The Circle

tidy—she’d feared their clothing would confirm what their vessel implied—that they
     were not just waterborne vagabonds, but dangerous, too.
    For a moment, the couple watched as Mae maneuvered her way to their barge, curious
     about her, but passive, as if this was their living room and she their night’s entertainment.
    “Well,
help
her,” the woman said testily, and the man stood.
    The bow of Mae’s kayak knocked against the steel edge of thebarge and the man quickly tied a rope around it and pulled the kayak so it was parallel.
     He helped her up and onto the surface, a patchwork of wooden planks.
    “Sit here, honey,” the woman said, indicating the chair he’d vacated to help her.
    Mae sat down, and caught the man giving the woman a wild look.
    “Well, get
another
one,” the woman said to him. And he disappeared again under the blue tarp.
    “I don’t usually boss him around so much,” she said to Mae, reaching for one of the
     thermoses he’d set down. “But he doesn’t know how to entertain. You want red or white?”
    Mae had no reason to accept either in the middle of the afternoon, when she had the
     kayak to return, and then the drive home, but she was thirsty, and if the wine was
     white, it would be so good under the afternoon’s low sun, and quickly she decided
     she wanted some. “White, please,” she said.
    A small red stool appeared from the folds of the tarpaulin, followed by the man, making
     a show of looking put-out.
    “Just sit and have a drink,” the woman said to him, and into paper coffee cups, she
     poured Mae’s white and red for herself and her companion. The man sat, they all raised
     their glasses, and the wine, which Mae knew was not good, tasted extraordinary.
    The man was assessing Mae. “So you’re some kind of adventurer, I take it. Extreme
     sports and such.” He drained his cup and reached for the thermos. Mae expected his
     mate to look at him disapprovingly, as her mother would have, but the woman’s eyes
     were closed, facing the setting sun.
    Mae shook her head. “No. Not really at all.”
    “We don’t see that many kayakers out here,” he said, refilling his cup. “They tend
     to stay closer to shore.”
    “I think she’s a nice girl,” the woman said, her eyes still closed. “Look at her clothes.
     She’s almost preppy. But she’s no drone. She’s a nice girl with occasional bursts
     of curiosity.”
    Now the man took the role of apologist. “Two sips of wine and she thinks she’s some
     fortune-teller.”
    “It’s okay,” Mae said, though she didn’t know how she felt about the woman’s diagnosis.
     As she looked at the man, and then at the woman, the woman’s eyes opened.
    “There’s a pod of grey whales heading up here tomorrow,” she said, and turned her
     eyes toward the Golden Gate. She narrowed them, as if completing a mental promise
     with the ocean that, when the whales arrived, they would be well treated. Then she
     closed her eyes again. Entertaining Mae seemed to be left to the man for now.
    “So how’s the bay feel today?” he asked.
    “Good,” Mae said. “It’s so calm.”
    “Calmest it’s been this week,” he agreed, and for a while no one spoke, as if the
     three of them were honoring the water’s tranquility with a moment of silence. And
     in the silence, Mae thought about how Annie, or her parents, would react to seeing
     her out here, drinking wine in the afternoon on a barge. With strangers who lived
     on a barge. Mercer, she knew, would approve.
    “You see any harbor seals?” the man finally asked.
    Mae knew nothing about these people. They hadn’t offered their names and hadn’t asked
     Mae for hers.
    Far beyond, a foghorn sounded.
    “Just a few today, closer to shore,” Mae said.
    “What’d they look like?” the man asked, and when Mae described them, their grey glassine
     heads, the man glanced to the woman. “Stevie and Kevin.”
    The woman nodded in recognition.
    “I think the others are further out today, hunting. Stevie and Kevin don’t leave this
     part of the bay too often. They come here all the time to say hello.”
    Mae wanted to ask these people if they lived here, or, if not, what exactly they were
     doing out here, on this barge, attached to that fishing boat, neither of which seemed
     functional in any way. Were they here for good? How did they get here in the first
     place? But asking any of these questions seemed impossible when they hadn’t asked
     her