The current picked up. The banks of the river were made of tile. The palisades were tiled as well, and studded with more bored lifeguards, standing like unemployed goats. He looked up and longed for the pelicans of the morning, their competence and precision. His biceps ached from holding on. He couldn’t see Cody’s face. At the next turn, a young park employee stood up to his waist in the crashing water. His job was to catch inner tubes as they threatened to bash into a wall, to send them in the right direction. How could so badly designed a thing exist at a place meant for children? Bruno paddled his feet. He wanted to avoid the guy, but instead they knocked right into him. “Sorry!” he shouted, and then they were shoved away, in the opposite direction, in front of the wave machine.

Now they were surrounded by loose boys and empty bobbing inner tubes. “Hold tight!” he commanded Cody, as he heard a wave behind them. A woman in a neon pink swimming dress clung to a single inner tube. Clawed at it. They hadn’t seen this stretch of river from the bridge. Every few seconds some hidden mechanism slapped out a wave, which then lifted the flotsam—people, tubes, goggles, swim shoes—and dropped the flotsam, and smacked the flotsam on the head. Even artificial rivers are careless, Cody.

Survivors of the Whaleship Essex at the Waterpark. The Lusitania at the Waterpark. The Poseidon Adventure at the Waterpark.

He’d thought he hadn’t wanted children because Eleanor hadn’t wanted them. He hadn’t wanted them for that reason. Eleanor was already forty when they’d married and she’d convinced herself she was too old. Perhaps he was too old, too, but here was his heartbreaker, screaming as they bounced along.

“Are you all right?”

The boy nodded the back of his head. You could hear the waves from the wave machine behind you before they lifted you up. That was good. They were just one turn from the beach. Now Bruno was holding Cody’s right wrist to the starboard handle of the inner tube. Every wave threatened to scupper them. What would happen then? Would it jolt a lifeguard into action? Would the boy be picked up by the passengers of another tube? Sucked into the filtration system? Bruno thought of Ernest drinking at the swim-up bar, Ernest who would never forgive himself, though he would forgive Bruno, and that would be the worst thing that could ever happen to either one of them. No, not the worst thing.

A bullying wave pushed the edge of their raft, tipped them, rushed overhead, and swept Cody away.