The boathouse was a dark square, jutting out into the ocean to the east of the house. I walked down
toward it. The night bird started singing again and then, suddenly, flew off in a rustle of leaves. Then
there was only the wind.
I knew what I was going to say; I had been rehearsing it in my head ever since I saw her.
Hang tough, Jake, don?t let soft memories shake you. Get it said and get out.
I was ready.
She was standing in the boathouse, haloed by the moon, swinging on a twenty-five-foot Mako bow
line clamped to a hook above her head. She didn?t see me at first. Eyes closed, she was lost in the
moonlight, stirring her own memories.
A small Sony tape deck was whispering on the dock beside her. And that summer came back, a riptide
that erased whatever scenario I had planned. I recognized Phil Spector?s breakaway guitar on the old
Drifters version of “On Broadway.” Twenty years ago I could whistle every note and break, right
along with him. I didn?t even think, I just started whistling softly between my teeth, amazed that I
could still keep up with all the riffs and pauses.
She turned, startled, her fawnlike eyes fluttering as they tried to adjust to the darkness. The ocean was
slapping the pilings beneath us and the Mako bumped easily against the rubber tires in the side of the
dock.
Nothing else but the wind.
“Jake?” she said, a decibel above the night sounds.
“Yeah.”
She moved away from the line.
“You can still do it,” she said, and laughed.
“I?m a little rusty,” I said.
“No. Not rusty at all.”
There was an awkward pause, where you feel you should say something just to fill the silence. She
did it for me.
“I?m so glad you came. I wanted it so bad it hurt.”
“You haven?t changed at all,” I said huskily. “Time has passed you by.?,
“You always say the perfect thing, you always did.” Another pause, then, “I didn?t even hear you. I
was lost for a minute.”
“I can?t think of a better place to be lost.”
She eased toward me, a shimmering vision, still moving slightly with the music.
“Remember the night party? Dewey Simpson got drunk and tried to swim to the channel marker in his
