I told Abe I’d been wanting to wake up next to the ocean, and he said he could make this happen. Maybe we’d camp on Angel Island? This was where the Chinese people had stopped before they made it to Chinatown, with its lobster tanks and red paper dragons. One time on Stockton I’d seen a bathtub full of frogs and thought, Now, these are a people I’ll never understand.

We went out to the island on my last weekend before work. It was full of palm trees and there was a large white building that looked like an insane asylum, with poetry scribbled on the walls in Chinese characters. The letters looked like a pile of sticks had fallen down, brushstrokes crossed in all directions, making tents for other brushstrokes to crouch under. There were plastic translations pasted next to them: The waves are happy, laughing ‘Ha, ha,’ read one. Another: The barbarians have two wests / this one and the one / we came for.

There was a photograph of a Chinese bride propped against the wall. Her face was all shades of gray, hair gathered into a tight bun that pulled back the skin of her face. She was waiting for a boat, or else the man she was supposed to marry. I turned her to the wall. I wanted to give her this, after all these years: a little privacy.

Abe and I took turns with the backpack while we explored. I liked knowing that our things were jostling together inside: sunscreen and water bottles, a bag of pretzels. Somewhere down there, our extra shirts lay close and folded.

Before twilight we set up camp on the shore. The water looked shifty and terrible, flashing back the gray sky. Sunset hadn’t come yet but I knew the clouds were too thick for a good one. The water was like a lurking old man with his whole body spread as far as we could see. “Want to swim?” Abe said. “I wouldn’t watch.”

Even if it was a joke, I didn’t like him thinking of me like that, my old body wrinkling in the cold water. I imagined easing through the darkness with a bottle of Potter’s, could practically feel it coming through my body, unlocking the catch at the back of my throat. I remembered getting high with Arthur, how he’d pounded his fist against the ground like he was knocking on a door. “Are you down there?” he’d called. “Can you hear me?”

We lay back on the sandy grass. Waves were sliding over waves and hissing back again. Abe pointed at the stars. “I can see a puppy up there,” he said. “A spaniel with…” He laughed.

“With what?”

“Straight above the second tree,” he said. “Can’t you see the body of a dog, four legs and then…a penis?”

“Christ.” I laughed. “You’re right.”

I couldn’t see it at all.