“An Anatosaurus,” Will said suddenly, remembering the name of a monster of the deep.
“What?” Zeke said.
“They’re dinosaurs with big bony heads. Anatosaurus means ‘duck lizard.’ They swam in the water and had big bills, like a duck. Dinosaurs hung out in the water. People just think of them running all over the land but actually the water was full of them, too. The Anatosaurus had a head shaped like a wheelbarrow. Great big wheelbarrow heads on enormous bodies in the water.”
“Holy shit,” Zeke said. “Don’t tell me that stuff. I’ll have nightmares.”
“They’re gone,” Will said. “The dinosaurs are all dead, even though people say they’ve seen them. Those pictures they take are faked. They’re fog looking funny when it rises from a lake. There aren’t any dinosaurs, and nobody knows the mystery of where they went.” He was saying just what Spencer had taught him. Spencer wanted to be proven wrong, though — you could tell that. He had books and articles about dinosaur sightings, and even though he said he didn’t believe what the people saw, he still kept a list of sightings and possible explanations, using the person’s own words in one column, and commenting himself in the far column.
“There’s no Loch Ness monster, either,” Will said, bobbing through the water on Zeke’s back. “And did you know that one time an albino was photographed with a fish-eye lens in a thunderstorm, but the magazine that bought the pictures found out and never printed them?”
“Stop talkin’ about this stuff,” Zeke said. “I’ve got enough monsters in my nightmares.”
“Dinosaurs aren’t monsters,” Will said.
“Yeah? What are they? Harmless, like cheerleaders?”
“They’re gone,” Will said. “You’ll never see one in your entire life because they aren’t on the planet anymore.”
Spencer had been very emphatic about this: The dinosaurs were gone, every one, in spite of their size. They were gone, and nobody could have any sense of them except people who went to museums and saw their skeletons. Will kicked his heels lightly against Zeke’s sides. The dinosaurs were gone, but it was still possible to go giddyup on a horse. Zeke was a horse in the water. That was what you might see now, instead of dinosaurs. His mother had talked about the wild ponies at Assateague, saying that one day she would take him there.
“What are you two doing?” Wayne said, rubbing his eyes.
“We’re ghosts from the prehistoric world here to haunt you,” Zeke said, bobbing and weaving as though a basketball were in play. He approached an invisible hoop, retreated, feinted, submerged himself in the water. Will was starting to enjoy himself. What if Zeke really was a monster — a too-tall, lanky monster who was a real monster in spite of putting on a charade, a person whose spine had magnetic powers? Zeke went down, Will shot up; Zeke submerged himself entirely, Will rose up as though leading his team to victory, waving his arms.
“Be careful with him,” Corky hollered from the sidelines.
“He can swim,” Zeke said and, giddy, Will shouted that he could. Zeke was bobbing and weaving, the imaginary ball suspended for longer than would have been possible, the crowd growing restless. Will’s knees became Zeke’s earmuffs. His hands on top of his head became his helmet. Will’s shrieking became the roar of the crowd. Will was riding on Zeke’s slender shoulders and Zeke was a man with a purpose, a man in motion, a person about to reach the goal — which was the far side of the pool, the side near Wayne, in deep water.
Suddenly a car pulled into the driveway at high speed, the radio blaring. A sandy-haired man got out of the driver’s side, leaving his companion in her seat. She turned the music down. The man peered over the roof of the car for a few seconds, then started toward them. As he walked, the woman inside the car threw open her door. She extended one tanned leg. She had low, pointed-toe white boots, Wayne saw, as she swung her other leg out of the car. The car was a Mazda RX-7—the car Wayne thought was the sharpest thing next to a Jaguar. The man walked toward them hesitantly, pushing his sunglasses to the top of his head and squinting.
“Hi. What’s going on?” the man said.
“It’s a swimming party, is what,” Zeke said. Zeke didn’t like the way the man was walking toward them. If the man took them for rich folks, he might think it was a fine time to rob them and take off fast. There was something hostile about the way the man moved.
“What can we do for you?” Wayne said, standing. He, too, wondered what the man was doing there. The music coming from the man’s car was “We Are the World.” Cyndi Lauper’s voice cut through the air.
“Just wondering what was going on,” the man said. “I was going to take a dip, and I wasn’t expecting to find anybody.” He hesitated, looking at the women. At Zeke, who had turned his back on him and was bobbing, with Will, toward the other end of the pool. The man looked at Wayne and frowned. “Are you friends?” he said.
“Are we friends, or are we friendly, do you mean?” Wayne said.
“I mean: Who are you?” the man said. “This is my mother’s house.” Only when he spoke the last words did his voice take on an edge. But Wayne was relieved to know why the man had stopped. He hated it when he was stopped by a cop and had to watch the cop approach the car.
Wayne extended his hand. “I’m Wayne,” he said. “Your mother was kind enough to offer us the use of her pool for the day.”
The man shook his hand tentatively, still frowning.
“She’s in New York,” Wayne added. That was the thing to do: tell her son that she was in New York. So why was he still puzzled?
“Please. Go right ahead,” the man said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go in the house and call New York.”
Zeke stopped playing with Will.
“Sure,” Wayne said, sitting down. He was thinking that the pool was his for the day. She had said that it was theirs for the day. It was theirs by right. He watched the man walk toward the house. Tight-ass, he thought. Why make a federal case out of everything? He looked like his mother, but on him the high forehead only seemed conspicuous. His mother had a pretty widow’s peak, and nicely arched eyebrows. Her face looked very clear. Her son was a tight-ass who was balding.
Corky came over to Wayne. “Nothing to worry about,” Wayne said. “Why’s he making a big deal? If he wants to call Mama, let him call Mama.”
Theirs by right.
He watched the man open the back door. He would be going to the phone in the Florida room, filled with white wicker and hanging plants with little red flowers that looked like open mouths with forked tongues spitting. The nursery Wayne worked for did not have those plants. He had looked for them, out of curiosity, to see what their name was. Who did her son think they were? Criminals?
Mine by right, Wayne thought. Maybe she hadn’t known that Will would be at the pool, and Susan, but could she really care that there were five people instead of three? He had been upfront. He had let her know earlier that he was married. She wouldn’t have thought that he was going to have a swim without his wife, would she? And most couples had children, didn’t they? Mine by right, he thought again, but this time he was fueling himself in case there was any problem. He understood that it wasn’t exactly his by right. Corky sat on the towel next to Susan again, but their conversation was strained. They would not have a good time until the man came out of the house and gave them his blessing. What does he think — he’s the fucking pope, because the old lady’s got some bucks? Wayne thought.