Harper is in one of his golden moods. Rare these days. He looks a hundred years younger than this morning when they caught the cab. He solicits information from the two couples. Which side of the wedding party. Where they are coming from. What they do. Everyone here is a friend of Fleur’s, but no one has as long and distinguished a claim as Harper and Thanh. Harper, saying he has a bad back, lies down on the glass bottom of the boat. Everyone has to rearrange their feet. No one minds. He tells a story about the time Fleur, inebriated and in a rage, who knows what brought it on, kicked in the front of a jukebox at an Allston bar. The Silhouette. All of those early nineties alt-rock boys in their dirty black jeans. Legs like toothpicks, jeans so tight they could hardly bend their knees when they sat down. Thanh used to marvel at their barely-there asses. Allston rock butt. A U2 song is playing on the jukebox when Fleur kicks it in. Harper, nimble spinner of the spectacular untruth, improvises a story. Bono once jerked off on her little sister when she fell asleep backstage after a concert. After that, Fleur gets free drinks whenever they go to The Silhouette. She even works there for a few months.

Is this the kind of story you are supposed to tell to strangers on your way to a wedding? Better, Thanh supposes, than the one about the albatross. The best part of Harper’s story is that Harper wasn’t even at The Silhouette that night. It was just Thanh and Fleur, on some night. Thanh was the one who made up the story about Bono. But there is no story that Harper does not further embellish, does not re-embroider. Thanh wonders if that story still circulates. Did anyone ever tell it back to Bono himself? Maybe Thanh should Google it. You can see the lumpy profile of what must be Bad Claw Island, maybe half a mile away. Tide’s out, the pilot says over the intercom. You can wade over from here. Water’s maybe three feet deep. You can swim! If you want. Harper jumps up. His back good as new. Absolutely, he says. Who’s in? Harper takes off his shoes, jeans, shirt. There’s that fat, hairy belly. Leaves his briefs on. He goes over the side and down the ladder. Two men and a woman named Natasha join him. All in their underwear.