other. These are knotty calcium deposits that develop from constant pressure against a surfboard; you get them on your toes and the tops of your feet from paddling while in a prone position. We have them on our knees, as well, and Bobby has them on his bottom ribs.
I am not tanned, of course, as Bobby is. He’s beyond tanned. He’s a maximum brown sun god, year round, and in summer he’s well-buttered toast. He does the mambo with melanoma, and maybe one day we’ll die of the same sun that he courts and I reject.
“There were some unreal zippers out there today,” he said. “Six-footers, perfect shape.”
“Looks way slow now.”
“Yeah. Mellowed out around sunset.”
We sucked at our beers. Orson happily licked his chops.
“So,” Bobby said, “your dad died.”
I nodded. Sasha must have called him.
“Good,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Bobby is not cruel or insensitive. He meant it was good that the suffering was over for my father.
Between us, we often say a lot with a few words. People have mistaken us for brothers not merely because we are the same height, weight, and body type..
“You got to the hospital in time. So it was cool.”
“It was.”
He didn’t ask me how I was handling it. He knew.
“So after the hospital,” he said, “you sang a couple numbers in a minstrel show.”
I touched one sooty hand to my sooty face. “Someone killed Angela Ferryman, set her house on fire to cover it. I almost caught the great onaula-loa in the sky.”
“Who’s the someone?”
“Wish I knew. Same people stole Dad’s body.”
Bobby drank some beer and said nothing.
“They killed a drifter, swapped his body for Dad’s. You might not want to know about this.”
For a while, he weighed the wisdom of ignorance against the pull of curiosity. “I can always forget I heard it, if that seems smart.”
Orson belched. Beer makes him gaseous.
When the dog wagged his tail and looked up beseechingly, Bobby said, “No more for you, fur face.”
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“You’re filthy, too. Catch a shower, take some of my clothes. I’ll throw together some clucking tacos.”
“Thought I’d clean up with a swim.”
“It’s nipple out there.”
“Feels about sixty degrees.”
“I’m talking water temp. Believe me, the nip factor is high. Shower’s better.”
“Orson needs a makeover, too.”
“Take him in the shower with you. There’re plenty of towels.”
“Very broly of you,” I said. Broly meaning “brotherly.”
“Yeah, I’m so Christian, I don’t ride the waves anymore—I just walk on them.”
After a few minutes in Bobbyland, I was relaxed and willing to ease into my news. Bobby’s more than a beloved friend. He’s a tranquilizer.
Suddenly he stood away from the refrigerator and cocked his head, listening.
“Something?” I asked.
“Someone.”
I hadn’t heard anything but the steadily diminishing voice of the wind. With the windows closed and the surf so slow, I couldn’t even hear the sea, but I noticed that Orson was alert, too.
Bobby headed out of the kitchen to see who the visitor might be, and I said, “Bro,” and offered him the Glock.
He stared dubiously at the pistol, then at me. “Stay casual.”
“That drifter. They cut out his eyes.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Because they could?”
For a moment Bobby considered what I’d said. Then he took a key from a pocket of his jeans and unlocked a broom closet, which to the best of my recollection had never featured a lock before. From the narrow closet, he took a pistol-grip, pump-action shotgun.
“That’s new,” I said.
“Goon repellent.”
This was not life as usual in Bobbyland. I couldn’t resist: “Stay casual.”
Orson and I followed Bobby across the living room and onto the front porch. The onshore flow smelled faintly of kelp.
The cottage faced north. No boats were on the bay—or at least none with running lights. To the east, the town twinkled along the shore and up the hills.
Surrounding the cottage, the end of the horn featured low dunes and shore grass frosted with moonlight. No one was in sight.
Orson moved to the top of the steps and stood rigid, his head raised and thrust forward, sniffing the air and catching a scent more interesting than kelp.
Relying perhaps on a sixth sense, Bobby didn’t even look at the dog to confirm his own suspicion. “Stay here. If I flush anyone out, tell him he can’t leave till we validate his parking ticket.”
Barefoot, he descended the steps and crossed the dunes to look down the steep incline to the beach. Someone could have been lying on that slope, watching the cottage from concealment.
Bobby walked along the crest of the embankment, heading toward the point, studying the