The Book of Joe

that. It’s a function of his genius.”
    “Whatever, man,” Wayne said, climbing drunkenly to his feet. “I’m still boiling.” He pulled off his T-shirt, upon which was emblazoned the phrase BIG IN JAPAN in large black letters, and threw it to the floor. “I’m going for a swim.”
    “We can go back to my pool,” Sammy said.
    “Why bother?” Wayne kicked off his high-tops and waded into the pond and then, with no hesitation, plunged headfirst into the dark, shimmering water and swam out with long, powerful strokes toward the geyser.
    “Drunken night-swimming,” I said. “Now there’s a brilliant combination.”
    “And god only knows what the hell’s in that water,” Sammy said disapprovingly. “Microorganisms, parasites.”
    “Radioactive nuclear waste.”
    “The Loch Ness monster.”
    “The Porter family’s personal sewage.”
    “Come on, you guys,” Wayne called to us from the pond.
    “It’s beautiful in here.”
    “Isn’t this how the Jaws movies always start?” Sammy said.
    “Sharks don’t live in ponds,” I pointed out.
    “That’s exactly what the chick in the bikini says before she gets eaten.”
    Out in the water, Wayne had reached the geyser and was now clinging to some unseen piece of its apparatus, his form lightly obscured by the thick residual mist of the water’s spray. I closed my eyes for a second, feeling bloated and dizzy from the cheap domestic beer we’d been guzzling. When I opened them, Wayne was gone. “Where’d he go?” I said.
    “I don’t know,” Sammy said, craning his neck to see.
    We shouted his name as we got to our feet, scanning the dark water for where his head would surely break the surface at any second. “Where the fuck is he?” I said, alarm like an icy balloon inflating in my belly. I looked over to Sammy, who was already pulling off his sneakers, and quickly did the same. We charged madly into the cold water, calling out for him between frantic strokes as we swam desperately out toward the geyser, which was much louder up close than I would have thought. I reached the center first and quickly performed an awkward surface dive, my outstretched fingers scraping bottom and coming away caked in grimy pond scum. I resurfaced, panting, and was about to try again when there was a loud whoop and Wayne suddenly came flying through the glowing geyser’s spray above us, his knees pulled up to his chest, flecks of luminous water trailing behind him like a comet’s tail. He flew through the air in slow motion, framed in the backlit water like some mythical god rising from the depths, before landing in a perfect cannonball between Sammy and me. He surfaced a moment later, pulling his wet hair out of his face and laughing at us.
    “Asshole!” Sammy shouted, splashing at him with disgust.
    “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” I said, choking on a sour mixture of relief and pond scum.
    “It was the only way to get you guys in the water,” Wayne said, still grinning.
    A furious splashing fight ensued as we tried unsuccessfully to dunk him, his long, sinewy arms easily fighting us off.
    Afterward, he showed us the small maintenance platform on the side of the geyser that had facilitated his ambush, and we took turns jumping and diving through the geyser spray into the pond.
    I was the first to eventually climb out of the pond, my stomach churning spasmodically from the injudicious combination of beer and pond water I’d imbibed. I leaned against a large sycamore for a few minutes, taking shallow breaths until my innards succumbed and I vomited violently, the hot acid of my puke burning my throat, filling my eyes with tears.
    I pulled on my T-shirt and lay down on the grass, feeling unsteady and light-headed. When I opened my eyes a few minutes later, Sammy and Wayne were still in the pond, their voices echoing eerily across the water, muted by the soft rumbling of the geyser. I propped myself up on my elbows and could just make out their shadowy forms in the darkness, bobbing up and down in the thick mist that floated around them. Their outlines blurred as my drunken, weary eyelids began to close, and their profiles waxed and waned like a throbbing pulse as the world around me began to spin at a dizzying speed. Just before I passed out, their fuzzy silhouettes appeared to touch in a tentative embrace, but I’d barely noted the illusion when unconsciousness dispensed with the foreplay and hungrily consummated our union.

Eight
    Time slows to