On days this hot, the air conditioner in Harold’s 2001 Honda Accord rattled like the underside of an overpass, so he kept it off. Even worse, he had to rely on the windows, which let the blanket of muggy afternoon seep into the cabin, stain the dashboard with the sweaty smell of sunlight. See, everyone thinks they know what the sun smells like—spring, the ocean, hot oil on a nonstick pan—but if you spend enough time, you quickly learn it’s more like a busy laundromat, like mildew in your clothing.

The outside coming in would have bothered Harold far less if the traffic allowed him to move further than three inches at a time. It’s what they say about this town, he thought: The traffic’s a complete disaster. He’d always considered traffic one place really no different than traffic in any other place, till moments like this, when he was stuck for almost an hour now on a bridge, inching forward to avoid the blind spot of some oversized jackass pickup truck that had been trailing him since Constitution.

To make it worse, Gibs, fiddling in the other seat, was in one of his moods. Bored with the lack of motion, he’d put on the radio, hit scan, and began listening intently for secret messages in the cacophony of radio preachers, pop and country singers, and news anchors. Harold tried to tune it out, because he was trying to avoid exasperating the stressful driving situation, but the radio rambled on, digging into his thoughts.

While the total black bear population has decreased over the course of the last ten years, precautions are being taken by state officials to, it said, before scratching to the next station. Dance, dance, dance, yeah, dance, dance, dance, it said. Where, in the roar of the sea, the Lord arose from his slumber, climbed the stairs, and, it said. Arrived at the White House today, planning talks for continued foreign military support in the form of, it said. New tires at used prices, that’s right, new tires at used prices, it said. The word of the Lord.

Eventually, Harold clicked it off, startling Gibs, who had been leaning close to the speaker, trying to discern what only he could discern.

“Plug in your phone,” he told him, “if you want to listen to something.”

“I prefer the radio,” Gibs said.

“Let’s go with nothing then,” said Harold, a little more shortly than he had intended.

Gibs crossed his arms and leaned back, looking like a toddler. Harold hated feeling like he was looking after his friend, babysitting. And what had happened that caused him to be so alert and suspicious in the first place? All his life, Gibs had been entirely aloof in the ways he interacted with his surroundings. Back when they were kids, it was the same way when their families would go camping together out near Ocala, where the palm brush overflowed past your vision, and you could shout into nothing and hear nothing back. They’d done that: shout. There was something to the openness that sought to extract the hollering from their throats, and the distance swallowed it all, absent of tree lines or hills or buildings to return an echo. Harold’s dad scolded them, afterwards, telling them not to shout or someone will think they’re in trouble.

Who, though? wondered Harold at the time. He could not fathom how far his voice would need to travel in that far-off land to actually make impact with another human being.

Then one morning, while the families were admiring a freshwater spring, Lacy, Gibs’s sister, suddenly asked if anyone had seen him. No one had. He had simply vanished. It took three hours of the families searching, calling, going off to find the authorities, crying, and praying the blood of Jesus before he eventually appeared at the campsite, still in his pristine, unwrinkled jean shorts and the orange polo that blended in with nothing. He was not scared, only he said that he’d gone to relieve himself behind a tree and did not realize how far he had walked. By then, it was too late to find his way back. He was that kind of child, aloof.

Now, he was conspiring about government secrets, aliens, spies, all sorts of nonsense. When Harold called him a few months ago, out of the blue, because it had been a while since they’d seen each other, Gibs answered from a crowded, loud environment, saying he could not talk long, because he was in the middle of boarding a plane for Pittsburgh.

“Nothing,” he’d replied, when Harold asked what was there. Then, he’d admitted, “It’s not about Pittsburgh. It’s about the bugs. Can’t say more. Gotta go.”

Later, over drinks downtown, Gibs apologetically explained the situation, which is that he had become overwhelmed by the notion that the feds had bugged his phone, his apartment, even his family members’ houses, so he wanted to throw them off. Pittsburgh was a ruse. Not for Harold but for the authorities who may have been listening in. He had purchased three different plane tickets to three different cities, then ended up boarding none and spending the weekend camping.

“The point,” he’d explained, “is to become unpredictable.”

This worried Harold. He had known plenty of unpredictable people in his life, and many of them were no longer around.

“You don’t think all these cars are going to the river, too?” asked Harold once the traffic started moving. He had been thinking about the plane tickets.

“It’s probably a game at Nats Park,” said Gibs. “That’s always why there’s traffic here.”

“You know it’s the first time the river’s been open to the public in fifty years, that’s what I heard on the radio. Or, this section of the river, at least.”

“Right.”

“The old plumbing makes it so filthy around here,” continued Harold. “When it rains, all the muck of the city overflows right into the water. The city also used to burn waste upriver, by some of the poorer neighborhoods. Awful, right? But they’ve been fixing things up for a while now. Today’s supposed to be a milestone, a point of pride. It’s a historic day.”

Harold had been excited about the excursion. He never swam in the river, because it had been illegal for as long as he could remember, but now that they opened up access for a single day, the city planned a block party at one of the riverside parks as a way to celebrate progress. Harold thought it would be the perfect chance to hang out with Gibs again, since they had spent most of their childhood summers swimming in public pools together.

“Did you hear about the fluoride brain particles?” asked Gibs, still looking out his window.

Harold found an opening in the right lane and took it, veering away from the massive pickup truck and managing another few yards forward.

“Goddam, this is bad,” he said. “The fluoride? No.”

“That’s what they’re using to clean the rivers,” said Gibs. “They’re dumping in fluoride, then saying it’s fine to swim. And you know that fluoride has changing elements to it. You spend enough time exposed to it, your brain starts getting wonky.”

“Wonky.”

“Yeah, wonky.”

“That’s stupid,” said Harold.

“No, it’s not. I’ve been reading about it.”

“The fluoride would mess with the fish. We’d be able to tell.” Harold eased the car further forward. He could not be sure, but it looked as though the pickup truck was behind him again. Somehow.

“Exactly,” said Gibs, turning to Harold. “Not the fish, though. It’s the ducks that give it away. Do you know how to tell when a duck’s been messed up by fluoride toxicity? They dive underwater.”

“They always dive underwater.” Harold did not know why he was going along with this.

“Yes, but normal ducks take turns. When you see them go under, flip upside down and fish around for food, normal ducks do it one at a time, never all at once. Because there’s danger all about, and they always need at least one to be on the lookout. Keeping an eye out for the others. But here, they just dive under willy nilly. They’re effed up, man. The ducks here are all the proof you need that the government’s messing with the water.”

“Because they don’t keep watch.”

“Yes. All societies need watchers. Everyone needs someone to look out for them.”

“Then why are you even coming to swim?” Harold snapped. He was feeling depressed now. And anxious. He considered turning the radio back on.

“It’s … historic and all that,” Gibs said, then turned back to gaze dejectedly out his window.

Harold considered responding. Just then, the traffic let up, and he managed to get across the river and turn down a side street. He glanced into the rearview, wondering where the truck had gone and whether it had decided to tailgate someone else instead.

“Lacy called, you know,” he decided to say.

This caught Gibs off guard.

“My sister Lacy? She called you? Why?”

“She said you might need a place to stay. That you got evicted.”

“Oh,” said Gibs. “That’s weird.”

“Is it true?”

“What?”

“Do you need a place to stay?”

Gibs smiled vapidly. “No, I’m good, man. All good,” he said in a sing-songy voice.

He quickly leaned forward and switched the radio back on, clicking scan once again so the blur of stations filled the silence between them. Still anxious, Harold looked into his rearview again and drove on.

They arrived at the riverside park a few minutes later, and Harold pulled into the end spot in a small gravel parking lot. There was a lot of commotion coming from the swimmers and river-goers who had laid out beach towels and picnic blankets and campfire chairs. A food truck buzzed from where it had been parked on the grass near the street, the old woman inside trying to find shelter from the searing heat by leaning into the soda cooler. Beside the food truck, a policeman had parked his car then left it there unoccupied, because the temperature was too much for him to sit inside. They had started a rule in the office: No idling. So he did not even give the impression he was going to stay. He parked the car and escaped to the nearest corner store to hide away for the rest of his shift.

Near the river, a beach volleyball net slouched under a sloppy game as some young adults in bathing suits hit a white ball back and forth, calling out in grunts and names as their wrists thumped loudly with each play. Sand stuck to their bare, sweaty ankles.

From one of the picnic blankets, someone’s boombox played a popular music station that got interrupted every few minutes by a male DJ trying to sell cars. As Harold got out of his own, he listened but could not recognize exactly what the DJ was saying nor what songs were being played. They were garbled by the voices of the crowd and the humming of the generators. He wondered if Gibs was listening too.

Glancing over, he realized that Gibs had disappeared. As soon as he got out of the passenger seat, he wasted no time in rushing toward the river, depositing his shirt and shoes in a grassy pile, jogging waist-deep into the water, then diving in completely. Harold went to collect the towels he had packed from the trunk. Which was when he noticed another massive pickup truck parked on the other end of the gravel lot. For a moment, he wondered if they had been followed, if it was the truck that had been tailgating him all morning, but he quickly cursed himself for how similar he was sounding to Gibs. We’re not being followed, he thought. It’s just another pickup truck that looks like every other goddam pickup truck.

Harold waded into the river chest deep to where Gibs was. It refreshed him, the cool water on his skin. It felt like he was a tree being watered for the first time in ages. He could feel his earlier anxiety pass over his body and drain into the river.

“This is nice, huh?” he called to Gibs, who was looking distractedly at the other bank.

“Yeah.”

“Looking for ducks?” said Harold.

Gibs went under the water, then came up yards away, and continued to swim further up the current, searching for his own space to enjoy the river in his own way. Harold let him go. It was not worth bothering over, if Gibs was going to be moody all day. The river was too nice, too pleasant to be soured.

Harold leaned back into a floating position, his arms outreached to either side. He stared upward at it all. Sunlight. Birds. Clouds. The arc of the universe moving in a torquish progression from one horizon to the other. It calmed him.

He exhaled and let his body dip slightly below the surface. Time seemed to pass rather quickly as he bobbed there in a state of ongoing, gentle existence. He felt drowsy. It could have been thirty seconds or ten minutes that he was lying there, and he would not have cared. He had nowhere to be that day. He felt weightless. Peaceful.

The sun scorched his body, but he did not care. So what if he came home burned that day? The idea of a sunburn being his biggest concern for the moment delighted him. It had been years since he’d been sunburned. He recalled the itchiness of his childhood—grass, sunburns, stepping in anthills. All those sensations seemed to merge into one in his adult memory.

But for now, he felt clean. Maybe it was the fluoride, he laughed to himself.

Then, he inhaled and came back up.

Somewhere, someone was shouting. Just in the realm of earshot. It was a deep, enraged shouting. Someone was saying, “You little shit” and “Thought I wouldn’t find you?”

Harold felt himself drawn to look, and standing up, he turned toward the shore and beyond to the gravel parking lot, where Gibs, shirtless and wet, was dodging between cars to avoid a bald, hulking man who was nearly twice his size.

“You really thought I wouldn’t find you?” the man shouted again.

People were turning at this point. Strangers were staring, squinting. The volleyball game halted. Picnickers paused their eating. But nobody was moving, Harold noted. Why weren’t they moving? Nobody stood up or intervened or called for help. They all simply paused and watched. Waiting for something.

Gibs was attempting to keep an old steel convertible between himself and the stranger, swaying left, then right in an attempt to mirror his pursuer’s movements. As they both continued like that, back and forth as if in a dance, Harold hurried out of the water. From where he was, he could see that Gibs was bleeding from the nose. He rushed toward his towel and keys.

“Where’s my money, tough guy?” shouted the man.

Gibs did not look particularly scared. Not in a way that Harold recognized. Instead, he looked aloof again, his mind wandering as though he had just emerged from the woods having been lost for three hours as a kid. Harold recalled the night at the campground after Gibs had gone missing. In their shared tent, Gibs told him, no, he had not been scared at all. He had simply been strolling along a path, guessing that someone would eventually find him. That was when he spotted something, a bit of movement up ahead. It was a black bear. Not a very big one. In all honesty, he’d explained, it was barely bigger than his neighbor’s husky. He did not know if it saw him, out there in the Ocala brush, but when he moved closer to it, the bear stood up on its hind legs and walked off like a human being.

Harold never believed the story about the walking bear. It was told with such a disconnect from emotion that he was sure Gibs had been lying or imagining it. Nor had Gibs ever retold it to anyone else. It stayed a secret between them for over 20 years. Harold imagined Gibs wandering in the woods, alone, a child, as he got into his car and started the engine.

“Gibs, get over here,” he shouted out the rolled down window as he pulled up to the scene.

The man and Gibs were still stuck in their dance, left then right then left then right. For a moment, the presence of the new vehicle distracted the stranger long enough for Gibs to get a running start. And he ran, then dove, right into the open window of Harold’s Accord.

Without missing a beat, Harold revved the engine and sped forward, imagining how odd it might look to the river-goers—bare legs sticking out of the side of a fleeing car, kicking like duck feet.

Once Gibs tumbled into the passenger seat, he sat up, tried to catch his breath, and glanced around.

“Shoot,” he said casually. “I left my shirt behind.”

Harold glanced in the rearview. The man watching them grew smaller in the distance. He did not pursue, but Harold could guess which vehicle he would eventually return to.

“What the hell, man?” he shouted at Gibs, once he felt the danger had passed.

“Just a misunderstanding,” he said, buckling himself in. “It was nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? He wanted to kill you. He said you owed him money. Who was that? Are you in trouble?”

“I’m telling you,” retorted Gibs. “It’s nothing. This sort of thing never happens. It’s chill pretty much all the time.”

“Chill?” said Harold. “What’s chill? What do you mean, all the time?”

Gibs sighed and reached for the radio, but Harold quickly blocked his hand from reaching the controls. He blew through a stoplight and veered onto the main road.

“Just did a few jobs, needed the money to pay rent. It’s whatever,” said Gibs as if it was whatever.

This took a moment for Harold to process. The car felt warm again, and Harold wanted to pull over to catch his breath.

“Jobs? What do you mean jobs?”

“You ever hear of a catalytic converter?”

“Dammit, Gibs,” Harold erupted.

“I’d never take yours, you don’t need to worry about that.” Gibs had begun picking at something on the edge of his thumbnail, a bit of dead skin.?

“Dude, you put us both in danger,” Harold said, exasperated. “That guy probably has my license plate number now. He’s probably going to follow us, follow me. He was trying to hurt you.”

“I’ll figure it out,” said Gibs, looking out the window.

“I’m calling the cops.”

“That won’t help. Seriously.”

Gibs said this calmly, as though it did not make a difference if Harold called the cops or not. But Harold had been bluffing anyway. He knew there was no solution in it.

“This isn’t okay,” he said.

“I know. I hear you.” Gibs turned back to face Harold. He appeared normal, suddenly. Present again. He was noting each part of Harold’s reactions, as if trying to memorize his face. “That guy was nuts,” he said meaningfully.

Then he turned back to the window and stared out of it for a long time. Harold did not know what to say. The intensity of his friend’s gaze had thrown him off. His heart was still beating wildly from the adrenaline, and he was baffled by how Gibs had apparently cooled down so quickly.

A moment later, Gibs spoke up again.

“I’m telling you,” he said. “Something’s in the water.”

“Fluoride.”

“Exactly.”

Harold could not help but crack a smile. They had made it out of the situation. They were momentarily safe, and his body betrayed his fury. It felt cool again. Like he was floating back in the river. Exhale. Inhale.

“You suck.”

“Now you’re getting it,” said Gibs.

Harold began to laugh.

“It’s just the adrenaline,” he excused himself. “I’m still furious.”

“Probably not the best time to ask,” said Gibs. “But you mentioned earlier about a place to stay.”

“Just shut up.”

Harold continued to laugh, harder, harder. Eventually, Gibs joined in, nervously at first. They were passing over the bridge once more, back toward the city, and Harold reached forward, clicked on the radio and set it to scan. This set them both off laughing again as the stations formed one long soliloquy of noise.

Reports of increased violent crime, and authorities are looking for the best ways to, it said. Get an all-inclusive cruise, for you and the whole family, that’s right, all-inclusive if you pay now using the code, it said. God’s righteous people are called to many things, but the most important of which is to, it said. Dance, dance, dance.