He is holding her hand and leading her into the bright turquoise sea. The beach is littered with reclining sunbathers. The air sizzles with heat and buoys the wild, carefree sounds of families and friends playing volleyball on one section of the beach, cricket on another. Children in the shallow waters squeal with delight, and seagulls shriek overhead. She follows him easily. They wade into the warm water as far as the breakers, where they are cradled and the water reaches them comfortably at their waist. This far out, the shouting and laughter of people are reassuring. A ribbon of cold water lashes about his loins, but in a flash, it warms. They face each other, holding each other’s hands. They are smiling with shyness at their hope that here they are finally free. She slips a hand out of his to lower a shoulder strap of her bathing suit and expose her breast to him. The water weighs on his hand as he tries to lift it so that he might touch her. Suddenly the sky darkens; the water has turned from turquoise to lifeless gray, and when he turns, he sees that a wave in the distance, several times their height, is blocking the light of the sun and is fast approaching them. He turns again, to look for the shore this time, intending to calculate its distance so that he might know whether they ought to swim swiftly to the safety of the shore or, not having enough time to do that, to dive beneath the base of the approaching wall of wave. But he sees instead yet another wave, equally high, coming from the opposite direction, and he realizes that he is unsure which direction the shore lies. It is abundantly clear that the distended bellies of both tidal waves, moving toward each other with equal grace and purpose, will clash at the precise place where she and he stand. He looks at the sky and then at her breast, at the dark purple nipple. He longs to touch it. The two waves, like opposing armies, advance more rapidly. There is time only to tell her to hold on to him, to instruct her to do only as he does. He waits until the uppermost curves of both waves, towering and stretching higher yet, form the two sides of a roof that is closing in above them. He shuts his eyes, tightens his grip on her hand, and draws her under the water to lie on the bottommost layer of the sea. With one hand, he grasps at the coarse, shifting sand, and miraculously he is braced. But the waves seem only to hover, to dance above them, refusing to slam together just yet, and he is running out of breath. She, too, so she tries to pull her hand out of his, intending to swim back to the surface. He suspects, however, that the instant she breaks the surface will be the very one when the waves collide, and they, split apart, will be pulverized.
He holds her tightly there, and interminable minutes later, the ocean begins to heave, to sway back and forth and sideways. He opens his eyes, but in the swirl of sand and salt, he is unable to see her, so he grips her hand, perhaps too tightly, but he will not risk losing hold of her. He opens his mouth to whisper to her, his words pushing through and against the water, telling her to cling to the ground, to lay her stomach flat against it, to press her face to the sand. When he has finished speaking to her, his mouth is full of the taste of salt and the grit of sand, and his eyes sting. He knows beyond any doubt that if she does precisely as he tells her, they will survive. Then there is silence. A cold hard silence, and it all begins. There is a tremendous sway of water, followed by insistent thrusting and pushing. The surges and upheavals threaten to dislodge and rip them off the floor. Long strands of uprooted seaweed wash by them, brush against them, and wrap fronds menacingly about their legs and stomachs, but they concentrate on holding on to the ground, and so manage to remain firmly planted there.
Several minutes pass, and finally the weeds, salt, and sand have settled and the water has stilled about them. Hesitantly they raise themselves and find that the sea is calm again, that the sun shines as brazenly as before, and the sounds of the people continue, as if uninterrupted, and they, he and she, have broken the water’s surface.