Normally I can will myself into the visions I want but this time I cannot. After a few minutes of failed imaginings I conclude that I must ride this one out. Carefully, I tidy up the floor, put the puppy under my arm like a piece of carry-on luggage, and head up on deck.75 The air as I push up the companion-way is still hot but it isn’t resistant. It lets me up. It practically invites me up. It tastes as if it’s been run through a filter of salt and pure ozone. I let down the puppy and suck in a few deep mouthfuls, washing my lungs in it. My eyes are so accustomed to looking finely—at tiny details in confined spaces and minimal light—that it takes them a moment to long-focus on the scene around me. It takes an additional moment for them to believe it.

To starboard: nothing but open water.

To port: nothing but open water.

Astern: nothing but open water.

Dead ahead: Charlie Izzo.

She is lying on her back, propped by several pillows, very aware of her openness and challenge—odalisquey. She is wearing a white bikini, ovoid sunglasses, and a knowing, nascent smile, a gibbous slash of teeth and lips. At her hairline is a pink, centipede-like scar that is beginning to heal. Scattered on the deck, like pieces of red-yellow shrapnel, are the shredded skins of pomegranates. Lying next to her towel like a beach book waiting to be read is the Nakamura sword.

“The boat’s more fun when it’s in the water, don’t you think?”

As if I didn’t know I was aboard a boat until she said it, I again cast about me. The sky overhead is an otherworldly blue, an impossible gentian. The waves are small white-tips, crisp jabs of water, and as the boat troughs through them it sends jolts of sea spray over my face. Again I breathe in salt air that has never been breathed in by anyone but me. It tastes fresh, like a second chance. It does not, however, do much to resolve the issue of whether this is real.

What else can you do with a fantasy? I play along.

“Did you steal it?”

“The boat?” she says as if scandalized at the suggestion. “No. I paid Kong top dollar.” Then, sheepishly, she holds up the Nakamura sword. “This I stole. But don’t worry. I’m sending it back to Nakamura just as soon as I find a specialist who can remove the microchip without damaging the hair on the hilt.”

“And then?”

“Then I’m going after the Saqueador,” she says. Then, coyly drawing a circle on the deck with one fingernail, she says, “I thought you might want to come.”

“Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, why would I try to help you? I can’t even fire a gun. I’m useless.”