‘You hear me?’ said Chico.
‘Yes, but –’
‘But what? We could sell this somewhere, I don’t know – the university, that aquarium at Seal Beach or … well, hell, why couldn’t we just set up a place? Look.’ He shook Tom’s arm. ‘Drive to the pier. Buy us three hundred pounds of chipped ice. When you take anything out of the water you need ice, don’t you?’
‘I never thought.’
‘Think about it! Get moving!’
‘I don’t know, Chico.’
‘What do you mean? She’s real, isn’t she?’ He turned to the boys. ‘You say she’s real, don’t you? Well, then, what are we waiting for?’
‘Chico,’ said Tom. ‘You better go get the ice yourself.’
‘Someone’s got to stay and make sure she don’t go back out with the tide!’
‘Chico,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t know how to explain. I don’t want to get that ice for you.’
‘I’ll go myself, then. Look, boys, build the sand up here to keep the waves back. I’ll give you five bucks apiece. Hop to it!’
The sides of the boys’ faces were bronze-pink from the sun which was touching the horizon now. Their eyes were a bronze colour looking at Chico.
‘My God!’ said Chico. ‘This is better than finding ambergris!’ He ran to the top of the nearest dune, called, ‘Get to work!’ and was gone.
Now Tom and the two boys were left with the lonely woman by the North Rock and the sun was one-fourth of the way below the western horizon. The sand and the woman were pink-gold.
‘Just a little line,’ whispered the second boy. He drew his fingernail along under his own chin, gently. He nodded to the woman. Tom bent again to see the faint line under either side of her firm white chin, the small, almost invisible line where the gills were or had been and were now almost sealed shut, invisible.
He looked at the face and the great strands of hair spread out in a lyre on the shore.
‘She’s beautiful,’ he said.
The boys nodded without knowing it.
Behind them, a gull leaped up quickly from the dunes. The boys gasped and turned to stare.
Tom felt himself trembling. He saw the boys were trembling too. A car horn hooted. Their eyes blinked, suddenly afraid. They looked up towards the highway.
A wave poured about the body, framing it in a clear white pool of water.
Tom nodded the boys to one side.
The wave moved the body an inch in and two inches out towards the sea.
The next wave came and moved the body two inches in and six inches out towards the sea.
‘But –’ said the first boy.
Tom shook his head.
The third wave lifted the body two feet down towards the sea. The wave after that drifted the body another foot down the shingles and the next three moved it six feet down.
The first boy cried out and ran after it.
Tom reached him and held his arm. The boy looked helpless and afraid and sad.
For a moment there were no more waves. Tom looked at the woman, thinking, she’s true, she’s real, she’s mine … but … she’s dead. Or will be if she stays here.