Again, not knowing what strange force was moving him, Joe aggressively grabbed the front of Fergal’s Pines Ferry T-shirt to pullhim in for a kiss, but instead tore a gaping hole that showed the entirety of the ferryman’s chest.

Fergal, clearly unaware of Joe’s intentions, twisted his eyebrows in fury. “This is my new work shirt!” He yanked back the remnants of his torn shirt, causing Joe to stumble off the low boardwalk and fall onto his butt in the soft sand. “Why the hell are you trying to attack me?”

Looking up at Fergal with the ripped shirt dangling around his neck, his bare chest, and the tree branches behind him forming a halo around head, Joe thought how much the man really did resemble the little figure on the merman clock. “I wasn’t!” he blurted, his head still in a hungover muddle. “That time, anyway. I was just trying to …” he began, trying to stifle his tears. “I don’t know.”

Fergal shook his head and again began to walk away. Joe dropped his head to his knees, and a huge sob heaved from his lungs. Seconds later, he heard the crunching of Top-Siders in the sand. He looked up. There, staring down at him, was Fergal’s sweaty, stubble-covered face inlaid with those glowing blue-blue eyes, looking simultaneously angry and sad.

“What?” Joe snuffled, feeling tears roll down his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I really wanted—”

Fergal dropped to his knees and hugged him, tucking Joe’s head against the warmth of his chest. For the first time since he could remember, Joe felt completely safe and protected. But still there was something more he wanted, but he was too frightened to ask for fear Fergal would stop holding him. Then, as if the ferryman was reading Joe’s mind, he took him by the shoulders and gently kissed him on his quivering lips. All the unsatisfied sexual hunger from the previous night rushed back through Joe’s body, and with a simple parting of his lips, the two men began hungrily going at it. The taste of Fergal’s mouth was sweet and unusually salty, causing Joe to plunge his tongue deeper like some sodium-deprived forest creature. But it wasn’t enough. He yanked Fergal’s torn shirt over his head and ran his hands across his tight abdomen, then up through the small patch of chest hair that formed a diamond just below his clavicle. He lifted Fergal’s arm and pressed his nose to the tuft ofblack hair in his armpit, then began lapping at the musty saltiness there. He wanted more.

“Kiss me again,” Joe demanded.

Fergal complied. Joe drank him in. Still not enough. It could never be enough. He desperately needed Fergal’s body even closer—he wanted him inside him. Again, like he knew exactly what Joe wanted, Fergal flipped him onto his stomach, and began to grind his crotch into the back of Joe’s jeans. He wrapped his forearm around Joe’s neck and used his free hand to yank Joe’s pants and underwear down, exposing his ass. Fergal dug into his pocket for a condom.

“Never mind that!” Joe arched his butt. “Fuck me now!Please, Elliot.”

Everything stopped. “Elliot?” Fergal repeated with disgust, and then lifted himself off Joe’s body. The chilly morning air blew across Joe’s naked back. He was confused at first, but then he realized what he had said.

“I’m really sorry,” he stammered. “It’s not like I didn’t know who you are. It’s just that Elliot was … he was …” No, no, he couldn’t tell Fergal, a stranger. He couldn’t. “Look, I just forgot your name for a second. It’s not a big deal. Who can remember everyone’s name on Fire Island, right?” He laughed nervously. “Hey, we can still do this …”

Fergal silently lifted Joe from the sand, pulling up his underwear and jeans as if he were someone else’s disobedient child. All the previous passion in his eyes had vanished behind a wall of blue ice. Joe wished Fergal would just say something, but instead the ferryman turned and started walking back toward the harbor.

“Come on!” Joe called out. “It was just a dumb mistake! Come on! Don’t be that way!”

Fergal’s body, like a study in perspective, grew smaller and smaller as it moved down Fire Island Boulevard toward some distant vanishing point.

Joe’s entire viscera felt as if it had been scooped out with a shovel. Sand and wind blew through the gaping hole.You are alone. You will always be alone. You deserve to be alone. Forever.

28.Mourning Doves

“The overlords, trapped in their armor of fixed identity, try to decimate the holy lovers with fists and laws, but Disco Witches always fight back—not only for the holy lovers, but for the overlords themselves. When the holy lovers are finally free, all will be free.”

—Disco Witch Manifesto #20

The mourning doves that nested in the trees and eaves of 44 and¼Picketty Ruff were especially prolific and quite musical. Their songs often reminded Howie of Broadway show tunes, inspiring him, as they did that morning, to begin spontaneously humming while watering the riots of salmon-colored impatiens on the back deck.

“Now what’s that song again?” he asked of the chirping doves. “Oh, right, that’s it. Thank you, ladies.”

It was that most optimistic Broadway gem “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” from the Jerry Herman musicalHello, Dolly!The song was perfect for starting his day off, which, like for most island workers, was Monday and not Sunday. “Put on your Monday clothes lalalalalala …” he sang. When the doves switched to one of Herman’s most heart-wrenching ballads from his lesser known musicalMack and Mabel, Howie shouted through the kitchen window. “Lenny! Get out here! You gotta hear the doves! They’re doing four-part harmony on ‘Time Heals Everything’!”

“It’s that new bird feed from Mulligan’s!” Lenny hollered from the kitchen, where he was preparing his double-meat, three-cheese lasagna. “Twenty percent more sunflower seeds!”

“Well, it’s working!” Howie shouted. “I don’t understand it! I’m feeling such a sense of bliss this morning! The psychic cilia inside my intestines are wiggling with joy for a change!”

“Holy shit!” Lenny called out. “That’s the most positive thing you’ve said in years!”

“I didn’t say I’m not still worried. We still have that blood moon coming Morning Party weekend. And let’s not forget the Great Darkness is still out there. Remember the omens? We’ll still have to be on alert for other confused young people who might be in danger. At least we’re certain Joe is safe.”

“Like I said all along!” Lenny shouted through the kitchen window, with an emphasized “Ha!”

“When you’re right, you’re right.” A slight twinge pierced Howie’s gastrointestinal bliss. “I trust Saint D’Norman’s twirling visions,” he shouted back. “Like the rubric says, if a holy lover misses just one of the five sacred criteria, he’s out of the running.” He knew he didn’t need to say it, but something compelled him. “Nope. We don’t need to even worry. Joe is missing … what was it? Three out of the five, including the all-important flying-heart-mole-thing on his back.” He scoffed. “I checked, you checked, Dory checked. So we’re all good. Triple-checked.”

Lenny stuck his finger out the window and flicked it like he was ticking a box. “You mean quadruple-checked. You forget that Saint D’Norman checked too—and he’s an R-friggin’-N. That kid’s skin is so perfect, he shoulda been a Noxzema model!”

“Exactly,” Howie said. “The age, the recent traumatic heartbreak, and the mole. Three strikes! He’s out. Oh, and he hasn’t mentioned anything about seeing that Gladiator Man in weeks, which is also a relief. If I remember correctly, poor Lucho had seen the egregore at least seven times by midsummer.” There was that gut stab again, and suddenly a shadow fell across the back garden. “So why, on the day I’m the happiest I’ve been in months, am I still getting worry knots in my gut?”

“You wouldn’t be who you are if you didn’t worry,” Lenny said through the window. “It’s like your connective tissue. You’d fall apart without it.” A moment later Lenny emerged from the kitchen door with a cigarette between his lips, a dish rag over his arm, and a Jackson Pollack’s worth of red sauce spatter all over his shirtless chest and belly.