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shaved, dressed, slicked, as if going to a ball. Didn’t realize just how nervous I was until I took a last glance in the mirror.
    I rowed humming “Sloop John B.” to calm myself. The dinghy gear I had requested awaited me. I went to work, not daring to look up even when I heard footsteps. It was always just the crew. Then, when I had almost finished, her shoes stepped into my sight. I looked up. She stood smiling, her light dress fluttering against her in the breeze. She thanked me for my help, and said how eager she was to get out in the boat. I managed to say, “Just don’t forget to turn back at the narrows. It’s a tough little boat, but China, I don’t know.” She laughed. Such an open heart-felt laughter, with her head thrown slightly back, that the whole crew laughed with her. Infectious. And her eyes. Great dark pools. Unguarded, dancing, sparkling with life. I had to look away. Another woman came and they boarded the shining skiff and the kid rowed them ashore. “Thank you again,” she called. And waved. I kept rigging. They were walking along the shore when the air was rent with her whistle. Then her laughter.
    Rowing back to the ketch, I felt nothing in particular, nothing that I noted, not until I pulled alongside, cleated the painter, and clambered back on board.
    Everything had changed. The brightness of the light, the richness of colors, the grain in the wood deck, the reflection in the polished brass—the world. The evening was awash with a transparent pink glow, and everything—the texture of ropes, shapes of blocks, the curve of the sheer—all seemed to have assumed a mystical intensity.
    The ketch—my first love, until now—seemed suddenly to stand apart from me. I went below. The flecks of sunlight bouncing off the water, rippling in slow waves between the deck beams overhead, seemed a magical event. And the silent shadows deep in the forepeak, seemed to reach onward, endlessly forever. I needed air. I rowed ashore. A creek flowed from the forest into green pools on the rocks. The water splashed, gurgled, foamed a brilliant white, exuberant, full of life. And the mossy rocks around it—even they seemed to breathe. It was as if a veil had been lifted—behind which I had cowered all my life.
    In Chinatown that evening, instead of hurrying past people as was my habit, I felt myself slow and let them sweep me onward. Like sailing through a pass, where the current grabs you and the rudder no longer steers because it no longer bites; you’re just being swept away. But it wasn’t frightening; it was almost reassuring that some great wild force now had me, and hurtled me along. And in the open-fronted shops of Chinatown even the badly plucked duck carcasses, hanging by their necks, looked beautiful.
    I didn’t dream about her that night. I lay half awake and thought about her. Her dark eyes filled the night, enormous and enigmatic.
    The simple repetitious chores of daily life—lighting the fire, making a ten-word entry in the log book, tying a knot—became unsolvable puzzles. I stared dumbly at a rope or the empty page. When I was alone I talked to her. Aloud. Even around others I had to catch myself sometimes.
    The next two afternoons I saw her in her dinghy, fumbling with the sails, just out of the shadow of the yacht. I hardly slept those nights. The third night I slept but woke up at dawn. The light soft; all calm. I felt much better. It was over. Back to normal. I thought of hauling the anchor chain onto the dock, checking it and repainting the fathom marks, a red stripe at ten fathoms, white at fifteen, two red at twenty, two white, and so on.
    Four days later, when I sailed back from the islands, I almost killed her.
    There was a rickety floathouse on logs anchored near the woods at the entrance of our bay. To sail up to my dock, I had to sail close to it, almost touching, then make a sharp turn into the wind and drift up to my float. Preoccupied with looking for her near the yacht, I