I’m going out for a minute. Ellen at the table, eating macaroni salad. Where? To the beach. Jerry nodding. Good call. The weather is freaking unbelievable. I read they’re finding dolphin corpses on the beach, Xie says. Ellen scrapes up more macaroni. Jerry scoffs. That’s some sonar thing. Xie shaking his head. There’s no Navy testing in this area. Jerry’s brows go up. Hm? Navy testing, Xie repeats. They’re the ones that use the sonar that affects marine mammals. Jerry’s indulgent smile. I’m pretty sure it was something to do with sound that caused those dolphins to get mixed up. Xie shrugging, hand on the door. Pretty sure it’s more likely that the half-million tons of oil spilled into the ocean four years ago have something to do with it but. Whatever. Slipping out. Careful not to let the door make a sound as it closes. Such sun. Treeless. And the pavement. Blinding. Ellen lives just three blocks from the beach; he and Erik lived several miles inland, on the east side, but he came here every weekend. All the garbage in the water, bodies in the water. Fishermen gathered on the cliffs, tossing white sea bass and mackerel into buckets. On the pier once he kicked one of those buckets over, the fish pouring, green and silver, back into the sea. The fisherman, barely older than Xie, yelling, What the fuck! as he chased him, hands almost on his back but Xie jumped in front of the cars passing through the toll arm, the fisherman shouting for someone to grab him but no one did. He avoided the pier after that, even though a part of him thought he should do it again, do it every day, get arrested, get hit, who cares; a year after the spill the fishermen back out there, willing to eat or sell whatever they could find in that dead water. Xie steps off the boardwalk into the sand. Usual jam of people, bright blue water. He climbs over the long flat piles of shale. Not a single starfish or anemone or crab in the tide pools; instead thin lines of orange on the rocks, and on the sand three dense fists of tar. He makes a shallow bowl with the hem of his hoodie and scoops them up. Sound of volleyballs thrashing against nets. Laughter. Watching the tar balls tremble as he walks home. The oil harmless if left in the ground but poison up here, if you put something where it doesn’t belong it dies or it kills or both. Not its fault. He doesn’t look again at the water, dazzling behind him. At the apartment he dumps the tar directly on the kitchen counter. What’s that? Jerry says, chopping garlic. It’s tar from your perfectly recovered beach. It’s what? It’s oil, Xie says. Washing his hands with half of a lemon. His mother looking over her shoulder from the stove. Xie, what’s wrong with you, get that off the counter. We’re eating in an hour.