Free The Fisher Boy by Stephen Anable

hour or so. The water was clear close to the shore, then aquamarine farther out, with a gem-like coldness that seemed to stop your heart when you dove in. It gave you a blade-like awareness of your body the first few minutes, then, once you swam in the slow, clear swells, it was marvelous, especially naked, with everything floating and free.
    But most of the men stayed on shore, marking crossword puzzles, getting peeved at the grit in their sandwiches, and cruising Edward. There was little interaction between the groups on the beach; they sat on their towels, in close proximity but with vague distrust, like Italian city-states during the Middle Ages. Several times, as soon as I emerged from the water, Edward went strolling languidly toward it, always naked, always smiling as he passed me. To follow him back into the Atlantic would be an open act of shameless desperation, so I didn’t dare.
    As the day wound down and the sun completed its arc across the sky, people began leaving the beach—Barton Daggett and his friends, the black man Edward had refused. But not Ian. Couples shook sand from their blankets and folded them as crisply as soldiers folding the flag at a military funeral. Guys wiggled back into sneakers, pressed fingers into reddening flesh to confirm they’d “picked up a little color.” They stuffed favorite beach stones into pockets to join guest house keys on long plastic lozenges, and began the trek back across the breakwater to town, or to the Herring Cove parking lot, full of all sorts of cars from all sorts of states with the same Celebrate Diversity stickers on their bumpers.
    By late afternoon, only three people remained in sight: myself, Edward, and an Asian boy. The Asian appeared to be in his late teens, with spiky hair and studs in his ears that looked like droplets of mercury. He wore a black Lycra thong, and his dusky skin suggested he could be Cambodian.
    Somehow his presence here felt validating, as though the bumper stickers about diversity were at last becoming true, and that war, emigration, and his parents’ prayers to a thousand joss sticks couldn’t prevent him coming here and being himself, on this beach at the edge of America. Finally, he too made gestures to leave, swigging the last of his Evian water, standing, brushing the sand from his tawny thighs, all the while glancing invitingly in Edward’s direction but getting no reaction whatsoever. Edward had emerged from his tent, but was absorbed with reading the bulky hardback book he’d snatched from the sofa at Arthur’s.
    Then the Asian boy peeled off his thong, wrung the seawater from it, and walked across the sand, the DMZ separating him from Edward. I could hear snatches of their conversation, like the words, ragged with static, of broadcasts from Winnipeg and Calgary fading in and out on my late-night car radio.
    Whatever the Asian’s line, it failed. He stepped indignantly into his briefs and jeans, then came marching in my direction. He was breaking through the erotic wall of silence that separates naked men at this beach, so I felt a little self-conscious.
    “What’s with him, anyway?” The Asian had a chili-thick Texas drawl. “Talk about mixed messages, the way he parades around! You should’ve seen him carrying on while you were in the water!” Then he was off, late for tea dance.
    I was shaking out my deck shoes when Edward approached, saying, “You’ve been awfully quiet this afternoon.”
    Don’t psychiatrists call that “projection”? “It comes with the territory,” I said.
    He was holding the book he’d gotten from Arthur’s sofa. “Arthur says you’re interested in this guy.” The book’s title was spelled out in gilt Gothic lettering:
A Prince Among Painters: The Art of Thomas Royall
. It was mostly plates, and contained little information. The one Royall biography was something rare published in the Fifties.
    “He painted
The Fisher Boy
,” Edward said. “It’s in the museum back in