“Who?”
“Heather. Here. Give her this s’more.” I pass another graham cracker sandwich to him and nudge him toward her. “I’ve got to get something from my tent.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, you stay here.”
“Can I put my tent next to yours?”
“No, Simon. Yours is perfectly fine where it is. Or you can go back to the ranch, if you don’t want to camp.”
He gives me a hurt look. “I never said that.” Invariably, some of the campers will go back when Bill and Lorrie do, if for no other reason than they don’t feel like sleeping out in the sand. And sometimes, it’s the biggest, toughest-acting kids that don’t want to be the ones sleeping out in a tent.
I give Simon’s shoulder a pat. “Well, then, you should go enjoy yourself. Go have some fun, Simon. I’ll be back.”
Hours later, the giggles and shrieks have subsided and the campers are all in their respective tents. I lie awake in mine, knowing it will probably be a few more hours at least before I finally fall asleep.
Sean and I tried to go camping once, in Bolinas. It was a disaster and a half. We ended up leaving around eleven that night because he just couldn’t handle sleeping on the ground.
“I thought there was going to be, you know, lodging,” he said as we left.
“It’s a campground,” I replied, trying not to sound as disgusted as I felt.
“Well, we went camping before when I was a kid and we stayed in a cabin. You know, with beds, running water.”
“That’s not camping; that’s staying in a cabin.”
I remembered looking at him as he stuffed our gear back into the car, and wondering, What the hell is wrong with you? It seemed like not the sort of thought you’d want to be having about your boyfriend.
It annoys me that I’m even thinking about this, and then I start thinking of that ridiculous orchid that’s still sitting on the kitchen table, and the one that’s sitting on my mother’s side table. I unzip the sleeping bag and get up, leave the tent. There’s a light breeze that carries a few hushed whispers from the campers’ tents my way, but everything seems to be in order. Most of them are probably already asleep.
I walk down to the water, let my toes be submerged in the edge of one of the waves. The water is cold and frothy and the moon is high in the sky. It’s one of those lovely nights when I should be feeling more at peace than I currently do.
I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn and squint, and in the milky light of the moon, I can see someone stumbling out of the water. He’s a good fifty yards away from me, and I wonder how on earth one of the campers managed to sneak past me, and what the hell he’s doing in the water at this time of night.
I storm down there. He trips, doesn’t make a move to get up, just lies there on his back, half in, half out of the water, arms splayed, staring up at the sky.
“Jesus Christ, how many beers did you have?” I ask. “And you better sleep this off by morning . . .”
But I stop abruptly, probably five feet away. The full moon has made it bright enough that I can see this is clearly not Brett or one of the other campers. I don't know who it is, and not just because he’s brought his hands up and is covering his face like he’s got the worst headache ever.
“Fucking hell,” he says, before trying to sit up. He makes it halfway and then twists to the side and throws up. It sounds like mostly water.
I take a step closer. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t seem to hear me over the retching, though, and when he’s done he rolls over onto his forearms and his knees, his forehead on the sand. Perhaps I should be more fearful of strange men that wash up onto the beach, but this one is clearly in no condition to do anything that might put me in harm’s way.
I take a few steps closer and kneel down. “Hey. Where did you come from?”
Finally, he looks at me. For a few long seconds, he doesn’t say anything. Then, he laughs, a dry, hacking sound that quickly dissolves into a brutal cough. He pushes himself up and stands, swaying a little.
“I would think,” he says, his voice rough like gravel, “that I were in heaven if I didn’t feel like such shit.”
“Well, this isn’t heaven; it’s Fulton Beach.” I look out to the expanse of ocean that is reflecting the moon’s light in milky-colored ripples. I see no boat, no vessel, not even a raft or a stick of driftwood. “And you’re not supposed to be here. Where did you come from? Where are you trying to go?”
“Sweetheart,” he says. “If I knew that, I’d be there by now.”
“Do you need to go to the hospital? I can call an ambulance.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “No, don’t call anyone. Just . . . just give me a minute. Let me try . . . let me . . . Goddamn. Do you have any water?”
I can see how dry and cracked his lips are and how the salinity of the water has irritated the skin around his mouth. He has been swimming for a long time, I realize.
“Sweetheart,” he says. “I really need to lie down.”
“Come with me,” I say, wanting to get him out of sight before Karen sees. “But stop calling me sweetheart.”
“Sure, okay. What’s your name, then?”
“Jill.”
“I’m Griffin. Thanks for saving me.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
He staggers next to me, one leg or the other giving out periodically but he doesn’t fall. He collapses into the tent and just lays there as I pull a water bottle from the little cooler I brought with me. I twist the cap off and hand it to him, and he sits up long enough to gulp a few mouthfuls before lying back down.
“Don’t drink so quickly,” I say. I try to scrutinize his face in the darkness. I twist the knob on my LED lantern and a whitish glow fills the tent. He is no one I have ever seen before. “Seriously. Where are you from?”
“I would tell you,” he says, “but sweetheart, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me,” I say.
He lets his eyes fall closed for a second, before reopening them. He’s got those enviable, long, thick lashes that only guys ever seem to have, and his eyes as blue and bright as pools of tropical water. “I was kidnapped. It started off really lovely and all; I was having the total Eat, Pray, Love experience, traveling the world, except in my case it was more like Drugs, Rave, Fuck, and I was partying in Thailand and I was kidnapped and woke up to find myself on some yacht in the middle of the ocean. And then a f**king whale sank the boat. Like Moby Dick or some shit. So I started swimming.”