The Beach

I faked with a left and floored him with a right. He dropped like a sack of potatoes.

'I'm thorry,' he yelped, 'lt'th true! I didn't find the papayath!'

'Say that again!' I shouted, looming over him with the Frisbee poised.

'I didn't find them! You did! I'm thorry!'

'Louder!'

'You found the papayath!'

I nodded curtly, and turned to Francoise. 'Just wanted to set the record straight.'

She glanced down at Bugs' twitching figure. 'Of course,' she said briefly.

'You want to swim out to the coral garden?'

'Yes, Richard,' she breathed, interlocking her arm with mine. 'I would love to.'

The fantasy might have happily continued from there, but the dead leaves and dirt under my feet had become sand. I'd reached the beach.

It took me ages to find Keaty and the others. Even with the moonlight I couldn't see them, and their laughter seemed to come from everywhere, spread evenly over the water and faintly echoing off the cliffs. But after twenty minutes of stoned wandering along the shore I finally pinned them down to a group of small boulders, a hundred metres out.

As I couldn't see them and they couldn't see me, I decided there wasn't much sense in calling out, so I slipped off my T-shirt and began swimming towards them. Gradually their figures became discernible in the darkness. They were all standing and bending over to look downwards into the water. Then – at roughly the moment I must have become visible to them – their laughter abruptly cut off, and as I got closer I saw that they had all turned to face my direction. 'Hey!' I said, finding their watchful silence a little eerie. 'What's up?' They didn't answer. I continued swimming and repeated the question, irrationally thinking they might not have heard me. When they didn't answer again I stopped, treading water ten feet from the boulder. 'Why aren't you answering me?' I said, puzzled.

'Look down,' Keaty replied after a moment or two.

I paused, then looked. The water was as black as ink, except for where the moonlight caught the ripples. '…What's to see?'

'He is too close,' I heard Etienne say.

'No,' said Keaty. 'Richard, move your hands, just under the surface.'

'OK…' I did as he said. From the boulder I heard Francoise sigh, but I still couldn't see anything past the blackness. 'I don't get it… What's this about?'

'Too close,' Etienne repeated.

Keaty's silhouette scratched its head.' Yeah, you're right… Come up on to the boulder, Richard. Watch me dive. We'll show you…'

At first I could see nothing but the disturbed water and reflected moonlight from where Keaty had vanished. Then, as the water settled, I began to see light below the surface. A milky glow at first that separated into a thousand tiny stars, next becoming a slowly moving meteor trail behind the brightest cluster. The cluster rose and turned back on itself, and turned again to form a glittering figure of eight. Then it sunk downwards, disappearing for several seconds.

'What…?' I said, baffled and astonished and unable to think of anything better to say.

Francoise put her hand on my arm. 'Wait,' she whispered. 'Look now.'

Deep in the blackness the glow returned, but this time it quickly divided into seven or eight clusters, brighter than before. They flickered and darted, dissolving and shedding light, but somehow replenishing themselves and becoming more intense. I took an instinctive step backwards, suddenly aware that the miniature fireballs were travelling up towards me at an increasing speed. The next instant the surface broke into a flurry of bubbles and Keaty appeared, gasping for air.

'What did you think,' he spluttered between lungfuls. 'Did you ever see anything like it?'

'No…' I replied, still stupidly dazed.' …Never.'

'Phosphorescence. Minute creatures or algae or something. They glow when you make a movement.' He hauled himself on to the boulder. 'Phew! What an effort! We've been practising that all night. Trying to get the best display.'

'…It looked incredible… But… where do the creatures come from?'

'Daffy would say they come from the corals,' said Gregorio. 'It only happens on some nights. Not often. But now it is here, it will stay for the next few days. Maybe three or four.'

I shook my head. 'Amazing… Just amazing…'

'Ah-ha!' Etienne slapped me on the back and pushed Gregorio's diving mask into my hands. 'But there is still the best to see!'

'Underwater?'

'Yes! Put this on and follow me! I will show you something you could never imagine!'

'It'll blow your mind,' Keaty agreed. 'It's indescribable.'

The DMZ

I returned Jed's binoculars to him and lay on my back. My head was still bleary from all the dope I'd smoked the night before, despite the brisk morning trek up the island, and I couldn't seem to focus on the tiny figures. 'Basically,' I said, folding my hands behind my head, 'it was like being in space. Floating with loads of stars and comets around you. One of the most amazing things was disturbing a shoal of fish…'

Jed readjusted the binoculars to suit him. 'I've seen phosphorescence before.'

'But not underwater.'

'No. Underwater sounds good.'

'Yeah. Really good…' I sighed. '…Did I tell you about Bugs and the papayas?'

'Nope.'

'I found a papaya orchard a couple of weeks ago, and now Bugs is making out like he found it. Granted, I couldn't remember the orchard's exact location, but it was me who found it first.' I sat up to see how Jed was reacting. He didn't appear to be reacting at all. 'I suppose it isn't that big a deal. What do you think?'

'Mmm,' Jed replied absently.

'Mmm—it is a big deal, or mmm—it isn't?'

'Oh… probably…'

I gave up. This was, after all, the precise problem with Bugs. Unless you were tuned in to the subtleties of his character, you couldn't appreciate how irritating he was. I lay back down again and looked up at the clouds, feeling frustrated.

Actually, I'd been feeling frustrated for quite some time. It had started when we'd arrived at our look-out post two hours earlier, to find, yet again, that Zeph and Sammy were still on their same patch of beach. I was aware that this should have been cause for relief but instead it had got on my nerves, and as the morning passed I'd thought carefully about this paradox. My first guess was that it was connected to the uncertainty of the situation. I'd become tired of the waiting and I wanted some kind of resolution to occur. Even if it was the worst-case scenario and they set off towards us, at least the situation would become tangible. It would be something it was in our power to affect.

But it didn't take long for me to realize that my first guess was wrong. In the process of working through the worst-case scenario, I inevitably worked through the best-case. I imagined Zeph and Sammy disappearing, going back to Ko Pha-Ngan or Phelong, and my never seeing them again. It was at that point I realized my mistake, because what I registered, whilst entertaining this optimistic thought, was disappointment. The strange truth was that I didn't want them to leave. Neither, as the root of my frustration, did I want them to stay put. And that left only one possibility: The worst-case scenario was the best-case scenario. I wanted them to come.

'Bored,' I murmured, carelessly, and Jed laughed.

'Bored is good, Richard,' he said. 'Bored is safe.'

I paused. I hadn't mentioned my thoughts about Zeph and Sammy yet, assuming that Jed wouldn't take them too well. But I wasn't sure. It was possible that he felt the same way. I knew he took pleasure from evading the dope guards, part of which had to be a danger buzz, and I hadn't forgotten the way Keaty used to talk about him. I decided to obliquely test the water.