out Cat. He
chases right along with us, and every time a wave catches his feet he
hisses and hightails it up the beach. Then he rolls himself in the hot,
dry sand and gets up and shakes. There are a few other groups of people
dotted along the beach. A big mutt dog comes and sniffs Cat and gets a
right and a left scratch to the nose. He yelps and runs for home. Cat
discovers sand crabs. Nick and I roll around in the sand and wrestle, and
after a while we get hungry, so we go back where we left the basket. Cat
is content to let me carry him.

Three girls are having a picnic right near our basket. One yells to the
others, "Hey, look! The guy went swimming with his cat!"

Cat jumps down, turns his back on them, and humps himself around on my
sweater until he is settled for a nap. I turn my back on the girls, too,
and look out at the ocean.

Still, it's not the same as it would have been a year ago. Then Nick and I
would either have moved away from the girls or thrown sand at them.

We just sit and eat our sandwiches. Nick looks over at them pretty often
and whispers to me how old do I think they are. I can't tell about girls.
Some of the ones in our class at school look about twenty-five, but then
you see mothers pushing baby carriages on the street who look about
fifteen.

One of the girls catches Nick's eye and giggles. "Hi, there, whatcha
watching?"

"I'm a bird watcher," says Nick. "Seen any birds?"

The girls drift over our way. The one that spoke first is a redhead. The
one who seems to be the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt and
hair piled up high in a bird's nest. Maybe that's what started Nick
bird-watching. The third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with brown hair, I
guess.

"You want a couple of cupcakes? You can have mine. I'm going on a diet,"
says the blonde.

"Thanks," says Nick. "I was thinking of going after some cokes."

"Why waste time thinking? You might hurt your head," says the redhead.

The third girl bends down and strokes Cat between the ears very gently.
She says, "What's his name?"

I explain to her about why Cat is Cat. She sits down and picks up a piece
of seaweed to dangle over his nose. Cat makes a couple of sleepy swipes at
it and then stretches luxuriously while she strokes him. The other kids
get to talking, and we tell each other our names and where we go to school
and all that stuff.

Then Nick gets back on the subject of going for cokes. I don't really want
to