“Now, put your oars in.” I did, and we took a long stroke together. “Turn your wrist now,” he ordered, and I obeyed, my blades gliding flat across the water as I leaned forward to take another stroke. “In again.” And both our oars slid in at the same time. “Out,” and we pulled out again. And this time, I felt the motion of the boat dictate when to feather my oar and when to put it back into the water. “In” and “Out,” his voice repeated. “In” and “Out,” like a chant; and we pulled and rose to the beat of his voice, pulled and rose, our bodies silent and attuned as they worked together, until the words dropped away and we pulled past his voice, my arms and back taking his rhythm inside. We stroked together, the boat shooting forward into the harbor, away from the shore, and I could imagine us at the tip of a slim shaft winging through air toward its target. Farther and farther out we rowed, the tiny O’s the oars made as they pulled out of the water spinning in widening circles behind us, and I stared after them in a trance, pulled by the sound of the oars moving in the locks, over and over and over the water.

After a bit, my wrists grew tired and clumsy again and I caught some water, which caused the oar to jerk up out of the oarlock and throw me off my seat. I caught the oar before it slid away, but then I realized I could not pick myself back up onto my seat without loosing my grip on the oars, and I was uncomfortably aware of Bart behind me and the view I presented him of my awkward helplessness. But he reached forward without a word and grabbed hold of one of my oars so I could push myself back up. I looked behind and smiled my thanks at him, taking up the oars again. He remained silent, however, and did not commence rowing. I turned again, wondering why he stayed his stroke.

Bent over his crossed oars, he was staring thoughtfully into the water.

“What are you thinking of?”

“How I could never have plotted this,” he answered.

“Plotted what?”

He looked at me then. “A man and a woman, alone beneath a summer sky, rowing farther and farther from shore—”

“That is an old plot,” I hastily interrupted.

“Nonetheless, one cannot write a good story without one,” he answered swiftly.

“Stuff!” I flashed out. “Of course one could.”

“Well, I cannot,” he said.

“What need have you of a plot, Bart Hunnowell?” He was being perverse, I thought, and blind. “What need have you of any of that, when you have—” I struggled to put to words what he had shown me. “Pure motion.”

“I beg your pardon?”