The trio was laughing and making easy small talk with Heather from the sleek new boat. It was towing what at first glance looked like a blue-and-gray lifeboat with an outboard attached. On closer inspection, it was sturdy and, of course, expensive. On the side was an emblem: “Zoom.” John was familiar with that kind of boat.
“You remember John,” she said and the two girls nodded distractedly. They both wore bikinis even though the weather was a little cool for that, their bodies young and flawless, both with long manes of golden hair. They looked so alike that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. But they were ordinary princesses, with none of the special attractiveness of Heather. Zack Miller was at the wheel, skillfully using the engines to hold the boats in place, and he barely acknowledged John.
“We’re going up the Licking,” one of the blondes said. “It’s party time! Hop in, Heather.”
Heather looked over her shoulder and smiled at John. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
He was barely aboard when Zack gunned the engines and swung around, knocking John into a seat. “Sea Ray 260,” Zack called to no one in particular.
“Isn’t this the most epic boat?” Blonde No. 2 said. They were all younger, all classmates. To John, they were rich, stuck-up, and shallow despite their star-quality SAT scores. Exactly the kind of people John hated. Even though his mother had become well-off working at the bank, John identified with the working-class roots of his stepdad. He knew, too, that most of his classmates came from old Cincinnati money and held it against him that his mother had started out as a mere teller at Fifth Third Bank.
The boat accelerated effortlessly, the empty Zoom skimming playfully along behind, as they shot under the big arched bridge that carried Interstate 471. Painted a yellow gold, it was not surprisingly nicknamed the Big Mac Bridge, even though it officially honored Daniel Carter Beard, one of the founders of the Boy Scouts. They moved east, upriver on the wide Ohio, with the condominium towers on the Cincinnati side sprouting out of the lush slope that led up to East Walnut Hills. The headwind destroyed the hair he had so carefully combed. Heather’s lush shoulder-length mane caught the breeze like an auburn sail. Spray from the river made the air wet and warm.
The girls all looked great, of course. And Zack. Zack Miller was Mister Perfect, with preternaturally bright blue eyes set into a classically good-looking face. Chiseled chin, a bit of stubble, an arrogant tilt to his head. The last time John had seen Zack, he boasted thick, dark-brown hair. But he was a champion swimmer and now his head was completely shaved. Of course, he made the look cool. It helped that his skin was tanned and flawless. Zack’s father was a high-ranking executive at Procter and Gamble.
The two blondes laughed, talked, and texted, all at the same time. John tried not to be too obvious about hanging on against the rough ride. He hated being on the river, especially at this speed. Looking at the extravagant white wake behind them only made his foreboding grow. Other boats flashed by, boats they could collide with. It happened all the time. The inner gyroscope of his mind was calibrated to disaster. The river could be as much as forty feet deep and so soupy thick you couldn’t see two feet in front of you if you tried to swim underwater, a river filled with two centuries of effluent from the Industrial Revolution, and god knew how many dead bodies. Dead bodies from the gangster glory days of Newport, Kentucky, the carp and catfish having long since picked them to skeletons, the remains from yesterday’s mishap upriver. When the river ran at flood stage in the early spring, all manner of mayhem ensued. Once he had been sitting at one of the floating restaurants when the river was running high and fast and had glanced over to see a dead pig slip by. It was not a flying pig. Every now and then, one of the restaurants was lost to flood season.
