Speaking for the first time since we had seen the sheet unfolded from
the woman’s body, Bobby said simply, “Let’s go swimming.”
Although the day had been mild, this was December, and it wasn’t a year
when El Nifio-the warm current out of the southern hemisphere-ran close
to shore. The water temperature was inhospitable, and the air was
slightly chilly.
As Bobby undressed, he folded his clothes and, to keep the sand out of
them, neatly piled them on a tangled blanket of kelp that had washed
ashore earlier in the day and been dried by the sun. I folded my
clothes beside his.
Naked, we waded into the black water and then swam out against the
tide.
We went too far from shore.
We turned north and swam parallel to the coast. Easy strokes.
Minimal kicking. Expertly riding the ebb and flow of the waves.
We swam a dangerous distance.
We were both superb swimmers-though reckless now.
Usually a swimmer finds cold water less discomfiting after being in it
awhile; as the body temperature drops, the difference between skin and
water temperatures becomes much less perceptible. Furthermore,
exertion creates the impression of heat. A reassuring but false sense
of warmth can arise, which is perilous.
This water, however, grew colder as fast as our body temperatures
dropped. We reached no comfort point, false or otherwise.
Having swum too far north, we should have made for shore. If we’d had
any common sense, we would have walked back to the mound of dry kelp
where we’d left our clothes.
Instead, we merely paused, treading water, sucking in deep shuddery
breaths cold enough to sluice the precious heat out of our throats.
Then as one, without a word, we turned south to swim back the way we
had come, still too far from shore.
My limbs grew heavy. Faint but frightening cramps twisted through my
stomach. The pounding of my riptide heart seemed hard enough to push
me deep under the surface.
although the incoming swells were as gentle as they had been when we
first entered the water, they felt meaner. They bit with teeth of cold
white foam.
We swam side by side, careful not to lose sight of each other.
The winter sky offered no comfort, the lights of town were as distant
as stars, and the sea was hostile. All we had was our friendship, but
we knew that in a crisis, either of us would die trying to save the
other.
When we returned to our starting point, we barely had the strength to
walk out of the surf. Exhausted, nauseated, paler than the sand,
shivering violently, we spat out the astringent taste of the sea.
We were so bitterly cold that we could no longer imagine the heat of
the crematorium furnace. Even after we had dressed, we were still
freezing, and that was good.
We walked our bicycles off the sand, across the grassy park that
bordered the beach, to the nearest street.
As he climbed on his bike, Bobby said, “Shit.
“Yeah,” I said.
We cycled to our separate homes.
We went straight to bed as though ill. We slept. We dreamed.
Life went on.
We never returned to the crematorium window.
We never spoke again of Mrs. Acquilain.
All these years later, either Bobby or I would still give his life to
save the other-and without hesitation.
How strange this world is: Those things that we can so readily touch,
those things so real to the senses-the sweet architecture of a woman’s
body, one’s own flesh and bone, the cold sea and the gleam of stars-are
far less real than things we cannot touch or taste or smell or see.
Bicycles and the boys who ride them are less real than what we feel in
our minds and hearts, less substantial than friendship and love and
loneliness, all of which long outlast the world.
On this March night far down the time stream from boyhood, the
crematorium window and the scene beyond it were more real than I would
have wished. Someone had brutally beaten the hitchhiker to death-and
then had cut out his eyes.
Even if the murder and the substitution of this corpse for the body of