The Circle

her son. Walt.” He stood and shook Mae’s hand. He was tall, thin, sunburned.
    “Nice to meet you. Am I too late?”
    “Too late for what? Dinner?” he said, thinking he’d made a joke.
    “To rent a kayak.”
    “Oh. Well, what time is it? I haven’t checked in a while.”
    She didn’t have to check. “4:26,” she said.
    He cleared his throat and smiled. “4:26, eh? Well, we usually close at five, but seeing
     as you’re so good with time, I bet I can trust you to bring it back at 5:22. You think
     that’s fair? That’s when I have to leave to pick up my daughter.”
    “Thank you,” Mae said.
    “Let’s get you set up,” he said. “We just digitized our system. You said you have
     an account?”
    Mae gave him her name, and he typed it into a new tablet, but nothing registered.
     After three tries, he realized his wifi wasn’t working. “Maybe I can check you in
     on my phone,” he said, taking it from his pocket.
    “Can we do it when I come back?” Mae asked, and he agreed, thinking it would give
     him time to bring the network back up. He set Mae up with a life preserver and kayak,
     and when she was out on the water, she checked her phone again. 4:32. She had almost
     an hour. On the bay, an hour was always plenty. An hour was a day.
    She paddled out, and this day saw no harbor seals in the marina, though she dawdled
     purposely to try to draw them out. She made her way over to the old half-sunken pier
     where they sometimes sunnedthemselves, but found none. There were no harbor seals, no sea lions, the pier was
     empty, a sole filthy pelican sitting atop a post.
    She paddled beyond the tidy yachts, beyond the mystery ships and into the open bay.
     Once there, she rested, feeling the water beneath her, smooth and undulating like
     gelatin fathoms deep. As she sat, unmoving, a pair of heads appeared twenty yards
     in front of her. They were harbor seals, and were looking at each other, as if deciding
     whether they should look at Mae, in unison. Which they presently did.
    They stared at each other, the two seals and Mae, no one blinking, until, as if realizing
     how uninteresting Mae was, just some figure unmoving, one seal leaned into a wave
     and disappeared, and the second seal quickly followed.
    Ahead, halfway into the bay, she saw something new, a manmade shape she hadn’t noticed
     before, and decided that would be her task that day, to make her way to the shape
     and investigate. She paddled closer, and saw that the shape was actually two vessels,
     an ancient fishing boat tethered to a small barge. On the barge there was an elaborate
     but jerry-rigged sort of shelter. If this existed anywhere on land, especially around
     here, it would be dismantled immediately. It looked like pictures she’d seen of Hooverville
     or some makeshift refugee settlement.
    Mae was sitting, squinting at the mess of it, when, from under a blue tarpaulin, a
     woman emerged.
    “Oh hey,” the woman said. “You came out of nowhere.” She was about sixty, with long
     white hair, full and frayed, pulled into a ponytail. She took a few steps forward
     and Mae saw that she was younger than she’d assumed, maybe early fifties, her hair
     streaked with blond.
    “Hi,” Mae said. “Sorry if I’m getting too close. The people in the marina make a point
     of telling us not to disturb you guys out here.”
    “Usually, that’s the case,” the woman said. “But seeing as we’re coming out to have
     our evening cocktail,” she said, as she settled into a plastic white chair, “your
     timing is impeccable.” She craned her head back, speaking to the blue tarpaulin. “You
     gonna hide in there?”
    “Getting the drinks, lovebird,” a male voice said, his form still invisible, his voice
     straining to be polite.
    The woman turned back to Mae. In the low light her eyes were bright, a bit wicked.
     “You seem harmless. You want to come aboard?” She tilted her head, assessing Mae.
    Mae paddled closer, and when she did, the male voice emerged from under the tarpaulin
     and took on human form. He was leathery, a bit older than his companion, and he moved
     slowly getting out of the boat and onto the barge. He was carrying what appeared to
     be two thermoses.
    “Is she joining us?” the man asked the woman, dropping himself in the matching plastic
     chair next to hers.
    “I asked her to,” the woman said.
    When Mae was close enough to make out their faces, she could see they were clean,