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woodwork. Stroking its rounded top, looking down on it. It fits. The way the plaque fits, the railing fits, the abutment fits, as if it wereincorporated into the design of the lovely miserable old gray structure. It probably won’t even get noticed for the first few hours, as drivers pass it by feeling like it has been there all along forever. No fuss. Good.
    You walk in a file, she first, you following.
    â€œDo I scare you at all?” you ask.
    â€œNot at all,” she says.
    â€œSo you get it, then. Like, you understand.”
    â€œNot at all,” she says.
    What did you think, that you were going to slip one past her? That by tricking her into saying the wrong thing somehow the contract would be legal and binding and therefore you would make sense because you made sense to Angela? Is that what you were hoping to achieve? To cheat your way in?
    â€œSo why are you bothering?” you ask, rather recklessly.
    â€œI don’t know,” she says.

HOPE
    You have always loved the beach. Always loved waters. Moving waters most of all. Could never resist the pull. Is it the magician’s trick, the waving of the cape, coming and going, the possibility of tides and river runs that can produce something out of nowhere or that can take something away just as quick? Is that it then, the idea that what is coming and what is going presents the possibility of something better than what you’ve got right here right now? That what you cannot see under there has got to be better than that which you can see?
    What are you waiting for? Ever believing, aren’t you, that a good tide is going to bring you a superior something?
    Only now more than ever you like the beach when noone else is there to appreciate it. Which means you like your beaches best cold and windy and rainy and raw and awful.
    The severed head of a tuna is a joy.
    You look around in every direction, as if a wad of fifty-dollar bills has just blown in your path and you are afraid the owner is going to come flying after it. But no, the tuna head is all yours.
    You go close, face-to-face with it. You open your mouth wide, like it does. You touch a very pointy tooth. Your hair is now beaten down hard on your frosted head, by the wind and spray, but it is not uncomfortable. Looking around the back you can see where the spine has been neatly sawed, where the fishermen have removed the useless bits at the dock a half mile to the south. Would have been nice if this find had been the rubbish of a shark’s meal. There would be a certain savage kick to that, a primal bloody rightness. But this isn’t bad either.
    And neither is “Summer Wind,” playing in your head, like it does without fail every time you hit this beach. The autumn wind, and the winter wind, have come and gone . . .
    Then just like that you are no longer a pair alone. You are a trio. He comes up behind you, the other big skeletal gape-mouthed tuna head.
    â€œHey, nutter,” Pops says. “No jacket, no hat, no brains? I’m going to come down here one of these times and find you looking like him .” He is squatting next to you, pointing at the tuna.
    â€œAh, it’s not so cold.”
    â€œAnd you’re scratching again. Quit with the scratching, or you’re not going to have any hide at all. You know that’s the best way to get some kind of infection, don’t you?”
    â€œI do, Pops.” Of course you do, but this is what you do at the beach. It’s the salt, probably. The wind, probably. The sand and the salt picked up by that wind and driven by it and embedded into your pores, probably, that make you scratch. It always passes, when you leave the beach. It will pass.
    â€œSkin. Best protector you’ve got. Take care of it. There’s not much we can do to hold back the years, but we can do that.” His own looks like the outside of an old suitcase. “And drink that V8, for crying out loud. The supply is