Jen and Stef are cavorting in the surf in the distance, splashing each other like kids, and laughing. I’m glad to see Jen carrying on like nothing’s wrong. I hope she doesn’t swim for the coast, but if she does she’ll likely come back—eventually. “You go, girl,” I go, slapping Vick on the shoulder as I stare in awe at the bare expanse of her chest, stiff nipples silhouetted in the impending dusk like this was a photo from a Thai sex tourism brochure for Pattaya’s Sunset Boob Cruise, where Lonnie liked to tell the story about how he got seasick and had to nurse on a lactating waitress to control his nausea. “Don’t worry about the fish, V-babe. Don’t worry about anything.” She grins lopsidedly and lopes off across the beach to skirt the die-off before heading down to the water, her long strides kicking up little sand trails like she was a flesh engine.

G says, “Frank O’Hara has a line, I can’t think of the name of the poem: ‘The fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism.’ That’s what Vicki makes me think of.”

“Fucking A, G. She’s Unique Forms of Mega-titted Continuity in Space.” It’s the best intellectual comeback I can manage since I can’t think of anything about Frank O’Hara at the moment, I’m drawing a total blank on him, nor can I think of the name of the sculptor I’m referencing. As G grins, apparently liking my line, I stop to admire the smears of cirrus cloud shot with orange-red as the sunset starts its striptease. Or are those cumulus clouds? No, the smeary ones are cirrus, cumulus are the big puffy ones, right? Oh, fuck. And isn’t there a third kind? There was a time when I knew this. Like, last week. I’m not gonna ask G, though, she’s in a LUX AETERNA-bursting squat now, busy studying the dead fish as I study her very live haunches.