As she rides by

launched myself down onto board. Uggghhh! Cold! Then, using the racket, off I paddled toward some distant, unknown horizon...
    Not so distant, nor so unknown, I must confess at this time to all you surfers and surf bunnies out there. What I didn’t bother telling those hodads Phil and Ted was, the main reason the Lew Lewellens had picked the site they did was because their best friends had a place two coves over that they loved and used all the time. And, having been through the same house-building process, they knew all the local bylaws and builders and regulations and what-have-you. Two coves... how far away could that be? I paddled, sneaking a look over my shoulder from time to time. Paddling was not easy; all that goddamned board wanted to do was go around in circles so I had to change hands with the paddle every couple of strokes. Also, it is not particularly easy to paddle at all when one’s shoulders and back are all tensed up with the nervous anticipation of having a large hole blown through one’s anatomy at any second. Which, however, did not happen; after some five minutes of energetic toil I made it around the headland out of sight of the Lewellens’ dock, and began to relax somewhat. One cove down, one to go, Daniel. Not such a bad day after all for a paddle. Thrust. Stroke. Recover. Thrust again. Scan the horizon for whitecaps, squalls, huge rollers carrying all before them, blue whales, cutlass-wielding pirates—ha ha! Not a one in sight. Nothing at all in sight, actually, but a sailboat or two and, way off, on the horizon, a trail of smoke left by some passing freighter. Where bound, shipmates? Panama , the Windwards, the Leewards, Sumatra , Java? Ha ha!
    Around then I noticed the water was getting a little choppier. My legs were freezing; so was my butt from the water that kept splashing over the board, and both my arms and legs were starting to tire—the arms from paddling, the legs from holding on. What cared I—only one more cove to go and the spit of land between me and the friendly tinkle of ice in a tall glass chez the Lewellens’ best friends was only fifty yards or so away. I switched hands again and paddled. I comforted myself with comforting thoughts, such as Evonne Louise Shirley after three drinks, and such as Phil and Ted opening up all Phineas’s fancy matched luggage desperately seeking footwear and finding them all empty, because why bother packing real clothes for a make-believe cruise?
    Around then, as I headed seaward slightly to maneuver my way past the last remaining obstacle between me and a long, hot bath, I noticed the current stiffening significantly, due to what caprice of tidal motion I did not know. Stiffening against me, too. I began paddling like a madman against it, and had just about turned the corner when something nibbled one of my toes, I swear it did. I screamed, and of course dropped the *!!%?!! tennis racket, which sank like a bowling ball before I could even make a grab for it. Next thing I knew the current had taken me a good two hundred yards straight out to sea, and it wasn’t done yet. From where I was I could see the Lewellens’ friends’ house clearly, if distantly. I could even see a girl in a bikini on the front veranda. I waved frantically to her. She gave me one languid wave in return, then disappeared into the house, no doubt to make a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on diet bread or do something equally vital. She did not reappear.
    Five minutes later I drowned for the first time. The bag of goodies that was tied on in front of me began slipping. I sat up too quickly and the board flipped over and headfirst into the chilly drink I went, mouth wide open, of course. When I powered my way back up, eyes tightly closed, of course, I gave my head a sharp whack on the downside of the surfboard, but that I didn’t mind so much because at least I knew where it was. When I was done coughing up seawater, I righted the board and inched my way onto it again. I stretched out cautiously, readjusted the bag, looked around for a handy island, saw none, and began paddling with my hands again as best I could.
    Ten minutes later I dropped down to visit Davey Jones’s locker for the second time. I was more or less becalmed in a trough between two swells and was trying to get up onto one knee to see if I could see where the hell I was by then in relation to the shore when a Japanese tidal wave or whatever the hell it was blindsided me and way up I