Eric smiled.

"I just hope we don't come across her corpse like all the others." She stared at him, her eyes intent. "You think I'm nuts, right?"

"Nope. For a while at the beginning, I used to wonder the same thing about Pavarotti. And I hate opera." He shrugged. "Trick of the mind, I guess. We miss the things we never got a chance to know. Even if we didn't like something, it was still there, so we might like it someday. Taps into our sense of hope."

"Like New Yorkers who've never been to the top of the Empire State Building. At least they knew they could go."

"Right!"

"Hey! Maybe in a couple months we can start a gossip magazine. A Who's Who of celebrity survivors."

The canoe sliced quietly through the water.

"Eric?"

"Yeah?"

"I hate boats. That's why I've been acting strange lately."

"I noticed."

"You've never complained. Not once."

"Is that an accusation?"

"No. Well, yes. You make me feel so damn guilty. Always patient and understanding. You rehearsing for sainthood?"

He laughed. "No, I figured it was just withdrawal tension, you know, from quitting smoking."

"I never smoked."

"Really?" He shrugged. "My mistake."

Tracy laughed, her first in the two weeks since Eric had revealed his plan for them to take to the sea. The news had reached out, grabbed her by the throat, and had been squeezing tighter ever since. Not only did she hate boats, she hated any kind of water that didn't come out of a tap or was safely enclosed in a pool. Jaws had only confirmed her worst fears about the sea, begun when she was a child watching Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. For weeks afterward she'd suspected a giant squid lived inside the toilet, waiting for her. She used to run next door to the Riker's house to use their bathroom. Once she didn't make it.

But this was even worse, knowing that they were floating over the drowned remnants of cities she used to romp through back in high school. Yesterday Corona del Mar. Today Huntington Beach, where she once dated that surfer her parents hated, Davy Lee. Silver Surfer, his buddies had called him. Was Davy down there now, hanging upside down from the ankle strap attached to his surfboard while fish gnawed away the cute dimples she'd loved to kiss when she was sixteen?