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Show 101 relax. They sail up one bay and down another. Hunt feels very close. To them. To Jewel and Hall. To their motion. His eyes are shut in his Benton Harbor bed. Leah's breathing is an audible element. Hall and Jewel abandon talking. Jewel stretches, like a sleek animal, in the sun. She takes her blouse off. And bra. Hall's chest feels like a metal bar is placed against it. Hunt feels compressed. Jewel's breasts have all the shape and power of a boxer's arm. "I wish we'd thought to bring wine instead of beer," she says at one point, and then, without commenting, she points to an airplane first, then to a cliff active with swallows. "Nice," Hall manages. The sun, on his shoulders, feels like fire. "Why did we break apart?" Jewel asks her question easily. Hall lets the rigging go, sail luff. "Why don't we swim?" Hall suggests. Jewel laughs because Hall's ducked her leading question. But Hall's shoes and socks are off. His shirt. His pants. Jewel watches "I remember your body," she says, and Hall feels stupid. He pulls off his jockey shorts and dives from the boat, glad for the shocks of both temperature and water. Hall stays under, in a kind of test-run of drowning, then surfaces, breaking into a swim. The swimming, Hall feels, pulls all the crazy dust of him together. By the time he stops to check where anything might be, the boat is empty and Jewel is somewhere with him in the water. Hall swims back. "How deep?" he hears Jewel asking. He stops, sees her treading water. "Feel good?" he asks. "How deep?" she repeats. "Very," Hall says. "It was all canyon." "The kids would go crazy here!" Jewel says. |