Oli dove head first into the surf one last time before returning to Yohan. The salt water stung his eyes. He just wanted his mother to come back and explain to him, again, how it was possible that she could love a man like Yohan.

“Oli,” Yohan began, “I’m glad you went to the sea because you were sleeping for too long. You shouldn’t fall asleep on the beach, the sun is dangerous.”

The sun is dangerous. This was exactly why he hated Yohan, for saying stupid things like this. He’d spent the entire day in the sun, all three days of this vacation. He played with other children, even Mariana—Yohan’s daughter—under the sun. Everybody was in the sun and Yohan seemed to think this was dangerous.

Olivier dug his toes into the coarse beach sand and fired back, “Is the sun more dangerous than a shark?”

Yohan laughed, “Yes. I think so. Sharks, they kill much less people everyday than the sun.”

The sun more dangerous than sharks.

“Yo, stop lying.”

“I’m not lying, Oli. Why would I lie about this?”

Of course he wasn’t lying. Of course the sun was more dangerous than a shark. He hated Yohan, his ability to mispronounce Algiers while saying racist things, how his stomach ballooned outward, how his stupid wrinkly genitals always sagged at eye-level.

“Oli, I know why you went into the sea. You made pee-pee on yourself again.”

Olivier felt his legs where the urine had been. He had, in fact, urinated all over his thighs just minutes ago.

“You need to stop doing that Oli. You’re too old. Mariana is two years younger than you are and she hasn’t made pee pee on herself for many years now. You will make your mother crazy.”

Yohan was making Olivier crazy; this was precisely why Oli had fallen asleep. Again, he had the recurring dream of being back home in Rennes, the public swimming pool, the whole nudist colony transported with him. Luckily, he had awoken on the beach covered in his own urine, but his parents had not yet returned from the yoga class further down shore to see it happen. He ran to clean himself off.

Back under the beach umbrella, Yohan was still grilling him about his accident. A paperback, “The New You: Reawakening the Soul,” dangled in his fingers. Yohan recrossed his legs, mashing his balls and penis together between them right in front of Oli. His mother had told him that Yohan and his wife, Peggy, were in love, but they were so full of love, just like his maman and papa, that they liked to share it with more people. The whole reason they seemed to go to this private beach in Nice was so that Yohan could share his enormous, hooked love with his parents—except they could do it outside, on this beach, in the apart-hotel room just a few meters from where they were, at another couple’s house, or on the balcony, late at night after they had sent Olivier and Yohan’s daughter, Mariana, to bed.

Yohan rubbed the bottom of his front teeth with his tongue as he looked at Oli.

“What do I tell your mother? Do you think she wants to hear this?”

“No. Please, don’t tell her.”

“Oli, I must. It is better for you.”

Oli grabbed his body board and hugged the board’s image of a white shark flush against his front. He shot back a look at Yohan, but couldn’t think of anything horrible enough to say, so instead just opted for a singular and emphatic “YOU.”

Yohan drew back with surprise. The thin gold-link chain caught awkwardly in the tuft of his black chest hair. He winced and fingered the gold links. Oli ran back toward the ocean.

The sun was setting and by the time Olivier had tired himself out on the body board, he could make out his parents returning from the other side of beach stretch, Peggy in tow. Their naked bodies wavered in the humidity, blending into one jiggling, tan blob.

Olivier had always wondered why they liked to be naked all the time. Sure, he liked to be naked when he took a bath or was in his own house, but he also liked to act like normal people. The beach colony was like a school for grown ups, where instead of a uniform, they didn’t wear anything, and instead of doing class work, reading, and sports, they went to classes about writing stories, spirituality, or yoga—all in the nude, everybody.

At least Yohan lived over in Paris, far away from Rennes, so Olivier didn’t have to see him on a regular basis. Oli couldn’t even imagine Yohan dressed like a normal person. Yohan couldn’t get away with saying stupid things while dressed like a normal person.

Yohan set out the bread, cheese, and salami from the cooler onto a wooden cutting board.

“Help me cut the salami.”

“Is Mariana not eating?”

“No, she’s working on her model boat. I left her something at home already.”

Yohan winked at Oli, “You want me to go get her?”

Oli acted as if he didn’t hear.

Yohan handled the cured sausage and knife in one giant paw and passed it to Olivier along with a cutting board. Oli cut a straight line down the middle of the salami and peeled the dry film away. He chopped.

“Be careful, with a salami like yours, you don’t want to slice the wrong one,” Yohan said, as he erupted with more porcine laughter. Yohan laughed at all his own jokes. Oli wondered if Yohan just walked around making jokes about other people’s private parts and laughed alone like a crazy person. He cut the salami into half-centimeter wheels, arranging them in four columns of six pieces, and quickly ate the remaining three that were extra.

Mariana appeared in Oli’s peripheral vision. She exited the beachfront apartment, closing the sliding glass door behind her. Mariana had stayed in the hotel room because she wanted to keep working on the model boat. Everyone had praised her for using cloth from a broken kite for the sails instead of the fabric provided by the model company. He didn’t know why anyone cared about this, but his parents seemed to think it was very clever. She claimed so it could “move faster,” but he knew she had no idea. She was a bony girl, thin black hair, straight down to her waist, the top of her head level with Oli’s shoulder. She was younger and Oli’s mother always forced him to play with her, although she never seemed interested in anything Oli wanted to do. For example, when he suggested building a shark tank instead of working on the boat, she said that his idea was stupid because sharks didn’t live in small spaces. Obviously, she didn’t know anything because they had gone to the aquarium together in Paris and they watched sharks swim many circles inside the ring shaped tank. She even said they looked “bored.” Oli knew it was common knowledge that aggressive animals like sharks couldn’t get bored.

Mariana kissed her father on the cheek and sat down next to Oli.

“Can the boat float?” Oli asked.

“Of course it can, Oli. My angel can make anything float,” Yohan answered, smiling at his daughter.

Oli wondered if Yohan knew just how stupid that comment was, but decided not to say anything. He offered Mariana a slice of the salami.

“Oli, watch yourself, you try to give Nana more salami and you’ll have to deal with me,” Yohan warned with a chortle.

Oli shied away with the plate, annoyed at his embarrassment after hearing this joke for the third time this trip. Nana leaned over, took a slice, some bread and soft cheese, and chomped on a sandwich.

Yohan rose up to greet his wife and Oli’s parents, who were sweating profusely from the walk under the sun. Oli rose to kiss his maman and papa on the cheek, but was impeded by Yohan’s large backside. It boasted a mélange of matted hair, sweat, and sand creeping close to his anus. Always eye-level.

Yohan began to tell maman and papa about how Oli peed on himself. In an attempt to distract Mariana from what was going on, Oli motioned for her attention. She watched as Oli knelt by her, picked up a Salami slice between two fingers, and displayed it like a magician’s coin. He did the same with a piece of soft cheese in his left hand. Mariana was mesmerized.

Oli crept behind Yohan, who had leaned over to fetch a beer for Oli’s papa from the cooler. Using his thumb as the thrust, Oli jammed the bit of salami and soft cheese halfway into Yohan’s anus.

Olivier was not given dinner that night. The hours after the incident were loud and confusing. Papa had been yelling at him quite a bit, asking many strange things about him and his friends at school. Oli did not answer any of it. Maman had concluded he had “acted out” in a strange fashion, and that was that. Yohan adopted a routine of looking over at him at regular intervals throughout the discussion, shaking his head like a robotic pig. What had upset Oli most of all was that Mariana hadn’t defended him. She told his parents that he had acted “crazy” just before he “attacked” Yohan. They kept using that word like he was some kind of wild animal. When he and Nana were finally sent to bed, she had stashed away some raisins and half of a cookie for him. Oli took them, but did not eat them in front of her.

He had fallen asleep for an hour or so, cookie in his hand, again dreaming about the public pool in Rennes. His mind was filled with the leftover images burned into his head like a camera flash: women’s breasts bobbed in the wake of paddling feet, kids his age scrambled out at the perimeters, grizzly, dark haired men stewed in the turgid bubble of Jacuzzis. Between deep breaths, he remembered ducking underwater and swimming between and around the bottom halves of people, their legs like stipes of a kelp forest, hairs the undulant fronds. He slipped within inches of vaginas, sagging vulva, shriveled penises almost retracting into the crotches of overweight men. This time his dream had made him follow a procession of the commune’s children, his friends Antwan, Mariana, and the ugly Sofie, up stairs leading to the opening of a slide in the shape of a tremendous penis.

The slide’s shaft fell ten meters down into another diamond shaped pool. The children shot out of the slide’s tip like short bursts of urine. At the top of the stairs, kids disappeared into a dark opening. Climbing atop an enormous pair of testicles, he had grabbed at coarse black hairs to steady and pull himself up on the slick skin surface. At the top, Antwan jumped, leading with his prominent nose, face first into the opening, a porcine squeal disappearing after him. Mariana and the ugly Sofie went hand-in-hand, their legs pressed together like four wet sausages, hair sliding after them, a dirty blond-black braid. Olivier stepped up to the slide, the rush of falling water pulsing through his veins. He put one foot in, sat down, and pushed off. He fell into nothingness, his throat too shocked to scream. He thought he had wet himself again, but to his relief woke in dry pajamas.

He could hear his parents, Peggy and Yohan, all chatting and laughing in the apart-hotel living room. It sounded like they had gotten over his incident that they had made seem like the end of the world just an hour earlier. He imagined they were drinking beer and pastis. Their muffled eruptions grew louder and more frequent. Nana was asleep in the twin bed across the room. Oli didn’t understand how she could sleep through the racket their parents were making.

The clock on the bedroom bureau displayed 12:22 AM. Oli could hear murmurs, the faint smell of something burning, and the late night noises now coming from beyond his room. He was still angry with Mariana for her betrayal at dinner, and even more so, for sleeping soundly. He got out of bed, stepped over the unfinished wooden boat by her bedside, and stood over her. He raised his thumb and forefinger in front of her sleeping features, miming a pinch on her lips, eyes, nose, a double pinch with both his hands to her neck. She slept peacefully.

At the window, he watched the ocean, the moon hanging like a glowing bone over the surf. He wondered if Nana’s miniature boat could actually float in something so violent like the ocean. A bottle broke beyond the bedroom door. His mother shrieked. Yohan’s enormous laugh burst through the walls.

Oli turned his gaze toward Mariana’s small outline. It rose and fell like the swell of a wave. How could she sleep through this? She must be deaf? Oli tiptoed toward her and contemplated what he should do to disturb her: yell in her ear, kick the bed frame, double pinch her sides, or clap in front of her face. Mariana stirred, her eyes flickering open and closed. She focused on Oli’s moonlit silhouette.

“What are you doing?” She murmured, half asleep.

Oli, having not made up his mind yet about how to disturb her, turned to dart away, and stubbed his toe on the foot of the bed in the process. He leapt toward his own corner, trying to stifle his pain.

“Go back to sleep!” he hissed, tears building in his eyes. He hobbled quickly to the bedroom door in order to get out of sight.

“I’m thirsty.”

He turned the doorknob with measured delicacy and tiptoed into the hallway, his mind engrossed by the pain in his foot, before lifting his gaze toward the kitchen door.

About twenty feet in front of him, Oli’s moonlit mother was bent over the kitchen sink, both her hands gripping the edges of the metal basin. Her breasts swung like pendants as Yohan furiously pumped into her from behind. Oli had never seen them loving each other this way before. He could not help but watch, as a runnel of sweat streaked down Yohan’s wrinkled lower back fat. His hands gripped her waist, crotch hammering into maman, their bodies a broken metronome. He grabbed at her breasts as if handling fistfuls of cured ham. His forefingers and thumbs tweaked both of her nipples and she let out a short gasp. Double pinch.

Yohan, lifted his huge, right paw up into the air and slapped maman’s bottom with such force that Oli let out a gasp in time with his mother’s, and immediately cupped his mouth with his right hand.

Yohan’s head cocked a small fraction. He slowed his pace for just a second, but then continued with his vigorous thrusting. Oli wasn’t sure if Yohan had heard him, but he couldn’t bring himself to move or pull his gaze away. Yohan started to pump more furiously, making hideous noises, loud boastful moans, almost as if he knew he were being watched. Oli’s blood froze when Yohan looked directly at him for a good second, without the slightest pause in his rhythm. Oli thought he saw a hint of a smile on Yohan’s face as he turned his head back toward maman and leaned deeply into her. She made a noise like she was being hurt.

Yohan jerked his crotch back, as if he had burned himself inside of maman, his banana-like penis curved toward the ceiling. He held it directly over Oli’s mother’s back. Yohan seemed to be peeing on her in short bursts. Oli snapped back into his mind, slipped into his room, and shut the door behind him.

Oli felt a tremendous urge to pee and entered the bathroom connected to his and Mariana’s room. He pinched the tip of his penis, so as not to go too quickly as he lowered his pajama pants, and managed to squirt only a small bit onto his leg, the rest dripping down into the water. The toilet bowl swirled with the light cloud. Oli thought of the moon painting the ocean surface. He flushed and washed his hands. It felt strange to him now, scrubbing his fingers together, the same ones he had used to humiliate Yohan.

Hands still wet, he tiptoed toward Mariana and shook her awake.

“Get up! You need to see something!”

Mariana sat up. He motioned her toward the door.

“Hurry!” he hissed.

Mariana got up and poked her head out of the bedroom door for a second. She looked back at Oli in confusion.

“Is it not strange to you?” he asked.

She shook her head. Oli poked his head out into the hallway from behind her.

“They’re gone,” he whispered over her shoulder.

“Who?”

“Your dad.”

“What was he doing?”

“Acting strange, like always, but this time much more.”

“How?”

Oli paused. Mariana would think he was lying if he told her that Yohan was having an accident on his mother. He had no idea what to say. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way Yohan had looked at him. He felt as if this was some kind of additional punishment being dealt his way.

“Forget it. You won’t understand.”

Oli stepped back from the door, head buzzing. He sat in the sag of his mattress. His whole body felt charged. He recalled the textbook images he used to calm himself: caravan of pilot fish tethered to a whale shark, remoras plastered just below a white tip’s mouth, two nurse sharks joined at the clasper swimming a vertical helix toward the surface. He pointed toward the sails and frame of the unfinished sailboat by Mariana’s bedside.

“Nana, you are making the boat all wrong.”

Mariana rubbed her eyes and slipped back into bed.

Oli continued, “It has no place for people to sleep. What good is that?”

Mariana’s silence made him more anxious. He needed to busy his shaking hands. He got up and opened the top center drawer of the bedroom’s bureau. He felt around inside the darkness of the drawer, rustling small papers, rolling ballpoint pens, and other small objects.

“Oli, stop!” Mariana shot in his direction, “go to sleep.”

He fished out an old letter opener with a dull blade and approached Mariana’s bed. He saw her pupils swell almost to the size of coins. He picked up the boat frame.

“What type of boat is this? Where does it go?”

Mariana hesitated before answering, “I don’t know. It’s just a boat. Why does it have go anywhere?”

Oli wove the letter opener through the strings and frame holding the mainsail, jibs, and topsails in place. He imagined it was Yohan’s ribcage. He jerked his arm and with great effort pulled through it, ripping it out of any discernible shape. He presented the tangled mess to her.

“If a boat doesn’t go anywhere, then this is also a boat.”

He dropped it on the floor and returned to his bed. He put the letter opener inside his pillowcase and rolled over to face the wall. He could hear her sobbing and was confused by how much relief Mariana’s whimpering was giving him. His stomach and throat were tightly knotted, but his chest felt like it had been cracked wide open, like he could suddenly breathe underwater.