certainty. The times we live in, right?”

“Right.” They walked maybe ten paces before Lee said, “So there was this guy who looked, I mean, he looked exactly like me?”

“Oh, yes,” she said quietly, a little shudder in her voice. “There is this guy, and he looks exactly like you.”

“You said is. You said there is this guy.”

“That’s right. I did. Guys like him, they don’t die young. They last, and they keep on doing what they do.”

“What does this guy do?”

“He hurt me. That’s what he did to me, and he liked it. It started when we were in high school, and it just kept happening even though I loved him and he loved me and I tried every way I could to make him stop.”

“Wait a minute. Let’s go back.” But Lee wasn’t sure what to go back to, or how far, or where this might take them. He knew now that he looked exactly like a guy who liked to hurt people. And he knew, he thought he knew, that he was not that kind of guy. So the resemblance was exact only as it pertained to the outsides of two men. Lee had been stupid, for sure, but he had never been a hurter, and especially not of women, unless usually being less than they expected him to be, hoped he was, was hurting them, and come to think of it now, here on this beach, he supposed it was.

“So,” he said, “you’re saying I let you down because I didn’t realize when we were eighteen years old that You promised me you wouldn’t come meant this guy was hurting you?”

“I didn’t say it was fair, I just said it was true.”

“Jesus,” Lee whispered.

“He didn’t help me either. I prayed to him a lot in those days. What I said to you, I said it because he was there, he was watching us. He wasn’t a student. He kept that part of his promise. He never went to school anywhere after we graduated from Leesburg High. And he stayed home and worked on his dad’s farm for a few weeks after I left, but then he followed me. When I said those things to you, I was speaking... to a symbol. I saw you the very first day in chemistry, and of course I thought you were him. Then I realized you weren’t, and I thought I could use you to get him away from me. I thought maybe when he knew he had a double, he might take it as, I don’t know, some kind of message.”

“A message?”

“You know, like God or fate or something telling him to get out of my life. Showing him that there was another one of him, a good boy, a boy who wouldn’t hurt me, right there in the same class with me. There by the grace of some power that was bigger than his hurting.”

It had been a long time since anybody had called Lee Taylor a good boy. It hurt him now to realize this. “So you thought I’d do what, say what? I’d somehow... decode this message, know I was a symbol, and come after you, find you, and help you?”

“I guess I did. I thought if God had made two of you, He had the power to send you to me. I was desperate. You probably don’t know what that’s like.”

Lee didn’t know. Not really. His life had been a series of jobs he did pretty well but cared little about, a lot of time in bars, a few friends but no one he could depend on in a pinch, and those disappointed women who always saw enough in him to stay for a while, and always saw too little to make it last.

“No,” he said, “I guess I don’t know about that, not really.”

Up ahead Lee could see where two sets of footprints came from the low dunes to their left, went to the waterline, and then headed south the way he and Helen Trenam were going. When they caught up with the footprints, he saw that one set belonged to a man who wore shoes. The other feet were bare and small, a woman’s or a child’s.

“So how did you finally get away from this guy?”

She said it so quietly that he asked her to repeat it: “I didn’t.”

“You mean...?”

“I mean I’ve been with him ever since, and he’s hurt me one way or another every day of my life. Every day since I appealed to you in chemistry class.”

In spite of his sympathy for this woman, Lee felt that he had to defend himself. “Look, is that really fair? I mean, how could I know what you were saying? What you wanted me to do? And anyway, what did you want me to do? What could I have done back then? I was just a kid. I didn’t know up from down.”

Afraid to look over at her, he saw only the tips of her fingers in his peripheral vision. She was pointing ahead of them at the thin strip of beach by the old jetty.

“Look at that,” she said. “Isn’t that something lying on the beach?”

Lying? “Yeah, I see it. What is it?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see, I guess.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t—”

“We have to, now. Now that we’ve seen it. We can’t just turn back.”

“I guess you’re right.”

They walked on, Lee looking down from time to time at the footprints they followed, a man’s and a woman’s, barefooted. When they got close enough to see that it was a man lying on the beach near the surf, his head below his feet, Lee looked back at the four sets of footprints behind him. The two sets of barefooted prints were identical. It’s been awhile since I’ve had sand between my toes.

“Hey,” he said, “I think maybe we ought to—”

Two men stepped out of the shadows at the base of the jetty and walked toward them.

The big one was Frank Dross. The other one was Lee’s double. The man at their feet was obviously dead. Even in the sparse light from a streetlamp on Gulf Way, Lee could see that the man’s face was black from the blood that had run to it because his feet were elevated. Blood leaked from a wound in his chest. Frank Dross drew a gun from the pocket of his brown polyester suit coat. “Hey there, my buddy Lee.”

But Lee was staring at the man who looked exactly like him. It was more than extraordinary. Even in the face of Dross’s gun and with a dead man at his feet, Lee stared, searched for any difference that the years since that chemistry class might have made between himself and this man whose name he didn’t know.

Helen Trenam said, “I brought him.” Her voice sounded tired, not even the smallest revelation of sorrow or guilt or triumph in it. Nothing but the sound of years of hurt.

“We see that,” Lee’s double said. “And we appreciate it.”

Helen Trenam took four steps to the side, as though to get out of the way of something.

Frank Dross pointed the gun at Lee. Lee’s heart shrank to a dead black dot in his chest. It was all he could do to keep from falling to his knees. Somehow, to keep standing was a small victory.

“Well,” Lee’s double said, “we have to hurry. This beach isn’t big enough for four people and a dead man.” Even his voice sounded like Lee’s.

“Tell him, Barry,” Frank Dross said. “He deserves an explanation.”

“I was about to, Frank.” Lee’s double pulled a gun from his back pocket and pointed it at Lee’s chest. “Maybe you’ve already figured this out, Lee. You look exactly like me, and for reasons that don’t really matter to you right now, I had to kill this man here, and a very good way for me to get away with this crime is for you to stay here with him.”

“Stay here?” Lee heard his own voice quaver.

“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” his double said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? The cops find you here with this guy, and they find two guns, and they figure the obvious.”

Lee’s mind flailed. “But what about those footprints.”

“What footprints?”

“Those, them. All of them.” Lee pointed to the beach behind them, then at the sand along the edge of the jetty where footprints came from Gulf Way. “They’ll know you were here.”

“Correction, buddy. They’ll know somebody was here. They won’t know who. They’ll just figure that some, uh, citizens came upon this unhappy scene and decided not to call it in. You know, the old don’t-get-involved thing. Very common these days.”

Lee’s double pointed his gun at the center of Lee’s chest. Helen Trenam took two more steps to the side. She had seen something like this before.

Lee said, “But I can’t just... disappear.”

“You won’t,” his double said. “You’ll be me.”

Lee’s eyes caught the beginning of a flash, and his mind had only the time to say to him, Extraordinary, but you’ll never tell this story.

Local Waters by Luis Castillo

Indian Rocks Beach

Abel Rivera had just printed his name on the dry-erase board and was midway through the date when he heard, “Friggin’ homo.”

The marker’s felt tip squeaked to a halt. His back was to the class so he couldn’t say with absolute certainty that he’d been the intended target, but a chorus of “oohs” left little doubt.

He narrowed his eyes and turned to face second-period Intensive Reading. A small class, perhaps a dozen or so students, and every one of them seemed to enjoy the sight of anger on his face. He lingered on a blond, stocky kid with cigar-shaped dreadlocks who was fist-bumping a boy next to him.

Abel picked up the attendance sheet. Right now figuring out who some of these kids were seemed to be a more pressing need than the assignment. Cody Kimball was the kid with the blond dreads. Abel pegged him as a surfer-stoner type and the guy who delivered the homo-blast. An Indian Rocks Beach local himself, he usually fared better with that crowd.

He thought he’d be subbing for Advanced Placement English, but when he showed up this morning at Gulf Beaches High he was informed of a change in plans. Instead, the school secretary assigned him to be today’s floater and sent him off with a class-coverage schedule plus a thin stack of report cards and instructions to pass them out at the end of second period.

He’d been a floater here before. It was an awful assignment, crisscrossing campus after each period only to arrive at the next class moments before the bell, short of breath while searching for anything resembling a lesson plan.

After taking roll he returned to the board and finished writing out the date and assignment. As he hyphenated Section Review 2–2, an object cut through the air. It was a paper ball weighted with a penny inside. He’d been on the receiving end of one of these before. Judging from the force of the throw, the kid who nailed him had an arm.

His eyes raced around the room to get an AP down here pronto, but he’d only stepped inside a few minutes ago and he didn’t know where the call button was. As he scanned for the intercom, he once again locked eyes with Cody Kimball.

The kid met Abel’s gaze and held it long enough to make his point: Prove it.

Abel wanted to respond that this would be countered with a swift, harsh measure.

“Okay, class, let’s not throw things.” He raised the paper ball, shook the penny inside. “Technically, this is battery...”

“Nah, dude. A battery hurts way worse.” Cody’s timing triggered another burst of laughter. A couple of kids really put their lungs into it.

Abel’s toes curled. He marched over to Cody. A bored expression spread across the teen’s face. He played with the fluorescent-orange golf tee he’d fashioned into an ear gauge. Abel got to within arm’s reach.

“Look, Cody,” a mild shrill weakened his tone, “I’m going to need a little more respect and cooperation from you if you’re going to be allowed to stay in here. So Cody, this is a yes-or-no question. Are you going to cooperate and not interrupt when I’m trying to explain something?”

“Listen, dude. Let me explain something to you. I don’t like you getting up in my grill. You smell like some bad burrito and I kind of freak when people I don’t know stand close to me.” He sprang from his desk and headed for the door. Near it, he raised both arms and flashed double-V victory signs. “Peace, my brothers. I’m out.”

Abel could have sworn he heard epic, owned, how’d that taste, under Cody’s classmates’ breaths.

“Okay. Moving right along,” was his reply. He tried to make this sound light-hearted, but knew it landed like a brick.

A few minutes later he found the intercom, but no referral forms. If he buzzed the office now to inform them that Cody had just dressed him down and walked out of class, they would simply tell him to write the kid up, and he wasn’t about to announce that he didn’t have anything to do that with in front of this bunch.

Cody was out of the class, not a half-bad consolation prize, but Abel was still seething. He slouched behind a computer monitor flanked by file trays and stacks of paper on the teacher’s desk.

Despite his attempts not to, he kept staring at a couple of pictures near the American flag. A brightly colored poster read: Our Kids Are Worth Whatever It Takes. Taped next to that was a piece of notebook paper with a student’s drawing of a dog dropping. It also featured flies with motion-depicting lines and came with an assumed laudatory caption — Mr. Angelo Is the Shit.

He substituted Abel for Angelo and omitted the the when he thought of Saturday and the spring luau at his daughter Emma’s new school.

He’d bought tickets for the event and thought that gesture alone would be enough, but she later explained that they had to sit at the tables near the stage. The dinner was sponsored by the school’s Tongan society, and the entertainment would be dance performances. Because of the way the hall was laid out, it was tough to see from anywhere but up front. That was where her two new friends, Lita and Elena, would be sitting.

Not wanting to disappoint his third grader, he said he’d get the VIP seating but discovered that you had to make a donation to get the upgrade. The news at the car line was that Lita’s parents had paid for a suckling pig. Elena’s had donated Hawaiian punch and the rum supply for the cash bar. Abel had just paid this month’s bills and didn’t have the funds for a suitable gift or donation. The bottom line was that he’d have to tell his wife and daughter they weren’t sitting up front with Lita and Elena.

A bell rang and the students told him it was time for morning announcements. Dolphin Daybreak played from a mounted television set. Through the din came details about “a troubling development at GBH.” Someone had broken into the Dolphin Store and stolen donated prom dresses for the upcoming spring dance. A fifty-dollar gift card would be awarded to anyone providing information on the theft.

His ears perked up, but fifty bucks still seemed a little light for the seat upgrade.

“Care less, bitch,” a skinny surfer called out to a plus-sized girl. “They wouldn’t have your size anyway.”

The two looked as if they were about to come to blows, but the dismissal bell seemed to break it up before Abel had to.

He realized as he left that he’d failed to pass out the report cards. They were in a folder he’d set near the computer monitor. The kids didn’t exactly strike him as the types to be excited about bringing them home. There wasn’t much he could do about it now. Angelo could pass them out tomorrow, he guessed.

Maybe that’s what set Cody off. Report card day could be a bitch for the likes of him. Abel went back inside and snuck a peek. Below Cody’s address, 1489 Sea Breeze Lane, the grade column confirmed his hunch.

In fifth-period Woodshop, a message on the blackboard greeted him. Students Not Allowed on Machines — Liability Issues/Movie or Study Hall. Abel found the DVD on the desk. The playback deck was coated in a layer of sawdust, but thankfully it worked. The jacket cover description promised extreme surfing action.

“I’ve seen this before,” someone called out in a nasal drawl. “The soundtrack shreds.”

This back-row endorsement seemed to be shared by most of the class, and Abel immediately sensed the spirit of cooperation that had been sorely lacking in second period. These kids might actually stay in their seats and not try to run anyone’s hand through a belt sander.

The class buzzed with chatter about a cold front moving into the area. The system would move out by tomorrow night, but for a brief time the gulf would have waves. He’d seen an item in today’s paper about an early spring storm fouling airport traffic in the Southeast. The only time the gulf had surf was when it sucked for someone else. Like the Labor Day when Katrina clobbered New Orleans. He had tried not to think about the Big Easy going under as he boogie boarded on some of the best waves he’d ever seen in the area.

Abel made a quick tour of the shop, sidestepping lumber strips, lathes, and table saws. Cabinets labeled Student Projects were locked. He inspected the craftsmanship on an unvarnished Adirondack chair before venturing back to the classroom section and sat near a tanned, flannel-clad freshman. Power chords accompanied surfers hopping up on their boards and gliding into huge barrels.

“Hey, Mr. Sub,” the boy said, “I like your shirt.”

A Hawaiian print his wife had given him on his birthday. He liked its baggy comfort, plus, he had to admit, the busy pattern could camouflage food stains.

“You surf?”

The question unexpectedly lifted his mood. This was more like the vibe he usually got from the Gulf Beaches High surf crowd. He was tempted to fib, but why spoil a gift?

“I boogie board,” Abel said. “I thought about checking things out after school.”

“Cool. It’ll probably be blown out, tomorrow might be better.” Then the boy asked, “Do you think I could borrow a dollar?”

Ah, the joys of this job. Did a day ever go by without a kid hitting you up for money or saying you smelled? Abel put a pause in their little chitchat and got up to stretch his legs.

Subbing was his way of testing the waters of a second career. The television production company he’d worked at for eight years had folded a few months ago and he was still adjusting to his new freelance status. From what he’d gathered, competition was steep in the market. But he’d told his wife that money was put away for times like these. The problem was, as his current checking balance bore out, he’d damn near exhausted the rainy day funds.

Tucked in the corner of the shop, he saw a surfboard and a skim board, both apparently in the middle of some refurbishing. Perched on a couple of saw horses next to them was a stand-up paddle board in the early stages of construction. A tableau of surfing hierarchy — surfers, paddle boarders, skim boarders. Boogie boarders, or spongers, were at the bottom of this food chain. He’d never stood up on a surfboard, never mastered the arm push-off with synchronized knee-tuck, then the pop-up that took one from the prone to pouncing position. He caught his waves lying down.

Back at the instructor’s desk, he noticed some referral forms under a cabinet-making manual. The Disrespectful or Discourteous box seemed a little light for Cody’s morning performance and there wasn’t much room in the teacher comments section either. He’d have to choose his words carefully to adequately describe what went down during second period. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been looking for these earlier in the other classrooms he’d been in. Word was that teachers here hid the forms from subs in an effort to cut down on the inevitable infractions. He’d also be lying if he didn’t think there was more to Cody’s performance than his report card. That prom dress business seemed like the type of mean-spirited prank that was right up his alley. Maybe Cody got wind that they’d be talking about it during the morning announcements and wanted to make it look like he had a good reason to bolt before anyone in class started pointing a finger at him. Abel decided to just stick to the facts: Student said substitute smelled like a bad burrito and walked out of class.

The movie’s closing credits scrolled. A dull ache began to run up the base of his skull. As if a small act of kindness might blunt his headache, he chipped off a buck to the kid who had sucked up to him earlier and asked him to take Cody’s referral to the office.

Abel’s horror stories from subbing had led his wife to suggest they pull Emma from their zoned elementary and put her in private school. The luau was the first function his family would take part in at St. Cyprian’s. He was keenly aware of the importance of getting off to a good start. Subbing was all about the first five minutes. A bad takeoff on a wave could be brutal. For Tori and Emma’s sake, he wanted their coming-out party to go well.

At home after school, Abel let Emma watch the Disney Channel when she’d finished her math and spelling. Tori was at the gym. Tonight was his turn to fix dinner. She’d be home a little after five and liked eating before six.

She and Emma seemed so happy with Emma’s new school surroundings. A welcome change to his wife’s glumness over the holidays; Tori had turned forty in November and didn’t seem too happy about it. With her uptick in mood, she seemed to be putting in more time working out and was quite proud of the ten pounds she’d shed since the first of the year.

Abel flipped a switch and the ceiling fan in the kitchen clicked on, its loud droning motor yet another reminder of something else he couldn’t afford to fix right now. He pulled out a package of chicken breasts and gave it a smell test. It was past the due date. Iffy at best; he set it on the counter.

In the back of the freezer he found a box of fish filets and considered other instant options. He glanced over at the bad chicken. There was always the chance Emma or Tori could come down with some bug and they’d have to miss the luau. He’d gladly eat the tickets.

Emma busted Miley Cyrus moves in front of the television. Did he actually just think that? He tossed the chicken out. A whiff of something foul escaped from the garbage can. Tori entered the house from the attached garage. Above the strains of “Party in the U.S.A.,” she cried, “What smells in here? Did someone forget to Febreze?”

Part of their new dinner routine since switching schools was Emma leading them in prayer.

“From-thy-bounty-through-Christ-our-Lord, amen,” they mumbled in rapid-fire unison.

Abel had traded in his knee pads some time ago but was dusting them off tonight, asking that the calls he’d made to every business contact he could think of would bear some fruit.

“Daddy,” Emma said, “on announcements they told us they’re still looking for donations. Me and Lita laughed at that. We said it sounded like they were looking for donuts.”

“Donuts.” He hoped they didn’t detect his unease. “Cute.”

He sensed his wife’s disappointment with dinner, but complaining when he’d gone through the trouble of fixing something wasn’t her style. She pushed back from her plate and declared that she had a surprise in her car. She took Emma’s hand and led her into the garage.

“Tell your daddy to close his eyes.”

In a few minutes the two appeared back at the dining table in matching outfits. Hawaiian shirts knotted at the waist. Tori looked great in her white denim shorts, which were shorter and tighter than Emma’s. She twirled for inspection.

He tried not to spoil the moment and smiled and marveled.

Tori grinned back. “Emma, let’s take these off before we get something on them.”

“Thank you for the present, Mommy.”

The two disappeared to change. Front-of-the-room threads, he thought.

At bedtime, after reading to Emma, he lay down and tried to relax while Tori brushed her teeth.

“Have you given any more thought to the school service hours at St. Cyprian’s?” she called out from the bathroom.

“Not really.” Although he knew they were subject to a fee if parental involvement hours weren’t fulfilled.

“The Pot of Gold in April sounds good,” she said.

“The ol’ Pot of Gold.”

Repeating her words rather than saying something he might regret was a technique he had often used in production meetings to tread water. He’d seen Pot of Gold marked on the kitchen calendar. At first he thought it might be a new restaurant she wanted to try. It fell on a Saturday in April, which coincided with a job he was hoping to get crewed on.

“I was planning to talk with Lita’s mom at the luau about us getting involved with the event.” She began to undress. “I hear the cool parents work it and she’s the chair.” Down to her underwear she added, “I’d rather do that than the Lenten fish fries.”

Perhaps he should tell her now about the luau. She slid out of her bra and panties.

“Sounds good to me,” was all he could manage.

“How ’bout this?” She struck a pose. “This sound good too?”

He tried to manufacture enthusiasm to match his wife’s, but the more she tried, the worse it went for him. She was kind enough to give it a rest without asking, Is anything wrong? Perhaps it was because he’d been considerate during her sullenness after her birthday, when part of their agreement was to “go easy on each other for a while.”

He kissed her forehead, relieved she didn’t press him further, but he was ashamed by his lack of performance. He padded lightly to the spare bedroom-slash-office. After a while he moved to the couch in the living room, trying to shake spasms of worry. Worry about the freelancing and the added burden of private school. Worry that he didn’t think he could hack it in the classroom. Worry that in three days he would blindside two people he loved with the embarrassment that they were sitting in the back of the parish hall at the luau.

The image of Cody paid an unwelcome visit as he tossed and turned. Abel fixated on that golf tee dangling from his ear.

At five in the morning he called the sub-finder system. What he didn’t need was another floater assignment like yesterday’s, one that left a something’s-gone-terribly-wrong-in-your-life feeling. Unfortunately, everything offered seemed worse. Today, Tori was working a shift at the cell phone kiosk in the mall and he had to pick up Emma by three. But he also knew it would be a bad idea to be in the house when Tori and Emma got up. He wasn’t up to answering, What are you doing here?

By eight they’d both be gone. He left quickly, quietly, and waited for the nearest Starbucks to open.

When Abel returned home, he found that Emma had left him a hand-drawn card on the dining room table. It had beautiful shapes of orchid-like blooms, pineapples, and a picture of an angry-looking island god with an evil smile on his face. She signed her name and added, Our class made a picture that looks like this.

He thought, No dad wants to tell his little girl no, but this has gone far enough. He would tell them today instead of springing it on them at the last minute. This, he had to get right. Maybe not subbing and running the risk of wearing defeat from another lousy day was a good idea. So too was getting his blood pumping by catching some waves. A little exercise couldn’t hurt, could it?

He grabbed his wet suit, fins, boogie board, plus a water-sport hood and gloves for the chilly conditions. He also grabbed Emma’s card before tossing everything into his truck.

The lot at 12th Avenue was full of cars sporting surf-brand decals as well as Gulf Beaches High parking stickers. He was lucky to find a spot. Beneath the shadow of a high-rise condo, he suited up in the bed of his pickup. Embarrassed of his middle-aged paunch, he thought of women putting on shape-wear as he stepped into his wet suit.

Wind rustled palm fronds overhead. He removed the truck’s door key and stashed the clip with the ignition and house keys in the glove box along with his phone. A strong gust of wind blew Emma’s card out. He retrieved it and stuffed it in his backpack.

Near the sea oats, he kicked off his flip-flops and set his stuff down. He was heartened to find that the waves had enough shape to propel a middle-aged boogie boarder forward, and pulled on his fins at water’s edge and wrist-leashed his board. The break was better off to his right but he wanted to stay clear of the traffic, a small pod of surfers, no doubt skipping school.

Taking in a breath of tangy air, he watched youths glide across shoulders of waves. He waded out. A burst of cold water seeped into his wet suit as he ducked under a shore-pounder. He found a sandbar about seventy-five yards from shore where his feet could touch bottom and he could catch the inside break. A wave three feet higher than his shoulders approached. He hoped he was good enough not to waste this gift. A honed sense told him when it was time to take off, and there was no changing his mind after deciding to go. The wave began its bend. He lunged forward and angled down the face. The swell’s force lifted his legs then dropped him, leaving it to him to maintain balance or taste defeat. Teeth clenched, he landed with a light bounce and got a face full of water. He rode the wave all the way in and beached it like a kid. The bottom of his board scraped the shore, his arms extended forward, feet in the air, as if he’d just slid home headfirst with a game-winning run.

The bigger sets were about 150 yards from shore near the boat buoys. He paddled out and waited. A dolphin’s dorsal fin rolled above the surface and disappeared in almost the same instant. In the next, the unforgiving energy of the gulf was on him. He panicked. Unsure if he had the time to dive under. The bending crest collected him up to the lip and dislodged him. He rolled over twice before he could regain his balance. He kicked up to the surface and discovered that his board was still attached, but it strained the leash, waving on top of the water, as if motioning for him to go in.

Yet he was just getting started. He continued to kick into the wind swells. His habit was to count the number of good rides versus wipeouts. Usually he had to be in double digits before calling it a day.

At about wave number five, a surfer encroached from the north. The hooded figure had his head down. Abel figured the guy would drift past, but he stopped and paddled into the wave Abel had been setting up on. He pounced on his board and aimed the nose at Abel’s temple. Abel dove under and steeled himself for the skeg to rake his back. He held his breath until he sensed it was clear to pop up. The surfer rolled away above the froth, not kicking out, dismounting instead and jogging to shore with his board under his arm. Abel gave chase, but the clumsy wide ends of his fins dug into the gulf bottom. The rubber buckled and he tripped. One arm tangled with the leash as he dragged his boogie board forward. Abel got within a few feet.

The surfer reached behind his neck and grabbed the frill of his hood. “Sub dude,” he said, as tentacles of blond dreads sprouted. Cody tossed his board down. “I thought that was you falling over on your face. Figured I’d come over and say hello.” He snapped his hair back, directing the spray toward Abel. “I wanted to say thanks for writing me up yesterday.”

Abel’s knees felt watery.

“Ain’t nothing but a slip of paper,” Cody said.

A slip of paper. Abel spit salt water from his lips and walked away, hoping Cody would follow, but he didn’t. As the kid had just demonstrated, anything in the water could look like an accident.

As Abel faced the horizon, it dawned on him that it was about this same time yesterday that Cody had hit him with the homo-blast and paper ball. That smile on his face reminded Abel of the one Emma had drawn on the angry island god. The water inside his wet suit sent a chill as he paddled back out in search of wave number five.

After reaching double digits, he took his fins off in the shallows and jogged to shore. The beach was void of tourists in the unwelcoming weather. He stepped up the incline where the heavy surf had dug into the sand. The coquina was rough against his feet as he walked to where he’d left his belongings.

He looked around but didn’t see anything but his flip-flops. In the distance, Cody and his group were back in the water. Abel wished there were some other explanation, like a huge seagull had flown off with his backpack, but he knew Cody and his crew had swiped it.

Paddling over to ask for his things back would be futile. He wasn’t in the mood to be turned into a spectator sport again.

Abel tucked his boogie board under his arm and walked to the nearest gas station to borrow a slim jim. As if to silence the soggy slap of his flip-flops, he let his thoughts run and became more convinced of what he put together in woodshop yesterday. If that kid had the balls to swipe my backpack while I was in the water, I know he thieved the prom dresses. He had a pretty good idea where to look.

After breaking into his truck, he retrieved his set of keys from the glove compartment and headed back to the station to return the slim jim. He drove to a nearby McDonald’s and, over a Big Mac, hatched a plan.

The house at 1489 Sea Breeze Lane was on a canal street two blocks off Gulf Boulevard in the north end of Indian Rocks Beach. The Kimballs lived across the street from the waterfront properties. Chimes from an ice cream truck and the grinding pitch of a wood saw broke the silence. The truck’s tune was somewhat familiar, but Abel couldn’t quite place it.

Garbage canisters lined the streets. Collection day was either today or tomorrow. The Kimballs had a derelict lawn. Shrubs, but no gate or fence, separated the front and back yards.

His best hunches of where to find the dresses were either the garbage or the garage. He’d brought along some plastic shopping bags to put the prom wear in and the swim gloves he used when boogie-boarding. There was no telling what he might run into.

He walked to the garbage can in front of the house and opened the lid. Except for a rancid smell, there was nothing inside. He hoped one of the Kimballs might come out and ask what he was doing. He’d gladly welcome this jumping-off point as an opportunity to voice his suspicions about Cody swiping his backpack. In fact, he decided, he’d go to their door right now to have that conversation.

He knocked. His pulse raced as he listened for the scraping of a chair or footsteps from inside. He waited and knocked again. No one answered. All indications were that no one was home. He walked over to the side entrance of the garage. If the dresses weren’t in the garbage, maybe they were inside there along with his backpack, and he’d tell whoever questioned him about opening this door that he was here to get it back. With gloved hands he twisted the knob, but found it locked.

He readied a story and walked around back. Should a neighbor happen upon him, he would say that he was a snowbird relative, down from Michigan, and was stopping by unannounced. The Kimballs had told him to let himself in and make himself at home.

He sidled past a hydrangea bush and into the backyard. Vinyl privacy fencing cordoned off the rear of the property. Grapefruit rotted on a dying tree near an attached lanai. Through mesh screening he saw that the Kimballs had left their sliding glass door open. He tried the flimsy screen door on the patio. It was poorly hung and gave a little, but it didn’t open. An eye screw and hook secured it. Tugging again, he found there was enough room to wedge the blade of a pocket knife between the door and frame.

Above the power lines a turkey vulture rode the thermals. Abel took out his knife, pulled on the door, put the blade to the hook, and nudged it free. He placed the shopping bags over his shoes and entered the Kimballs’ house.

Morning breakfast odors lingered. His plastic-wrapped footfalls crinkled on the terrazzo as he treaded through a rear living room area. The dining nook led to the kitchen. Through that was the garage.

He froze when he heard a bell peal. His eyes darted, looking for a place to hide. Near what looked like a family portrait in the dining room, he saw a grandfather clock and realized it was only the timepiece striking one.

He studied the portrait. In between two weathered-looking adults was a soft-featured Cody. Hair parted on the side, he looked to be about Emma’s age.

Abel looked at the gloves on his hands, the bags on his feet. As if the luau wasn’t bad enough, try explaining this? He nodded to the Kimballs. Going through the kitchen and out the garage seemed the safest route.

A strong whiff of gas and dead grass hit him as he stepped inside the garage. He flicked on the lights. Huge breasts strained a pinup’s bikini bra on a poster above a workbench. He took in the rest of the garage. His eyes traveled from the door panels to an oil pan and stopped on a surfboard bag with the word Dakine on it.

Next to the board in the Dakine bag was a tri-fin Volcom short board. The one Cody had at the beach was different from these two. How many sticks does one kid need?

A low rumble trumpeted something heroic inside his head, like the opening music of the old Hawaii Five-0 show. He followed images of a banquet procession. Burly Tongans in grass skirts and Hawaiian shirts hoisted a roasted pig, apple in mouth, on a surfboard that doubled as a serving tray. Sequined prom wear blurred. Hell, who’s to say those dresses weren’t already on their way to the landfill, or were never here in the first place? Why waste a gift, especially one provided by a kid who ripped off his stuff and almost did the same to his head. And Tori and Emma didn’t need to know anything about it.

Making a note to relatch the eye hook and take those damn bags off his feet, he allowed himself to venture that getting up on a surfboard probably felt a lot like this.

Should anyone ask what he was doing walking out of the Kimballs’ garage with a surfboard tucked under his arm, he’d simply say, Cody let me borrow it and told me to come by and get it. Hell, Saturday night, should his punk ass somehow happen to be at the luau and start asking questions, Abel would welcome the turnabout. It’s not like there was only one Volcom tri-fin in the world. This time he’d be the one dishing the hard look that said, Prove it.

Tree limbs swayed in the cold front’s last gasp as he strolled down Sea Breeze Lane. Then it came to him, the tune from the ice cream truck. Slightly off-key and at a faster tempo, but he recognized it as the theme to Love Story.

He drove to St. Cyprian’s, parked beneath a twisting live oak near the auditorium, and phoned the front office.

“Do you still have front-row tables available for the luau if I drop off a surfboard as a door prize?”

“Sure, how thoughtful,” came the response. “The surfboard goes so well with the theme. I bet it’ll be one of the best raffle items of the night.”

“I’m actually here at school. Would now be a good time to drop it off?” he asked.

The woman replied yes, and after taking down his name, she told him that the custodian would unlock the hall so he could put the board near the stage.

Inside the parish center, decorating had just begun for Saturday’s dinner and floor show. Student posters hung near the stage were the first items in place. He found the one Emma’s class had drawn.

He kneeled to set the board down and gave it a long last look, as if aiming everything he hated about himself onto it. What he felt instead were the eyes of the angry island god. Behind its evil smile he heard his daughter’s voice.

Daddy, what are you doing here?