The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

magazine called Variations that was no bigger than a TV Guide . The woman on the cover showed me her tongue and breasts.
    “Where’d you get that?” I asked, without breaking eye contact with her.
    “Behind my brother’s Car & Drivers.”
    “Is she a singer?”
    Phelps laughed. “What’s it matter?”
    “I just wondered if she’s an actress or a singer or someone we might know. I just like to know who I’m looking at is all.”
    “Yeah?” He laughed again. “Then check this babe out. Maybe you’ll recognize her.” He flipped quickly through pages. It was mostly words, but there were plenty of little pictures too. He opened to some girl in a pair of cutoffs that had fallen to her knees somehow. She displayed her breasts in her hands as if selling apples. Above the photo were the words: GIRL NEXT-DOOR.
    “Recognize her?’’ Phelps baited.
    My mind scrambled. “No.”
    “She’s the girl next-door.” He winked.
    “Next-door to who?” I started sweating.
    “To somebody . You think beautiful naked women don’t have neighbors?”
    I didn’t know what to say to that. She looked as if her breasts felt so good she couldn’t keep her own hands off them. Phelps explained that she no doubt benefited from airbrushing, some photographic trickery his brother told him about that covered up zits, mosquito bites and birthmarks. “They can even change lips, smiles, eye colors and nipple sizes,” he said authoritatively.
    “I know,” I said, tired of feeling ignorant.
    He flipped, fingers twitching, through the pages for something else. Suddenly there were tiny pictures of women showing me their privates and coaxing me to have my way with them. At least that’s what the captions shouted. Their phone numbers were right there too. I couldn’t believe it. You could apparently call them right up if you had the guts.
    I backed up, overwhelmed. I’d seen Playboy foldouts. I’d studied every photo in Sports Illustrated ’s bikini issue, but I’d never seen women’s privates laid out right next to their phone numbers before.
    Phelps laughed. “What’s up? You don’t like looking at naked women?”
    “I’m not their doctor,” I said. It was one of the stupidest things I could have said to someone like Phelps.
    He laughed himself sideways, then said, “Bet you’d like to be Angie’s doctor.”
    My slap caught him mid-blink, rocking on his heels, and knocked him back over his knobby knees onto the beach with his brother’s sicko magazine clutched above his chest so—God forbid—it wouldn’t get wet.
    It all happened too fast to even explain it to myself, and before Phelps could call me a “fuckin’ freak” for a second time I heard the cameraman and saw the lady who’d asked me all those questions about the squid the morning I found it.
    They talked loudly as they stumbled over the barnacled rocks toward us, oblivious to how far their voices carried.
    “Ah crap,” I said. “It’s television people.”
    “Good.” Phelps climbed onto his feet. “They can film me kicking the shit out of you.” But it was obvious he didn’t have it in him. Who wants to be caught on TV whupping someone half their size?
    The lady shouted my name and waved hello as if we were cousins.
    “She’s cute,” Phelps declared, from fifty yards.
    When she got close enough she extended her hand toward me. I tried to shake it, but got caught between a real shake and a fingers-only lady shake. She checked her hand for mud and found some. “You remember me, Miles?”
    The puking mannequin, I thought, and nodded. My goal was to say nothing, but what if that didn’t matter? What if she started speaking for me the way the newspaper lady had?
    She wasn’t as foxy as Phelps claimed either. Her eyes were so far apart she looked like a hammerhead shark. She said a whole bunch of crap I missed until she mentioned that during the squid morning, I’d said that perhaps the earth was trying to tell us something.
    Phelps smothered a