I opened a beer for me and one for Orson. I poured his into a bowl and suggested he share some of it with Mungojerrie, but the cat took one taste and spat with disgust.
The night was mild, the sky was deep with stars, and the rumble of the point-break surf was like the beating of a mighty heart.
A shadow passed across the fat moon. It was only a hawk, not a gargoyle.
That creature with black leather wings and a whiplike tail had also been graced with two horns, cloven hooves, and a face that was hideous largely because it was human, too human to have been plugged into that otherwise grotesque form. I’m pretty sure drawings of such creatures can be found in books that date back as far as books have been printed, and under most if not all of those drawings, you will find the same caption: demon.
I decided not to think about that anymore.
After a while, Sasha came out of the surf, panting happily, and Orson panted back at her as though he thought she was trying to converse.
She dropped on the blanket beside me, and I opened a beer for her.
Bobby was still thrashing the night waves.
“See that ship out there?” she asked.
“Big.”
“We paddled a little farther out than we needed to. Got just a little closer look. It’s U.S. Navy.”
“Never saw a battleship anchored around here before.”
“Something’s up.”
“Something always is.”
A chill of premonition passed through me. Maybe a cure and a vaccine were forthcoming. Or maybe the big brains had decided the only way to cover up the fiasco at Wyvern and obscure the source of the retrovirus was to scrub the former base and all of Moonlight Bay off the map. Scrub it away with a thermonuclear brush that even viruses couldn’t survive. Might the wider public believe, if properly prepared, that any nuclear event obliterating Moonlight Bay was the work of terrorists?
I decided not to think about that anymore.
“Bobby and I are going to set a date,” I said. “Gotta get married now, you know.”
“Mandatory, once he said he loved you.”
“That’s the way we feel.”
“Who’s the bridesmaid?” she asked.
“Orson,” I said.
“We’re deep into gender confusion.”
“Want to be best man?” I asked.
“Sure, unless, when the time comes, I’m up to my ass in angry monkeys or something. Take some waves, Snowman.”
I got to my feet, picked up my board, said, “I’d leave Bobby standing at the altar in a minute, if I thought you’d marry me instead,” and headed for the surf.
She let me get about six steps before she shouted, “Was that a proposal?”
“Yes!” I shouted.
“Asshole!” she shouted.
“Is that an acceptance?” I called back to her as I waded into the sea.
“You don’t get off that easy. You owe me a lot of romancing.”
“So it was an acceptance?” I shouted.
“Yes!”
With surf foaming around my knees, I turned to look back at her as she stood there in the light of the Coleman lantern. If Kaha Huna, goddess of the surf, walked the earth, she was here this night, not in Waimea Bay, not living under the name Pia Klick.
Orson stood beside her, sweeping his tail back and forth, obviously looking forward to being a bridesmaid. But then his tail abruptly stopped wagging. He trotted closer to the water, raised his head, sniffed the air, and gazed at the warship anchored outside the mouth of the bay. I could see nothing different about the vessel, but some change evidently had drawn Orson’s attention—and concern.
The waves, however, were too choice to resist. Carpe diem. Carpe noctem. Carpe aestus—seize the surf.
The night sea rolled in from far Tortuga, from Tahiti, from Bora Bora, from the Marquesas, from a thousand sundrenched places where I will never walk, where high tropical skies burn a blue that I will never see, but all the light I need is here, with those I love, who shine.