I ate my lunch of chicken teriyaki, which was to sustain me throughout the week—those cooks had it down cold—and headed for the little swimming beach. Anders was sitting on the deck. He wasn’t dressed for swimming, but he had his pants legs rolled up and his big pale feet were submerged in the green water. Sacha and Viridian paddled and floated together nearby. Sacha’s curly hair was wet and streaming; her suit, what I could see of it, was cornflower blue. Viridian had a plain black swimsuit and had tied a scarf over her hair.

“Are you coming in?” she called when she saw me.

“I didn’t bring a suit.” This was to be my answer all week, and it saved me from a lot of embarrassing wet encounters. I went to sit on the deck next to Anders. “How’s the water?”

“Cold,” Sacha said. “It feels good. As long as you don’t overdo it.”

Viridian said, “They’re here to make sure I don’t float away like Ophelia.” She was treading water. I couldn’t tell how deep the river was. “Why don’t you push Anders in, he needs to loosen up.”

Anders turned his head to look at me. It was a somber look.

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said.

“They are not such strong swimmers. Someone should watch over them.” You never heard him say that much. He had a deep voice that seemed to come from somewhere slightly off center, as if he was a ventriloquist’s dummy. It was unnerving, like most things about him.

“He’s such a worrywart,” Sacha declared, paddling a little farther out into the water. Anders turned his head sharply to follow her. I wondered if what I’d thought was obsessive love was really obsessive fear, keeping watch against mortality.

Laughter reached us from somewhere farther down the riverbank. Ken Spinner and the two workshop girls were wading in the water, hand in hand, with Ken in the middle. “Count of three!” Ken hollered, and they plunged forward into the river, whooping and screaming.

Viridian said, “Are they naked? I can’t tell.”

Sacha said, “I must confess, I chose not to look too closely. Talk about swimming at your own risk.”

Then she asked me if I was going to be doing the setup for tonight’s event. It would be Sacha’s turn to read in the auditorium. She was paired with Jane, the young feminist novelist who wrote what were called dystopian futuristic books about the patriarchy run amuck, although they sounded a lot like my high school.

Sacha and I worked out the arrangements for the evening, what they needed in terms of lights and microphones and water bottles. Viridian said she thought she’d had enough of a swim and stroked her way toward shore. Sacha looked over at me and I stood.