On this side of the promenade the sound of the waves surrounded them, though the tide was out, and they walked over a vast moonscape of soft, dry sand, cool under their feet. The darkness wasn’t impenetrable. By the lights of Beach Avenue, and by the brighter lights of the hotels farther down, their pale bodies were illuminated and exposed, and yet it wasn’t until they were almost upon it that they saw a large rowboat half-buried in the sand, the words “Cape May” painted on its side in blue letters. The light was deceptive out here. Henry could see its sources, brightly, and by it he could see Alma vividly beside him, but if she walked a few paces ahead she was almost entirely lost in the dark. They were hidden here, and safe. The faint glow of the Milky Way arced down toward the horizon. Finally they reached the smooth, damp, cold sand that was easier to walk over, and they made their way quickly to the edge of the surf.

It struck their feet, icy cold, and Alma shrieked and took hold of him, pressing her body against his. The surf was high but not frighteningly so. It crashed and made a glowing field all around them. They waded farther in, the depth varying with the waves: now it was at his shins, now it was halfway up his thighs. The water stunned him. The first time it struck his balls he cried out, and Alma laughed and dragged him farther ahead, but by then the water was going out and it was only to his knees.

“You just have to dive in,” she said.

“It’s freezing,” he said. “I can’t do it.”

“Of course you can. Be a man.”

She bounded in up to her waist—one last flash of her behind—and dove headlong into the next wave. The same wave struck Henry’s middle, shocking his skin with cold, and a moment later he saw Alma’s head and shoulders several yards ahead of him. He forged on, all of his muscles seizing. The water here was an element entirely different from the creek where he’d skinny-dipped back home, where the water caressed his skin in the summer. There the water was domesticated, here it was wild. The next breaker hit him square in the face, tumbled him over in darkness, and for the first time he tasted the heavy salt of the ocean in his mouth and nose. The saltiness, the intensity of it, surprised him. He got his footing back and stood up, and still he was only waist-deep, and Alma was an indistinct shape beyond the breakers.

“Come on,” she cried, “swim for your life.”

“I’m trying,” he shouted back.

“Get past where it breaks. You have to dive into it. It’s calm out here.”