It was my first night back and I was loafing on the street-corner of Washington and 12th with Bink. Now here is a man with big, earthy feet who always knew what he was going to do when he grew up. A man completely unburdened by metaphysical doubt and thus a good foil for me. So Bink and I are standing on the corner, staring into the neon lighting up the spine of Washington Avenue and looking for a purpose to our night.

“When was the last time you saw Smitty?” Bink asks me.

“Smitty? Shit, years and years. He still lives here, huh. Does he come into the bar?”

“Yeah, he cruises through now and again.”

“Yeah, what’s he up to, still life-guarding?”

Bink starts laughing. His broad shoulders shake with the effort, his belly, grown large now, rolls.

“Josh, Smitty’s lost his mind.”

I start laughing.

“He was always crazy, Bink.”

“No, I’m serious, he’s really lost it. The last time I saw him he had this Vanilla Ice high-top fade and he told me he was playing semi-pro football for some team Gene Atkins started out in Davie.”

“Gene Atkins? The guy from the Dolphins?”

“Yeah.”

I pause.

“Semi-pro football? He’s 32 years old. What happened to life-guarding?”

“He got suspended.”

“Suspended?”

“He got into some fight with the two cops.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, something about how he broke into his own house and some neighbor called the cops and the cops came in, pepper spray, he went berserker, you know Smitty, he’s crazy.”

“What?”

I’m laughing again.

“Well you can ask him yourself, he heard you were in town and wanted to meet up.”

“Where are we suppose to meet him?”

“In front of the Albion.”

An hour later, standing in front of the Deco facade of the Albion Hotel, I see Smitty walking down the street. He’s practically bouncing, in fact, in a pair of nylon action pants and a T-shirt that has Gucci written in bold gold letter across the front. Bink and I look at each other.

“Smitty’s fucking crazy.”

“Smitty’s fucking crazy.”

We laugh.

The first thing Smitty does as he approaches me is to start rapping. He’s gesticulating the rhyme patterns with his hands and punctuating the beats with odd nasal intonations. “What’s up Smitty?” I ask him, but he won’t answer until he’s finished his rap.

“What’s up J-dawg? How’s the Califon-i-a?”

He slaps me five. Slaps Bink five.

“Everything’s straight man. How about you? I hear you’re playing some semi-pro ball.”

“Yeah, dawg. Ballin, getting pumped, man. Getting buff, getting fast man. At practice today I beat Stick in the 40 sprints. Boom, I laid it down. Stick comes up to me after and says- Mannn how you so fast for a white boy?”

“Stick?”

“Yeah, bro, Stick is sweet man, he wears the Nike’s with the spats still on. That’s where I copped the style, from Stick.”

Smitty points down to his sneakers, a pair of white Nikes with a flap attached that covers the laces.

“The spats are sweet, huh, B.”

“Yeah- spats huh.”

“Yeah dawg, Stick is the bomb. The fastest cat on the team but today I just flowed it, B.”

He takes an action stance.

“Boom, laid it down.”

“Shit Smitty that’s great.”

I look at Bink, he shrugs.

And then Smitty’s off a mile a minute, about his rap, about football practice, about how he thinks he has a shot at the NFL — “special teams man, commando style, just fucking blow it up, boom,” about some girl he just met who he wants to take water-skiing.

I ask him about the incident with the cops.

“I don’t wanna tell that story man.”

“Why not, it sounds fucking crazy.”

“No, Smitty doesn’t look good in that story. No matter how I tell it, Smitty comes out the loser.”

“Well, man lets grab a cocktail and catch it up.”

“Can’t do it man, can’t drink until I finish this cycle.”

“Cycle?”

“It’s not steroids or nothin like that, just some vitamins and shit, but I can’t drink while I’m on the cycle.”

“Wow dude, sounds like some vitamins.”

“Getting buff, B.”

He pulls back a shirt sleeve and flexes his bicep. It is rounded to bursting. I stare at his face to see if he is serious, it is contorted into heroic form.

“What happened to you Josh-dawg, you shrunk up man, need to get you in the weight room, B.”

“Shit, those days are behind me. Anyway, Bink and I are gonna catch some chilly poppers at Rumi, you sure you don’t wanna hang. Bink’s buyin.”

“Oh man, there is mad ass to be had in Rumi, B, but I can’t do it. Hey dawg, where you staying?

“At Bink’s.”

“I’m coming tomorrow morning to pick you up, dude, you got to go water-skiing with me and this chick. Dude, she’s a ten man, a ten, I can’t wait to see her skiing in a bikini dawg, its gonna be live, B, ab-so-lutely live.”

Bzzzt, bzzt. At first it is a sound inside my dream. Then, my morning breaks open. I struggle out of bed and towards the callbox on the wall. Bzzt, bzzt.

I press the voice button.

“Hello?”

“It’s me dude, buzz me in.”

“Smitty?”

“Buzz me in, dawg, we gotta go man, we gotta go.”

“All right Smitty, gimme a second, I’m trying to figure this fucking contraption out.”

Smitty is across the lawn and at the house door in a heartbeat, banging. I am still stumbling around in my boxers, head foggy, breath thick. I look down at Bink laying on the couch. He looks dead. I shake him, he opens one eye and says, “Deep sleep, deep sleep, go away.”

I open the door for Smitty.

He enters the room a bundle of motion.

“Come on B, we gotta go, gotta go. The ten is waiting. We gotta pick her up, bro. Hot girls don’t like to wait, yo.”

“What, where, what’s going on Smitty?”

“Dawg, you tied one on last night, huh. Don’t worry B, I filled the cooler with beer and booze and red bull. Come on, come on, bro, get some trunks on and let’s bolt. The ten is getting impatient. Dude, she is so hot, you’re gonna eat it. The face is okay, but the body, bro, the body.”

“Where’d you meet this chick?”

“At the beach bro.”

“Whose boat Smitty?”

“Don’t worry dawg, I got a boat just get dressed.”

“You have a boat?”

“Dude, I said don’t worry, I have a boat we can use. It’s Nate-dawg’s, you’ll like Nate-dawg, he’s cool B, he’s cool. Let’s go.”

He starts pushing me, screwing his face up into impatient anger. When Smitty was fourteen and I was twelve, this was the face I couldn’t resist. Smitty was always the tough guy, not the big guy, but the guy who would never back down. The guy who would call you a pussy if you didn’t take the chances he took. For as long as I can remember Smitty has been that guy for me. Most things I did when I was growing up on the Beach, from water polo to fraternities to girls I dated, I did in reference to him. I still can’t say no to him.

We are speeding down Collins Ave towards South Beach, on our way to pick up the ten. Smitty is pounding the steering well rhythmically with his hand and bobbing his head. Some kind of gangsta rap is playing. Smitty occasionally turns to me to emphasize a lyric by shouting it louder than the radio. I am mostly confused. Outside, between the houseboats lining Indian Creek Canal, I catch glimpses of sunlight floating on the water’s surface.

“Tell me, again, the plan, Smitty.”

“B, I told you the plan.”

“B, all you told me was a ten, a boat, some guy named Nate-dawg and that you have a bunch of booze and maybe some sandwiches.”

“Dude, Nate-dawg is house sitting some place on San Marino Island for David Copperfield. We can use the boat there.”

“The magician?”

“Yeah, dawg, the magician.”

We pick up the ten and arrive at David Copperfield’s house. I haven’t really gotten a good look at the ten yet. Her presence doesn’t change Smitty though, he is not one of those guys. He remains the same once she arrives, hyper, laughing, gesticulating, bursting. He tells her stories about us, about how he made me steal the city bus driver’s cap when I was a freshman pledge. About how when I tried to run out of the door, the bus driver closed it on my foot. About how I was so scared I pulled my foot straight out of the shoe and ran all the way home without it. He tells her other stories about Beach High, about the Swamp Dawgs, about our water polo teams, about the characters in our mutual past with names such as Zool, Lumpy, Disco and Sidemouth. He doesn’t tell her about the crashes, about the car he jumped over Crespi Island bridge and lost control of, about the car he flipped driving back from California because he fell asleep at the wheel. About where the ruddy scar that crosses his face comes from. Split my head open like a pumpkin, he tells me and then shows me pictures of the surgery. I try to look but can’t after the first one. Then he tells me a story about a girl he met a few weeks after the surgery.

“She had a gnarly military boyfriend,” he tells me.

“Smitty you’re crazy.”

“I couldn’t help it bro. I was so ugly man, so busted up, my confidence was gone man. I couldn’t believe someone would want to fuck me. She was hot too, B. She had this beauty mark right next to her cooch. It looked like an ice cream scoop. It was so sexy bro, the cone end pointed right there, bro, right there.”

“So what happened?”

“It got ugly, B, it got ugly.”

“How so?”

“She told the guy and the guy came looking for me.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, bro. He shows up at the house and both my wrists are broken. I can’t even hit him back.”

“He beat you down when you had broken wrists?”

“Yeah dawg, he busted open all these stitches. I had to get them replaced.”

He traces a finger over the scars criss-crossing his face.

“But when he left, I came out on the porch and yelled at him — is that all you got you fucking pussy, is that all you got — I’m still here bitch, I got two broken wrists and I’m still here.”

“What did he do?”

“He walked back in and beat my ass again. But I won bro, I couldn’t even fucking hit back and I won.”

As we walk up to the house, a rambling one-story bungalow affair, Nate-dawg appears. He’s shorter than me, younger and has a shaved head. His eyes are small and mobile. He reminds me something of a human mouse. Smitty and he exchange high-fives and dawgs. Introductions are made. We all go into the house, smoke a little grass out of a glass bowl in a room with nothing but a couch and a strange giant dart looking thing hanging on the wall.

“What’s up with the wooden dart contraption?” I ask out loud.

“It’s an atlatl,” Nate-dawg responds, smoke still lingering between his teeth.

“A what?”

“An atlatl- its for hunting.”

“Hunting what?”

“Cavemen used to use it for bison, now some people use it for deer.”

“Fuckin A.”

“Yeah, dude, its crazy. There’s a target out back that David uses to practice.”

I look out the sliding glass door towards the back yard and spy the boat hanging from winches on the outside dock. I catch the word Atlatl scripted in marine color cursive on its bow. I realize that I have no desire to go water-skiing or even to go on a boat.

We load the gear onto Atlatl. Our first stop is to get gas, but not five minutes onto the water and a marine patrol boat hails us for a pull over. The ten hasn’t even taken off her skirt yet. Nate-dawg is nervous, he doesn’t own the boat. Turns out we have no life vests. I am silently happy. The trip seems to have come to an end and I can go home maybe and get more sleep. But Smitty starts talking his lifeguard talk, city employee courtesy or something. I hear him say, that’s what we always tell people on the beach, safety first, absolutely, safety first officer. The older of the two patrolmen smiles. I can see the sky floating on the dark lens of his sunglasses. His arm, placed casually on the metal rail of our stern, is hairless.

“Well, normally we would terminate your voyage right here and send you home. But, I can extend you a courtesy escort over to the marine gas station. You can buy the life vests. As soon as we see you have the adequate safety gear we’ll let you continue.”

Both of the patrolmen have kept a steady eye on the ten. Perhaps she feels it, too because when I look back, the loose cotton shirt is back on, over her bikini top.

The motor rumbles and spits. The patrolmen wave us off from the dock in their haughty casual-serious way. I watch them as they get smaller and finally disappear between blinks. Once we are out in the open waterways, Smitty asks Nate-Dawg to drive and starts unloading the cooler.

“Beer dude?”

“I don’t think I have the stomach for it yet, Smitty.”

“Whatever. How about some vodka red-bull?”

Smitty has a bottle of Absolut Citron in one hand and a red-bull in the other.

“What are you going to do about cups?”

“Fuck cups.”

He pops the red bull can, dumps a portion out and pours the Citron into the can. Covers the hole with his thumb, shakes. Drinks. His face screws into wrinkles.

I look at the ten. She is staring at Smitty, in what I would describe as nonchalant amusement. She has taken the cotton top off again. I consider her breasts. They seem too ample for her slender frame, too attentive. Fake, I think, and that’s a turn-off.

“How is it?” she asks Smitty.

“Fucking great” and he offers the can to the ten. She declines, laughing. Her breasts shutter lightly with the movement. I re-consider their fakeness. Smitty chugs the remainder of the can.

“I thought you couldn’t drink Smitty. What happened to all that jazz you were feeding me last night?”

“Bro, no problem man. I finished the cycle yesterday. Its fine, B, its fine.”

He fixes another of his citron red-bulls and yells at Nate-dawg to pull into the cove so we can ski. Nate-dawg yells back to fix him a drink. I take my shirt off and stare at nothing in particular.

“J-dawg what happened to you?”

Smitty walks over, puts his hands over my pecs, squeezes them.

“B, you all shrunk up man.”

He cocks his head back in that mock laughter of the tough. I slap his hand away.

“Yeah, well this skinny-ass body has gotten me all the way up the Himalayas, dawg, and over the Andes too.”

“Yeah, yeah, bro, we know how you save all your money up in a sock — what bumble-fuck place did you go last? Madagascar?”

“Mauritania.”

“Whatever, what the fuck is over there anyway?”

“A lot of sand.”

“Where’s Mauritania?” the ten asks.

“Africa, west Africa, below Morocco and above Senegal.”

“Wow,” she says. “Was it pretty?”

“It was mostly empty, but yes, pretty, too — a strange kind of lonely beauty, ya know.”

“Lonely beauty,” Smitty scoffs, “you always pull some shit like that out of your ass. What’s that mean, lonely beauty?”

“It means you got to be lonely to see it, you fuck-chop — it means whatever you want it to mean — get your ass out of States and you’ll see some of this shit for yourself and then you can tell me what it means to you.”

“Whatever, dawg, I gots what I need right here. Like the Buddha said, do all your traveling at home.”

“The Buddha said that?”

“Sure, man, you better read up J-dawg, Smitty’s dropin knowledge on you.”

I am first up and I make a mess. I dig a ski edge too deep into a turn and am sent ass over ears skidding over the surface of the water. The skis fly awry, my neck twists the water slaps against my face. I am blinking stupidly as Smitty pulls the boat alongside me. I stare at him howling with genuine laughter. In the distance a knot of small sport crafts are camped at an island, a yacht plys through the inlet, bodies no bigger than my thumb wave indolently from the square galley of a tour boat, a jet ski sprints to nowhere and back. The sound of its motor crackles the heavy blue air.

“You got another one in you B?”

“Yeah, yeah, fucko, just trail the rope back to me.”

The next few runs go much the same as the first. In the beginning I am riding, almost skillfully, suspended between water and sun. I stay up long enough to make a circle of the cove, to contemplate its still symmetry, to forget it. Just long enough to be overcome by the possibility of play. I glide past the mangrove trees bounding the cove, venturing out near the shallows. I can see the shoals of sand racing beneath my skis. The boat skips out into the channel and then makes a turn back into the cove. The turn sends me sprawling across the water.

Nate-dawg goes next and then Smitty. They are both much better than me. Nate-dawg is some kind of skater, Smitty tells me. That’s how they met, skating around the 10th Street beach. I look up and Nate-dawg has dropped a ski. He jumps a wake, veers hard back towards the wake, creates immense walls of water with his one ski.

“Nate-dawg’s pretty good Smit.”

“Oh dude, I’m gonna wreck his shit when I get out there. B, it’s gonna be live. You’ll see, Smitty gets freaky on those bitches.”

And sure enough, Smitty is freaky on those bitches. Just as freaky as Nate-dawg. He’s like an action figure out there, I tell the ten.

“Eric’s so crazy, it’s funny,” she says.

“How did you meet him?”

“Wow, dawg, did you see that jump?” Nate-dawg yells out from the driver’s seat. He is moving his head between watching the water in front of him and peeking back at Smitty ski.

“Eric?”

“Yeah, Smitty.”

“We were at 10th Street beach yesterday. He came up to me and started rapping. Something about my toes and how they looked like diamonds in the sand. I donna know. He had us all cracking up.”

“And then he asked you to come today?”

“No, we went out last night for a drink and then he asked me.”

“Where are you from?” I am staring at the tattoo of a butterfly imprinted on her skin right above where the bikini strap curves with her hip. My eye follows the strap into the triangle of material no bigger than my fist. It catches on a spot of reddish irritation lingering on the nude edge. A razor burn. She shifts her legs, covering the mark.

“Tampa.”

“Visiting?”

“Just moved here.”

And then Smitty is climbing back into the boat.

“It’s your turn now.” He smiles mysteriously and hands his life-vest to the ten. The skis float askance in the water. The ten waves her hand in cryptics, shrinking back.

“No, no. I don’t think I’ll be able to get up.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. We’ll make sure you get up.”

As the ten slips into the water, Smitty turns to me with glee in his eyes and another red bull topped with citron in his hands.

“Dude, when she gets up, we’re all gonna be perving on those fourteen year old hips.”

He takes a large gulp of the cocktail, tilting his head back, eyes to the sky. The liquid spills out over his mouth and crawls down his chin. Nate-dawg howls as he guns the motor.

The first few runs are unsuccessful. The ten falls several times without standing up on the skis. She tries to give-up, but Smitty will have none of it. As we pull away from her floating form, Smitty starts yelling at Nate-dawg.

“Nate-dawg, what the fuck?”

After the third try, Smitty tightens his face into that hieroglyph of frustration and takes over the driver’s wheel.

“I gotta do fuckin everything, man.”

Nate-dawg gives little protest. He seems relieved, happy to sit in the front of the boat with me and watch the ten from its raised prow. Sure enough, on Smitty’s first run as driver, the ten is up and skiing. I can feel joy sweeping over the boat. We have achieved something. There she is, the ten, skiing behind the boat in her bikini. Nate-dawg stands up and starts cheering. He and Smitty slap high-five over the driver’s windshield. I close my eyes to the heat, feeling the air, thick and muddy, pulse against my face, and try to imagine something worth remembering. As I open my eyes my hanger-over even seems to be fading. And in completing this thought, I see, out of the corner of my eye the outline of a tree coming even with the boat. I can’t quite make sense of this peripheral vision before the boat is rocked by a concussion and an immediate sharp pain pierces the back of my right ear.

I reach for the spot of pain and my hand comes back bloody. We have hit shore, driving at full speed. I look up and Nate-dawg is getting up off the floor of the boat. I see blood trickling down the sides of his face. He is holding the top of his head with both hands.

“What the fuck happened, what the fuck happened?” he is yelling.

I move over towards him and immediately realize the crown of his head has been scalloped open. Blood is gushing out, slicking the floor. When Nate-dawg sees the flow of blood he begins circling the small, bloody deck of the boat, yelling.

“What the fuck happened? I’m gonna die aren’t I? I’m going to die. What did you do to me?” He grabs Smitty. “What did you do to me?”

Smitty pushes him away. “Get the fuck off the boat Nate, get the fuck off the boat.”

“No, no, you’re going to leave me here to die. You’re going to leave me here to die.”

“Get the fuck off the boat.”

Smitty grabs Nate and Nate shrinks into a ball. Smitty pushes him away in disgust and jumps off the boat onto the shore.

“Hold your head, Nate, hold your head. Everything is going to be fine, dude, everything is going to be fine,” I tell him, while staring at Smitty on solid ground trying to push the boat off of shore from the stern.

“Give me a fucking hand Josh, we gotta get the fuck out of here,” he is yelling. I move towards the back of the boat.

The ten comes breast stroking up in a foot or so of water. She stops at the back of the boat, stands up. Her face comes into focus for the first time.

“Are you okay,” I ask.

“Yeah, what happened?”

“I think we crashed onto shore. Nate is pretty fucked up. I think he needs to get to a hospital.”

“Okay.”

“Josh, get the fuck over here, I need your help,” Smitty is yelling.

“I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die,” Nate dawg is yelling.

The ten is placid. I give her a hand into the boat. She steps delicately, sinking her foot into the blood pooling near the engine. I notice the fine tension caught in her calf muscle and then look towards Nate. He is sitting behind the wheel, holding the top of his head with both hands. I pick up my shirt and put it on his head, pressing down to try to stem the flow. The shirt soaks dark and through and through, blood gums between my fingers.

Smitty is back on the boat. He talks calmly to Nate, telling him if he doesn’t get off the boat, he is going to throw him off the boat. Nate gets off the boat and starts running back into the woods that creep all the way down to the water line where our boat is grounded between trees.

Smitty turns to me.

“Josh, you have to help me get this boat off shore and out of here. We have to split before the cops come.”

“Eric, I can’t do it. I have to stay and get Nate some help. Nate is seriously fucked up man, I have to make sure he gets help. I’m taking your shoes and I am running after Nate.”

“Fine, dude, don’t fuck up the spats.”

He hops out of the boat and starts pushing it from the front. He grunts and his muscles ripple with effort.

“I’m coming with you,” the ten calls out to me and gathers up her bag.

We find Nate in a minute or so. He is screaming through a chain-link fence that separates us from what looks like a giant parking lot.

“Help me, help me, I’m going to die. Help me.”

As I run over, I recognize the back of Gulliver High School. In the distance I can see the pool I remember from high school swim meets. I see something that looks like students at the far end of the parking lot and wave my hands widely.

“Nate, you gotta lay down man. We’re going to get you help. But you gotta lay down and calm down. Everything is going to be fine.”

He turns to me, his eyes bald with desperation.

“What happened, man? Why did you do this to me?”

“Nate, relax, we had an accident, that’s all. Everything is going to be fine.”

When I saw Nate’s head just after the crash, before it started flowing blood, I saw that it was split open in a semi-circle wider than my hand. I look at the ten, but she appears unfazed. She has even managed to clothe herself again and it strikes me she looks a bit like a nurse. I yell and yell and yell like a madman through the chain links.

Nate lays down in the ten’s care. Some students with a cell phone appear. They call an ambulance. As we are waiting for help to arrive I can hear the sputter of a motor on the water. Through the tangle of branches, through the tangles of mangroves I see the boat backing off shore and turning slowly towards the inlet. When the ambulance arrives, Smitty is well gone. When the man asks, I tell them that we must have hit a sand bar. The medic looks skeptical.

“Where’s the boat?” he says.

“He went for help,” I tell him.

The ten nods in agreement. I can’t help notice, however, that the medic seems more interested in staring at the ten than in listening to my story.

“Will he be all right?” I ask as the medic bandaging the back of my ear.

“Oh yeah, he’ll need a whole mess of stitches, but he’ll be all right.”

“But all the blood,” I say, “it freaked me out.”

“Were you drinking?” he asks. “That’s why all the blood.” he says, looking knowingly away — liquor thins it out.

He offers us a trip to the hospital in the ambulance and chats up the ten on the ride. I sit dumb and shirtless.

Standing out front of the emergency room in swim trunks, I feel altogether ridiculous. The ten offers me her shirt, but I decline.

“It’s really my skinny legs that make me self-conscious, “ I try to joke.

She is silent.

“Where do you think Smitty went?”

She seems to contemplate it for a moment and then answers.

“Practice.”

“Practice?”

“Yeah, I bet he went to football practice. I saw his cleats in the car.”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah, Eric’s really strange.”

Bink picks us up at the hospital. He had just woken up when I reached him at his house.

“No shit,” he tells me.

“No shit — Smitty’s fuckin out of hand.”

“I told you Josh, that cat’s lost his mind.”

“What about the guy in the hospital?”

“I had to call his dad.”

“Really — bro, that must have been an interesting call — what did you tell him? Mr. Jones you don’t know me but your son and I were on a boat today when...”

“Yeah, yeah just pick me up Bink.”

He is beside himself with laughter.

When Bink drops the ten off she looks at me, but doesn’t know what to say.

“Strange day,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” she pauses, has something else to say, but then bats her eyes and doesn’t. It is the magic hour. The hour when the sky becomes a crayon box melting in clear fire. The hour when I can feel the heat drain out of the air and the air itself turn my body inside out. As I watch her walk away, her slight hips swinging in the rhythm of casual sex, I have long enough to think about the feel of her hand in mine earlier that afternoon when I helped her back into the boat. I squint, trying to make her body into a sail, a sail I can then press against the sky in a romance of endings. But when the ten slips into the shadow of the doorway and fumbles for her keys I have too long enough to contemplate love at last sight. Instead, Smitty’s voice comes into my ear and I can hear him protesting, “What do you mean I crashed the boat, I didn’t crash the boat, the boat crashed.”

As the door to the apartment building swings shut and the ten disappears, Bink turns to me and says, “She’s hot, man, but I don’t know if she’s a ten.”