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stuffing condoms into the drink holders. She suspects they think the town is providing them as a service of some sort; she waits to read an angry letter to the editor, but no one says anything and they are always gone, pocketed, slipped into wallets, a dozen a day.
    Carefully, she climbs back down the ladder and repositions herself in the sand. As she crawls forward, the damp sand rubs her belly, it slips under the elastic waistband of her pants and down her legs, tickling.
    It began accidentally; fragments, seemingly unconnected, lodged in her thoughts, each leading to something new, each propelling her forward. At cocktail parties, in the grocery store, the liquor store, the hardware, the library, she was looking, thinking she would find someone, looking and seeing only pot bellies, bad manners, stupidity. She was looking for something else and instead she found them. She was looking without realizing she was looking. She had been watching for weeks before it occurred to her. An anonymous observer under the cover of summer, she spent her days sitting downwind, listening to their conversations. They talked about nothing—waves and water, movies, surfing, their parents and school, girls, hamburgers.
    She found herself imagining luring one home. She imagined asking for a favor—could you change a bulb?—but worried it would seem too obvious.
    She could picture the whole scenario: the boy comes to her house, she shows him the light, he stands on a chair, she looks up at his downy belly, at the bulge in his shorts, she hands him the bulb, brushing against him, she runs a hand up his leg, squeezing, tugging at his Velcro fly, releasing him.
    They have a mythology all their own.
    She caught herself enjoying the thought—it was the first time she’d allowed herself to think that way in months.
    Now, she catches herself distracted, she puts her goggles back in place, she focuses. A cool wind is blowing the dune grass, sand skims through the air, biting, stinging, debriding.
    A late-night fortune hunter emerges from the darkness, creeping across the parking lot, metal detector in hand. He shuffles onto the beach, sweeping for trinkets, looking for gold, listening on his headphones for the tick-tock of Timex, of Rolex. When he gets the signal he stops and with his homemade sifter scoops the sand, sifting it like flour, pocketing loose change.
    She hears them approaching, the blast of a car radio, the bass beat a kind of early announcement of their arrival. Rock and roll. A truck pulls into the parking lot, they tumble out. This is home plate. Every morning, every night, they return, touching base, safe. Another car pulls in and then another. Traveling in packs, gangs, entourages, they spill onto the sand. And as if they know she is out there, they put onshow, piling high into a human pyramid. Laughing, they fall. One of the boys moons the others.
    â€œAre you flashing or farting?”
    Pawing at the sand with their feet, they wait to figure out what comes next.
    There is something innocent and uncomplicated about them, an awkwardness she finds charming, adolescent arrogance that comes from knowing nothing about anything, not yet failing.
    â€œWe could go to my house, there’s frozen pizza.”
    â€œWe could get ice cream.”
    â€œThere’s a bonfire at Ditch Plains.”
    They piss on the dunes and are off again, leaving one behind—“See ya.”
    â€œTomorrow,” he says.
    The one they’ve left sits on the steps of the bathhouse, waiting. He is one of them—she has seen him before, recognizes the tattoo, full circle around his upper arm, a hieroglyph. She has noticed how he wears his regulation red trunks long and low, resting on the top of his ass, a delicate tuft of hair poking up.
    A white car pulls into the lot. A girl gets out. The light from the parking lot, combined with the humidity of the sea, fills the air with a humid glow that surrounds them like clouds. They