Salt, brackish or fresh ... it’s water. AND ... if you can’t see land in any direction ... it’s an ocean ... even if it’s a lake. It gets old ..... and new.We ... the three of us ... left Ludington on the tide ... not that there’s much of a tide ... there’s not ... but old habits die hard. We left with the tide.Bea said, “Not Beatrice ... Bea ... and NOT B-e-e ... Mom was a little religious ... Beatitude Simmons.”I had a thought... “Thinking like that could find you overboard.”“Yes, ma’am ... not. If that’s how she went about eating pussy…I couldn’t blame Sapphire much for her opinion on Doc’s technique. I halved another cantaloupe and said, “Watch and learn. You don’t shove the seeds off. They’re those glistening folds you know so well. You…you ease them off with your tongue. It’s not a race, it’s a delicious moment for both of you.” She leaned over close to me and watched as I let my tongue tease the stem of the melon and then as I used the flat of my tongue to repeatedly remove one. Idisrobed."Step inside."I stepped into the booth and it slid shut. Inside was a white light,emanating from the floor. Everything was sterile. I heard somethingspinning above me."Why are your RAD levels so high?" asked the voice through an unseenspeaker."I don't know," I said. I didn't care if he knew I was lying; I wasn'tabout to start babbling about parallel planes made from negative energy.Whoever this guy was, he was definitely the paranoid type. His finger wasprobably poised over a button. We ate a lot of fresh grilled fish and spent some quality time in the hot tub drinking wine and swapping lies. I ended up explaining to the rest of them about accumulating recognizable, standardized gold coin for their retirement funds as it was as inflation-proof as any specie that I could find. After that they all started putting aside a little each month, earmarked for krugerrand purchases.I kept thinking about how much money we might have found at that drug lord's compound. I'd seen.