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face,” I said.
    The man stopped chewing. Someone laughed, a lady tittered, then the judge described the morning media crush and his role as water taxi, historian and waiter, milking riotous laughter out of every inflated detail. I left the instant their eyes lost me, and found Phelps cross-legged in the grass with greasy lips, slogging through a mound of chicken wings.
    I grabbed some sourdough and four grilled oysters and handed Phelps a napkin, so I could stomach looking at him, then led him to the edge of the bay.
    “That Frankie Marx seems cool,” he said, watching me.
    “He’s a moron.” I shoved bread into my mouth. “There’s nothing real about him.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    His tone assured me I’d already blown my secret. I’d never wanted him to know the first thing about Angie. And I didn’t know what I’d do if he started boasting about how many bathrobes he could hang on her rack.
    I eyed the meandering line of flotsam left high on the sand from the last high tide. Professor Kramer knew people who studied tidal lines to forecast changes in ocean currents and sea life. I just saw it as the Sound’s equivalent of a lint catcher. From forty feet, I made out a spindled collection of seaweed, kelp, broken shells, seagull feathers, crab pinchers and salmon bones.
    I was finishing my third oyster when I saw Lizzy loose, sniffing along the waterfront on my folks’ property, which I assumed meant that Angie and Frankie were making out so dang hard they’d lost track of their dog. I figured would go no farther than the city-owned blackberry tangle on the far side of our land. Not even cats ventured into that barbed jungle. The prickly vines were as fat as lamp poles and growing at a horror-movie pace. If I hadn’t kept snipping them back, they would’ve already overwhelmed the garage and barred my windows. I heard Lizzy bark, then saw her chase a truck on the stubby two-lane bridge the news vans clogged that morning when the squid showed up. The truck was hauling a white tool trailer that Lizzy apparently hadn’t noticed because after she quit chasing, she veered behind the truck just enough for the trailer to thump, spin and flip her over the low railing.
    I rose and sprinted across our property and slogged through drifbood slop in front of the blackberries before I heard Angie and Frankie yelling, Lizzy! I kept my eyes on her splash, but didn’t see any movement beyond the initial ripples. It was mid-tide, which meant there was five feet of water beneath the middle of the bridge—enough to dive if I had to.
    When I got halfway across the bridge, I saw that she was actually only a few feet from shore, yet she wasn’t on the surface or the bottom, but rather suspended sideways, as if cast in ice. I wheezed across the bridge, splashed knee-deep into mud and kelp and pulled her ashore with one hand on her collar and the other around her chest until I could drag her high enough in the mud to keep her head above water. She didn’t respond to back slaps. I fanned her snout and felt no air, so I cupped her nose in my hands and blew three strong puffs into her. Nothing happened. I panted, then tried again, sealing her snout with my lips this time, and puffed hard. Still nothing. I could hear Phelps’s breathing by then and Angie’s hollers and the distant clatter and drone of the Stegner party. I forced air into Lizzy once more and felt her resist. She then shook herself from my lap, wobbled, fell down, puked water, panted and whimpered before getting back up, shaking herself again, whining some more and lying on her stomach, chest heaving, tongue dangling.
    I felt queasy and wiped my mouth. It didn’t taste great. My throat burned with oyster burps. I splashed my face, but it still took a few moments before I wanted to stand. Then Angie and phony Frankie were there with wild eyes, shuttling between Lizzy and me, Phelps telling, retelling and exaggerating everything. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,”