A thud, and the second wheel hits the tarmac. The staccato of a hundred seatbelt buckles snapping open, and the single-use friend you almost died sitting next to says:

I hope you make your connection.

Yeah, me too.

And this is how long your moment lasted. And life goes on.

And somehow, by accident, Tyler and I met.

It was time for a vacation.

You wake up at LAX.

Again.

How I met Tyler was I went to a nude beach. This was the very end of summer, and I was asleep. Tyler was naked and sweating, gritty with sand, his hair wet and stringy, hanging in his face.

Tyler had been around a long time before we met.

Tyler was pulling driftwood logs out of the surf and dragging them up the beach. In the wet sand, he'd already planted a half circle of logs so they stood a few inches apart and as tall as his eyes. There were four logs, and when I woke up, I watched Tyler pull a fifth log up the beach. Tyler dug a hole under one end of the log, then lifted the other end until the log slid into the hole and stood there at a slight angle.

You wake up at the beach.

We were the only people on the beach.

With a stick, Tyler drew a straight line in the sand several feet away. Tyler went back to straighten the log by stamping sand around its base.

I was the only person watching this.

Tyler called over, "Do you know what time it is?"

I always wear a watch.

"Do you know what time it is?"

I asked, where?

"Right here," Tyler said. "Right now."

It was 4:06 P.m.

After a while, Tyler sat cross-legged in the shadow of the standing logs. Tyler sat for a few minutes, got up and took a swim, pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and started to leave. I had to ask.