“You okay?” Heather patted his arm.
“The river makes me superstitious.”
“Oh…”
John’s biological father had a sailboat in Boston, and took him out on it when he visited in the summers. A few years ago, the man had decided he wanted to be part of John’s life again. The sailboat and the open sea really frightened John. And the company of his stepbrother and stepsister, such as it was, and his father’s chirpy young girlfriend of the moment-they all looked alike, attractive, and slender-made him feel even more alienated from the world. His father looked like the kind of man Zack would become at fifty, right down to the flawless blue eyes. He despised such men.
By this time, Zack had come about and brought them back downtown, then they turned south into the mouth of the Licking River. As the boat slowed, the dread in John’s middle eased.
“Brought along the Zodiac in case we picked up more to party,” Zack said to Heather, indicating the small craft he was towing. John’s real father owned the exact same boat and had taught him how to pilot it in Boston Harbor. The man had done it, John knew, to help him overcome his fear of the water. Part of John wondered if he had also done it out of a streak of cruelty. But John had mastered the Zodiac out of spite, even if it didn’t fully cure his sure knowledge of the sorcery of the river. He even grew to like the little craft. It was similar to ones used by Navy SEALS.
Zack said, “Should we cruise for company or go up the Licking. We don’t have an even number of guys and girls…”
“Let’s go,” Heather said. “Maybe we’ll find more people we know.”
“Or make new friends. Lot of licking goes on in the Licking River,” Zack said over his shoulder, and the blondes laughed as if it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Indeed, the tributary had a reputation for summer socializing: men in fast boats picking up young women at the Serpentine Wall and bringing them up here for sex. John looked at Heather and could only dream. He didn’t own a fast boat or have the inclination to be such a man or even know how to become one. It came so easily to guys like Zack Miller. It was in their DNA. Could it even be learned? Heather detached herself from the other two girls and sat next to him as they moved slower up the narrowing river.
“Better?”
“I’m fine.” He was feeling anything but.
“We’ll have fun. I made plenty of food to go around. It’s good to make new friends.”
The levees that protected Covington and Newport rose up. The boat crossed under bridges, passing several boats and fishermen. The northern Kentucky towns lay on either side, downtown Cincinnati to the north, but down on the river itself, dense trees growing right down to the bank blotted out any other views. It was like being in the country. A canoe and two kayaks passed, going the other way. He noticed another boat, a trim cabin cruiser, tied up under a railroad bridge. The portholes to the cabin were opaque and the boat barely registered the passing of Zack’s Sea Ray.
They cruised deeper into Kentucky as the sun went down and the other boaters found their places closer to the city. They passed under the bridge that carried the Cincinnati beltway before Zack cut the engines and tied up at an old, abandoned dock beneath a thick canopy of branches.
“So John Borders.” Zack spoke to him for the first time. And that was all he said, as if rendering a judgment.
Zack turned to Heather and soon they all were talking schools. They could switch from the latest slang to jokes to perfect adult conversation. Zack was starting at Harvard in the fall, pre-med, but after a month in Paris on his own. One of the blondes was doing an internship in John Boehner’s office this summer. She was going for an MBA after finishing her undergrad at Brown. Everyone but John was impressed.
Zack hooked up an iPod to some speakers and they belted out a play list from the 1980s. It was so Cincinnati, frozen in time. Then he opened up a cabinet and pulled out liquor bottles and glasses.
“Red Hook cocktails, anyone?”
