Final Hour (Novella) Read Free Page B

than blue, every ripple silvered by the sun.
    Fish were mostly shadows if one cared to lean over the railing and search for them below the surface. The occasional sea lion, in spite of its enormous size, slipped through the channel silently, swimming more than half submerged, skin glistening like wet rubber.
    Wearing only khaki shorts and a good tan, in a comfortable lounge chair on the afterdeck of a sixty-eight-foot coastal cruiser, Pogo from time to time looked up from his copy of
The Adventures of Augie March
to watch one of the more beautiful yachts or racing boats cruise past. Thousands of vessels were moored in the harbor, hundreds of millions’ worth of watercraft, but he coveted none.
    Pogo held a part-time job at Pet the Cat, a surf shop near the first of the two piers on Balboa Peninsula, but now that the summer season had passed, the shop was closed on Mondays. Usually he would have been on his board and in the water, whether the waves were double-overhead honkers or those small, fast inside zippers that were easy fun. This evening, however, he had a date, as they say, with an angel, and he chose to conserve his energy for romance.
    By romance, he didn’t mean sex. His date was with Makani, and they were letting their relationship evolve slowly. He had known her for more than two years, but he’d learned about her psychic talent, her see-by-touch, only a month earlier. He had long liked her. But she’d always seemed reserved, holding back a significant part of herself. Now he knew why, and the knowledge bonded them as never before.
    She said he was the only person she’d ever known in whom she had never glimpsed a dark intention or perverse desire. He didn’t know why that should be the case. Although all he wanted in life were sea, surf, sun, friends, good food of the diner or Mexican kind, a beer when he was thirsty, and books, he figured that he must have a dark intention now and then, though he could identify in himself no seriously perverse interests, or at least none that seemed perverse to him.
    A lot of the time, he lived with two other surf rats, Mike and Nate, in a studio apartment above a thrift shop in Costa Mesa. But frequently he took jobs house-sitting or boat-sitting while the owners were away. In this case, he was looking after both a house on the fabled harbor and a sweet boat docked in front of it, living in luxury without cost or stress, without any need of a lawyer or an accountant or a living trust.
    He didn’t hear Makani venture along the dock or come aboard—as quiet as the gulls, the fish—until she stepped through the gate in the railing, onto the afterdeck, and said, “Any beer aboard?”
    “What kind of yacht would it be if there wasn’t?”
    In blue Surf Siders, white slacks, and a blue halter top, her lustrous dark hair held back by two barrettes from which dangled blue silk ribbons, Makani looked like a sea goddess who had waded ashore to find a mortal mate.
    “You look like a sea goddess who waded ashore to find a mortal mate,” he said, because he knew a good thought when he had one.
    “Just tell me where to find the freakin’ beer,” she said.
    He described the route to the galley, and a minute later, she returned with two ice-cold bottles of Corona.
    By then he realized that she was in a state of distress, and though he wouldn’t have been surprised if she needed both beers, she gave one to him. She sat on the edge of the lounge chair next to Pogo’s, but he remained half reclining.
    “Saul Bellow,” she said, indicating the book he had put aside. “What would your parents think?”
    “They’d be ecstatic.”
    Pogo came from a family of busy achievers who, had they been aware of his true IQ, would have arm-twisted him into law or medical school. From a young age, he had known that he needed only a life of common pleasures, that he was born to live in the moment, which was, by his assessment, the only place where anything was real. The formidable name on