“You said Angela called this Armageddon. It’s the end of the world, she said.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So maybe if you’re busily working on a project to destroy the world, you don’t have time to come into town for a movie. Anyway, like I said, this is a tsunami, Chris. This is the government. There’s no way to surf these waters and survive.”
I gripped the handlebars of my bike and stood it upright again. “In spite of these monkeys and what you’ve seen, you’re going to just lay back?”
He nodded. “If I stay cool, it’s possible they’ll eventually go away. They’re not here every night, anyway. Once or twice a week. If I wait them out…I might get my life back like it was.”
“Yeah, but maybe Angela wasn’t just smoking something. Maybe there’s no chance, ever again, that anything will be like it was.”
“Then why put on your tights and cape if it’s a lost cause?”
“To XP-Man,” I said with mock solemnity, “there are no lost causes.”
“Kamikaze.”
“Duck.”
“Geek.”
“Decoy,” I said affectionately and walked the bicycle away from the house, through the soft sand.
Orson let out a thin whine of protest as we left the comparative safety of the cottage behind us, but he didn’t try to hold back. He stayed close to me, sniffing the night air as we headed inland.
We’d gone about thirty feet when Bobby, kicking up small clouds of sand, sprinted in front of us and blocked the way. “You know what your problem is?”
I said, “My choice of friends?”
“Your problem is you want to make a mark on the world. You want to leave something behind that says, I was here.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Bullshit.”
“Watch your language. There’s a dog present.”
“That’s why you write the articles, the books,” he said. “To leave a mark.”
“I write because I enjoy writing.”
“You’re always bitching about it.”
“Because it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s also rewarding.”
“You know why it’s so hard? Because it’s unnatural.”
“Maybe to people who can’t read and write.”
“We’re not here to leave a mark, bro. Monuments, legacies, marks—that’s where we always go wrong. We’re here to revel in the world, to soak in the awesomeness of it, to enjoy the ride.”
“Orson, look, it’s Philosopher Bob again.”
“The world’s maximum perfect as it is, beauty from horizon to horizon. Any mark any of us tries to leave—hell, it’s only graffiti. Nothing can improve on the world we’ve been given. Any mark anyone leaves is no better than vandalism.”
I said, “The music of Mozart.”
“Vandalism,” Bobby said.
“The art of Michelangelo.”
“Graffiti.”
“Renoir,” I said.
“Graffiti.”
“Bach, the Beatles.”
“Aural graffiti,” he said fiercely.
As he followed our conversation, Orson was getting whiplash.
“Dick Dale,” I said, dropping the sacred name of the King of the Surf Guitar, the father of all surf music.
Bobby blinked but said, “Graffiti.”
“You are a sick man.”
“I’m the healthiest person you know. Drop this insanely useless crusade, Chris.”
“I must really be swimming in a school of slackers when a little curiosity is seen as a crusade.”
“Live life. Soak it up. Enjoy. That’s what you’re here to do.”
“I’m having fun in my own way,” I assured him. “Don’t worry—I’m just as big a bum and jerk-off as you are.”
“You wish.”
When I tried to walk the bike around him, he sidestepped into my path again.
“Okay,” he said resignedly. “All right. But walk the bike with one hand and keep the Glock in the other until you’re back on hard ground and can ride again. Then ride fast.”
I patted my jacket pocket, which sagged with the weight of the pistol. One round fired accidentally at Angela’s. Nine left in the magazine. “But they’re just monkeys,” I said, echoing Bobby himself.
“And they’re not.”
Searching his dark eyes, I said, “You have something else that I should know?”
He chewed on his lower lip. Finally: “Maybe I am Kahuna.”
“That’s not what you were about to tell me.”
“No, but it’s not as fully nutball as what I was going to say.” His gaze traveled over the dunes. “The leader of the troop…I’ve only glimpsed him at a distance, in the darkness, hardly more than a shadow. He’s bigger than the rest.”
“How big?”
His eyes met mine. “I think he’s a dude about my size.”
Earlier, as I had stood on the porch waiting for Bobby to return from his search of the beach scarp, I had glimpsed movement from the corner of my eye: the fuzzy impression of a man loping through the dunes with long fluid strides. When I’d swung around with the Glock, no one had