We’d been doing a mixture of drifting and cruising. I guided the motorboat at an oblique angle, moving south of our watcher on the west bank, seeming to leave him—or her—behind us. But as I did so, I also slowly edged closer to the shore. I then turned the boat around and headed back north and east, directing our prow and my gaze away from our observer, moving at our slowest powered speed.

I said, “Gail, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to make a very sharp turn as fast as I can get this boat to go.”

She regarded me with amused interest. “Any particular reason why?”

“I’m a motorboat enthusiast,” I said. “Just curious how this maneuvers compared to the Broome 218,” I said, inverting the street address of my first apartment in Manhattan.

She laughed and said, “You want to take a joyride, you found yourself the right girl, Ray. As a matter of fact”—she reached under the dash and flipped a little switch—“you’ve sort of been cruising in second the whole time.”

I flushed. “You might have told me.”

“Oh, I kind of hoped you were setting me up. I was waiting for you to tell me that the boat’s run out of voltage and we’re stranded here together until help comes in the morning.” With studied mock innocence she batted her eyes, and as far as my heart was concerned, she’d hit one right out of the park. Her mother’s admonition was getting harder to adhere to every minute.

I cautioned her to hang on to something. She grabbed the side of the boat with her right hand and gripped a handle on the dashboard with her left. I eased the boat halfway through its turn, as if we might be heading back to the south, letting the boat seem to swing on its own just a little to the west, and then I floored the accelerator, spinning the wheel to my right as I torpedoed our craft directly at the watcher on the shore.

All right, it’s not like we were going to set any speed records. But we were the fastest thing on Lake Merritt at the moment and I’d achieved my goal, which was to catch our observer off guard. I’d kept in mind that anything you see coming at you through binoculars seems to be closer and gaining on you faster than it really is, and our watcher was startled.

Gail screamed with delight, and whether it was our oncoming vessel or Gail’s cry that was more startling, our observer lowered the binoculars, froze for a moment, then turned and headed up the slope to Lakeside Drive.