The rocks formed an archway. Shephard’s stomach fluttered again as they ducked into a darkened vault that was protected on three sides by rock and open at the top to the sky. Inside, it was quieter and warmer. He could hear the breeze whistling through the cracks, overtaken by the rhythm of waves.
A wide angle of light opened the darkness around him. He watched as Jane pressed the flashlight into the sand and set her bag beside it. Without looking at him, she turned away and began to unbutton her dress.
Shephard watched, dumbly rapt, as the dress slid from her back, revealing Jane Algernon’s wide and slightly muscled shoulders. A swimmer’s back, he thought, scalloped and lean, tapering to a narrow waist. Then, as the dress fell to her knees and she bent to step out of it, he studied her high, firm buttocks and strong thighs, which were sculpted flawlessly. Her legs were long and without waste. No bathing suits, he thought, as she wrapped a large towel around herself and turned to face him.
For a brief moment Shephard felt that rare emotion, the opposite of déjà vu: not that he had been there before but that he would never be there again.
Was it pleasure, invitation that crossed her face as she returned his stare in the dim light? Fear? He was aware of the moment as precious, inviolable, singular. It felt strange to be so sober, so acutely present. The ocean that rushed against the rocks was inconsequential and far away. She seemed to have gathered all his awareness into a single vector that, even without moving or speaking, she drew in toward herself.
Shephard turned and undressed, feeling her eyes on him as surely as she had felt his. The light went out and she found his hand again, leading him out to the darkness. They waded carefully through the tidepools until they hit the sand, and by the time she was waist-deep, Jane had slipped under a wave. Shephard followed, the warm water stinging the cut on his head, his belly touching the smooth sand bottom. He kicked and stretched his hands out in front, feeling another wave surging overhead, pounding his feet as he went under. How long since he had been in the water? He counted the years but lost interest. Up again, he could see that the water was faintly luminescent, tinged blue-white by the moon. Jane broke into a crawl stroke ahead of him. The flutter of her kick made a sparkling trail behind her, but she was a quiet swimmer and moved through the water with an effortless, languorous rhythm.
He kicked hard and pulled deeply to keep up with her, careful to leave a few meters between them. Past the waves he felt the bottom falling away and knew that even a few yards from shore the ocean was much the same as it was many miles out: strong, unfathomable, unforgiving of all that is not part of it. And just as the first lappings of the waves had seemed to draw little parts of him away with them, he could now feel larger portions leaving too. He recalled that he had been married once but wasn’t sure to whom. He believed that he rented an apartment somewhere in the town behind them but couldn’t quote an address. He knew that he was a cop on a murder case but couldn’t remember the specifics. He wondered why he had ever quit surfing. But the regret soon vanished. He didn’t know why and didn’t want to know. Was it possible to continue this way to Hawaii, or perhaps to an uninhabited tropical island where he and Jane could live on fish and fruit, procreate wildly, found a race? It seemed a possibility.
Then, ahead of him, Jane Algernon’s face collected in the darkness and it was smiling.
“Are you scared? The rocks are under us, not far,” she said. Shephard could feel the churning of her legs as she kicked to stay afloat. Her hair was slicked back and the bones in her face caught the moonlight.
“No. Are you?”
“I do this every night.” Her voice was a whisper, excited and conspiratorial. “This is as far away as you can get from yourself and still get back. Do you know what I mean?”
“I feel it. I couldn’t have said it.”
“It’s reductive. I’m Jane Algernon and you’re Tom Shephard. That’s all I know right now because compared with this ocean, nothing else matters. I know when I get back that everything will make sense again. Different sense, but still sense.” She lapped up a mouthful of water and sprayed it into the air. “Look. She’s our mother. She’s our great organizer.”
“You broke your rules,” he said, moving closer.
“They don’t apply out here. Nothing applies but what you are right now. What are you?” Her breath smelled as if it came from somewhere rich and clean.
“Words or no words?”
“Whatever it takes, detective.”
The months of inertia changed to months of hunger as Shephard reached out and placed his hands on Jane Algernon’s face. He could feel her legs and arms straining as he eased her still closer, close enough to taste the warmth of her breath. His legs pumped the water. Inside him he felt a sweet riot breaking out, birds on the wing, electric, agitated, nerve-spun. Her mouth was warm and the water running around it was cool and salty. He kissed it, then across her cheek and down her neck — she said something but he didn’t hear what — until he dropped his hands to her waist and lifted slightly, bringing her breasts high enough to take one nipple between his lips as gently as if it were a drop of water. She pressed against him, legs still lunging, arms falling to his buttocks then around, and Shephard realized his strength as she took him in her hands, tenderly, like a treasure consigned to her care. Their legs mingled, locked, released; He closed his eyes and found her mouth again; he was streaking through space. His hand fell to her legs and she eased them apart, his fingers finding warmth and slick abundance, a woman’s quiet affirmation that even the ocean could make no less of. Shephard could feel it around his fingers, his palm, as if it were draining, spilling in a rush. And while he pushed inside her she climbed him, arms around his neck, the bottoms of her thighs around his ribs, her warmth breaking away from his hand and colliding with his stomach, hot where the cool water had been. He churned harder to support them both, guiding her buttocks down, around him, then moving inside her, a flawless connection that began tentatively and went deeper while she kissed his mouth, nose, ears, eyes. She whimpered with each snap of his legs and he hoped that he would be strong enough. Moving forward, he found a rock and braced his feet against its rough edge. She leaned back and fanned her arms in the water. Her torso shone pale and slick in the moonlight and Shephard could see her hair floating around her head. He brought her harder against him.
She cried out as the first voltage erupted inside her. He could feel it, like electricity, quick and tense. Then another, and she groaned and drew herself back up to him, arms locked around his neck as another surge broke inside. Shephard slowed, resting as they sank down, then pushed off the rock for a heave upward. She clutched his flanks with her thighs. They strained together, until Jane’s legs stiffened, rigid around him. He was aware of her shrieking, of his own rapid breathing, of the weakening of his legs. But the first stirrings of his own release brought their own energy, and while she clung to his body with ebbing strength he worked the last of his power, slowing, then feeling everything inside him moving to her. The frenzied birds took flight, and Shephard lifted his face skyward as if to watch them go, as a rich release shuddered out of him and seemed to last for hours while she tightened and drew it out, and out, and out still more, so that when it ended Shephard thought it was still going out of him and maybe always would be.
Floating. Face to the stars on a bed of ocean. Beside him a woman’s hair, blending with his own. Her arms working the water slowly, her breath still rapid but descending. Shephard was aware of his own heartbeat, magnified by the water, a fast thudding, a precise mechanism. Funny how the stars multiply the longer you stare, he thought. A dozen, two dozen, then a thousand pinpoints in the fabric of night. Then Jane asking if he saw the Big Dipper — yes — and a thousand other scenes nobody has named. And while her breathing slowed still more she asked him to swim another hundred yards out or so, to the Inside Indicator, a rock, her goal on nights such as this.