“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Yes … I’m listening to you.”

“What are you smiling about?”

“I’m just having a nice time … that’s all.”

“So … did you ever meet Bob Marley?”

He had. Several times. She wanted to know what he was like. Quiet, Fire said. Introspective. Listened more than he talked, and pretended to know less than he did. He didn’t like to lose, so he was always good at what he did. Did he have indulgences? None besides women and a beemer … not even guitars … and the beemer came late. For most of his career he drove a Volkswagen camper or a Bug. Was he a role model? Yeah … sure … he was roots but cosmopolitan, tough but humble, thrifty but generous, workaholic but laid back. And he didn’t take the easy route and go disco; plus he understood love in all its forms—spiritual, fraternal, and romantic. “Forever Loving Jah,” “One Love,” and “Is This Love?” Oh, by the way, did I-nelik play at the Garden? Yeah, man, he was the guy in the army fatigues on the other side of the drummer from the bass player. The one with the beard all up in his glasses? Same one. Oh, he was the coolest thing that night.

“Could I ask you a favor, Fire?”

“Sure.”

“My reggae collection is kinda weak … can you suggest a dozen or so CDs to build from?”

“Yeah, man … The Wailers, Catch a Fire; Bunny Wailer, Black Heart Man; Lee Perry, Super Ape; Bob Marley and The Wailers, Babylon by Bus; Burning Spear, Marcus Garvey; Steel Pulse, True Democracy; Black Uhuru, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner; Third World, 96° in the Shade; Toots and the Maytals, Funky Kingston; Jimmy Cliff, Wonderful World, Beautiful People; and the Heptones, To the Top. And can you show me your breasts?”

He didn’t realize he’d voiced this until she exclaimed in surprise, “Here?”

He looked around—at the people on the barge and the traffic on the street—then looked back at her, the world around him intensified: the lapping water, the driving music, his breathing, Manhattan’s glinting lights.

She was biting her lip.

“Come here.” His voice was coolly insistent, like a razor.

She’d never been addressed this way before. Or received a request of this nature, much less in a public place.

She slid toward him. She imagined herself leaving behind a silver trail.

His face seductively serene, he reached out and stroked her nose with the magic finger, traced the outline of her lips, dipped it in her mouth like a fountain pen in ink, and made mysterious signs on his face with her saliva. He replaced it in her mouth. She sucked it in with a moan, flaring her lips, collapsing her cheeks around it, playing the role of fellatrix with the emotional truth of a Method actor.

“Come closer,” he said. “I want to be near you always.”

He opened his legs and she sat between them and placed her thighs outside his and crossed her ankles behind the mooring post. She placed her finger in his mouth and began to feel his tongue transform her tall man into a nub of erectile tissue, wondering, as she felt a shudder in her belly, if her arms would tremble more than her legs if he made her come this way.