Florida isn’t so bad while sitting in this wicker chair, its hood closed over top of me. I am naked except for a green tourist-shop bikini that covers only the necessary bits of my pale, hairy skin—a buttery color that will announce to all the gawkers that I am not from around here, or anywhere that sunshine and warmth are plentiful. Passersby probably don’t even notice there is a body in this enclosure, and I worry that someone will try to claim it, tossing a beach bag at me before realizing their error. When anyone steps too close, I extend a foot out into the sun, turning it around and around as if to stretch. 

Sarah and I came here once, just the two of us, when we were in college, but all I can remember from that trip was the way the sun bleached her hair and shone from her teeth.

I have read an entire novel by the time I decide to test the ocean. Drunk with salty air and iced mocha, I stumble to the blue-gray waves falling toward the sand. 

This evening, I’m supposed to meet Alyssa, Sarah’s last lover, for dinner at one of those fisherman-themed restaurants—Crabby Somebody’s. I keep changing my mind about whether I will follow through, if it even matters after missing the funeral.

In the water, the undercurrent beats a shell toward the shore. I reach down and pick up the Fighting Conch, deep orange, streaked with purple and white. The creature inside thrusts out a knife-shaped snout, slashing at my fingertips. Its eye stalks appear and it screams, “Put me down asshole!” 

“I just want to hold you,” I say. “I’ll be nice.”

The conch blinks once, twice, three times. “I’ll give you fifteen seconds.” 

Its dark, slimy body returns to the safety of its curved shell, and I turn it around in my hands. I honor our agreement, laying it on the briny sand underwater.

At dinner, I discover that Alyssa and I are the same height and have the same short-cropped hair. Her teeth are so straight, though, and I take comfort in the fact that Sarah had always told me the gap in my upper incisors was her favorite part of my body. 

Alyssa reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “She was doing such great work ... before . . . How could something like that happen to someone so good?”

Sarah was selfish, reckless, I want to say, but I keep my mouth shut. It’s too soon for her to see the truth. I overlooked Sarah’s shortcomings once too.

Alyssa pokes around at the slimy mollusk on her plate, and the squishy sound it makes when she finally chomps it with her teeth forces me to drop my fork. I indicate to the waitress that I am finished with my half-eaten salad and gulp down the last of my wine too fast.

“Did she say anything about me, like at the end?” I ask.

“No,” Alyssa says. “She didn’t say much.”

Alyssa asks if I want to get together again tomorrow. I tell her I might visit family in
Fort Myers. The truth is, I have seen all I came to Florida to see. 

On the beach the next day, I walk toward the same part of the ocean. Before I reach the water, I see a lone conch that had been plucked from the water and cast aside on the dry, white sand. I pick it up. It’s the same one as yesterday. “Hey, are you in there?” I ask. 

I knock a knuckle against the shell, and nothing stirs.