Absent Friends

Jimmy gropes for Markie in the gray-green murk. He can't find him. But he's not scared. Every beam of sunlight that pushes through the water, every tug of the waves, they're all there to help him, he knows how to read them and use them. Left, turn left, turn left. He does, moves his arms through the water, Markie's there.

Then the waves, they're not helping anymore, like they're teasing, like it was a joke. But it's not funny, because Jimmy can't breathe. Straining, heart slamming, he swims with the arm that's not holding Markie, kicks his legs. He breaks the surface, gulps air. He swims more, more, then here's the beach. He half hauls, half throws Markie onto the sand, stumbles and falls down next to him. Both of them panting, they can't move. The ocean curls up around their ankles. There's sand in Jimmy's mouth, he coughs and chokes.

He hears a noise, turns his head: Markie's laughing. Jimmy stares: he can't believe this. But he feels a smile spreading on his own face. Above him, a seagull and an airplane, funny how they're the same size. The sun's hot and the sand's scratchy and his mom's over there on a big striped towel with sandwiches and Cokes and damn. And Jimmy's laughing, too, cracking up with Markie.

Back on the towels, Markie starts telling everyone what happened, what a big hero Jimmy is. The moms and dads look at Jimmy in a funny way.

Jimmy, he's thinking about the laughing part, about the waves tickling his feet and how amazing it is that seagulls are so white when the sky's so blue. And about how cold it was under the water, but how he felt heat: the fire under his own skin. It's fading but he still feels it now. He wishes it would stay.

Markie's mom starts to say something to Jimmy, some big thank-you, and Jimmy feels weird, like he's about to get a Christmas present that belongs to somebody else.

Markie, man, he says, you gotta be nuts, you think that's what happened. Jimmy pops the top on a Coke, slurps the foam that jumps out of the can. What really happened, he says, I just sort of bumped into you. You think I'd risk my ass saving yours, you got another think coming. Jimmy's using a word the kids aren't supposed to use, and the moms and dads frown. Markie's about to say something else, but he stops. He grins, shrugs, throws Jimmy a Twinkie. Jimmy bites it hard so the cream comes squirting out the end. His mom says, Oh, Jimmy! and races a napkin to him. Suddenly everyone's eating and talking and that's the end of that.

Except Jimmy, gulping his Coke, catches Tom looking at him, just for a second. How Jimmy feels from this look of Tom's is different from how he felt when all the moms and dads were staring at him like he was the only one the sun was shining on. How he feels, it makes him think of a Mets game his dad took him to, when he caught a rookie lefthander with a scorching fastball getting a nod from a veteran reliever, a guy you could count on to close out a game but you never saw newspaper stories about. Jimmy'd seen the rookie smile a little, and nod back, and it made him wonder how the rookie felt. Now, Tom looking at him this way, Jimmy thinks maybe he knows.

About Jimmy and Markie: that's how it was then, that's how it's been. Jimmy just supposes some people are like that, born with no sense. No point in getting mad at them, it's like getting mad at people who're born deaf. It's just, if you know someone like that, you have to look out for them.

And what Jimmy's thinking now, the way he sees to do what Mike the Bear wants—the way that's like something Tom would do—maybe this is a way he can do this thing for Mike the Bear, and look out for Markie, too.

PHIL'S STORY

Chapter 8

A Hundred Circling Camps

October 31, 2001

Phil thumbed off his cell phone, slipped it back in his pocket. Marian Gallagher's voice—a voice he'd never liked, too full of incense and intuition, earth goddesses and community trade—echoed in his mind. He turned to the window, staring not down to the carless streets but up into the empty sky. No, not empty. The military patrols flew so high you couldn't hear them, but if you looked up at the right time, you could catch the silver flashes against the blue.

Working at his desk, his back to the window, Phil had always liked the roar of planes. It had meant someone was going somewhere, someone was getting away. Good for you, Phil thought. That sound was gone now, lost to the no-fly zone the air over Manhattan had become. If the no-fly was ever lifted and air travel was allowed over the island again, the joy in that roar would still be lost to Phil, who'd heard the first plane hit and seen the second.

It wasn't the sound of planes that was on his mind now, though, and not the blue, blank sky. He was thinking about Marian's voice, what she'd told him, how he'd reacted. And, equally, about how impossible he and Marian had always found it to be decent to each other.