I pulled myself along the neon rope, making it to the next bicycle tube, and afterward, finally, to the far side of the water, the end of the neon line, and the anchored silver canoe. Somewhere along the way, the boots kicked off and they receded into the red-black water, the weight of the grout pulling them down.

When my hands found the boat, I was dying for air, lungs near to exploding.

My nails clawed at the gunnels, black-red water streamed out of my lipsticked mouth, and I gasped once—and then quietly, little choking ones, like when you are crying but trying to hide it. Though they were fifty feet away, at least, there were still small microphones on the cameras—nothing much—and they would run to the end of the reels, only a few more minutes. Enough time for a person to drown.

*  *  *

Once the reels ran out, I moved. It took a great deal of negotiating to get my body into the boat itself without capsizing it, as the narrow cut of the dress held me back. But once I hiked the skirt up and over my waist, I managed to get atop the stern, arms out flat, my weight almost even.

I lay in the bottom of the boat for some time, breathing evenly, trying to calm down as the sun descended over the horizon. I took the pins from the turban and dropped them over the side, hearing them disappear into the water with a sound so tiny, such a fragile, narrow plop, that I wanted to record it all on its own.

When the moon rose in the sky against the coming night—I was ready to move again.

The canoe shook as I hauled in the neon line and its three bricks. Covered in threads of silt and drowned algae, they coiled in a pile on the bottom of the boat, like the catch of the day. I paddled carefully, unsure of myself, changing sides over and over to guide the boat to where it was supposed to go. At the beach beneath the deck of the Mission, I climbed out, stubbing my toe on a brick as I stepped, then grabbed it by the nose and yanked it up the sand as far as it could go, beaching it. I hurled a sandy, silty armful of bricks and rope around the nearest support pole of the deck, and then, sand between my toes, walked down the beach to unpack the cameras.

That part was harder. I’m not a filmmaker, and so I was shaking and nervous as I unscrewed them from the tripods and carried them back—over my head and away from the soaking, muddied damp of my dress—to Jes’s studio.