"What didja do that for?  Can't you find work in town?  Or Sayville?"  Robby didn't believe what he was hearing.  The plan had been to be together this summer.  He'd go clamming during the day, Shel would work the concessions on the ferry like last year and they could spend evenings together.  Three short months separated the end of almost four years together.  In August they would leave for college on separate coasts.  Michelle grabbed her elbows.  Robby loved it when she did that.  Like subconsciously forcing his eyes on her breasts.  "Robby, there's no reason why you can't come see me.  You could ride your Barley or clam boat or whatever you call it.  Why not just come over to Fire Island when you're done clamming every day?"  "It's a Garvey, not a Barley, Shel.  And why can't you at least take the ferry home at night when you get off work?  There's no way my feet are gonna touch a grain of sand on that place." "The ferry costs money, is why."  She took one long-fingered hand, used it to brush back luxurious black tresses.  Just a month into ninth grade, her waist-length ebony hair had caused all other sounds in the school hall to fade, because there a goddess stood, a couple of lockers down, with her back to him.  And when she turned, her smile, noticing Robby noticing her.  That just sealed it.  The corners of those lips now lifted.  "Besides, I'll be staying at the beach house at Water Island all summer.  My parents will only be there on weekends.  You can pick me up when I get off work at The Pines, and use your boat to drive me home, so I won't be all alone.  Don't you think that's a better plan?"  Her other hand released her weighted chest and reached for his bicep, gently edging him closer. What a, what a, what's the word?  A corruption.  No, a conundrum, Robby thought.  He could see Shel every weeknight, maybe even stay overnight.  Normally the brain between his legs would have already made the decision for him.  But The Pines, that was a faggot beach.  With faggots.  He'd had to pick up his brother there the previous summer; the idiot had managed to get himself arrested for stealing wallets from the faggots at The Pines.  Until they caught him, his brother had always bragged how the faggots were such easy prey.  They'd yell, sure, but all his brother and the no-accounts he hung out with had to do was act tough, and the homos would run in the other direction, or beg my brother's gang of punks not to hurt them.  Until one day, when he'd tried to steal a wallet, said it was too thick to ignore.  Problem was the dude he stole it from was some athlete, like Robby, only this was a homosexual athlete, a fast one.  What they called a butch.  Robby had piloted his boat right onto the bayside beach, avoiding the docks, walked onto the boardwalk, and immediately felt like a sheep among wolves.  Grown men, all at least five years older, giving him the same look he'd give to Shel.  He stopped one man in a light blue, seersucker suit, who looked normal enough; asked him, where was the Police Station?  He told Robby, and Robby had parted his lips about to release a thank you very much, when the sheep turned into a wolf, called him a 'pretty, young stud'.  He refused to run.  Put his eyes ahead and feet forward, bailed his stupid brother out, and got the hell out of there. No getting around this.  Robby was terrified of these two-legged aliens.  How did he know if maybe he was a pervert like them, or if it spread by touch or air, like a disease?  "Look Michelle, you didn't talk about this with me.  You just did it.  So, maybe I'll see you around this summer and maybe I won't.  You made the decision for both of us I guess."  With that, he removed her hand tugging at his arm and walked away, pride moving each leg forward, the rest of him unable to reverse each step. By the beginning of July, Robby had been working off a sand bar he'd discovered the week before, located just a couple of hundred yards off The Pines shore, as if a magnet had directed him, clams calling for his rake, which was ridiculous, like someone saying they watched words spoken.  Every day he failed in his attempt of not thinking of her—of pulling up his rake, and damned the clams, anchoring his boat, diving in the brined water, swimming to the beach, walking down the boardwalk into the Blue Whale, finding Shel, embracing her and kissing every freckle she'd probably acquired by now, with days she'd spent in the sun.  After eight working days of digging the same stretch—which seemed to float new littlenecks to the surface of the sandy bottom as if the gods refused to release him from this acre of water—the embrace had morphed past a caress to feeling his hands seek the edges of her hair, fingers moving comfortably behind her ears, cupping the silken part of her away, just to enhance his view of her face.  Examine the brown eyes with gold flecks he missed so much. On the ninth day, Robby said screw it.  His need to see and smell Shel had consumed his fear of whatever surrounded her.  Besides, he figured, it wasn't as if he couldn't defend himself, right?  All-league gymnast and state finalist in wrestling, so what exactly scared him?  It was Tuesday, so that morning, he'd packed a gym bag for a couple of days away, told his dad who always left for work early he'd maybe be staying over the beach with friends that week, and as the sun rose in the eastern sky, he steered his Garvey on the morning-glassed bay to his spot and somehow knew that something important in him had changed, or had begun. He walked into the Blue Whale that evening, and spied Michelle leaning over the bar, her feet on the foot rail, listening to this tall dude, had to be six-five easy, and looked like a male model or something.  Then she laughed, as if the tall man had given her a punch line, stepped off the rail, picked up a tray filled with drinks, turned around, and saw him.  Robby realized he'd been standing in the doorway, his legs slightly bent as if in the midst of a dismount from a high bar.  Michelle beamed, his legs loosened and his heart floated.  She carried the drinks to a table, four men seated, wearing those little Speedos—two of the pink kind and two powder blue, with stripes, as if they'd fought over meager scraps from the seersucker suit draped on the leering man of the previous summer.  He moved to the side of the door, worried the door would slam shut and entrap him—a reaction he never noticed at the time, but later her friends all said they had.  Drinks placed, she pranced to the bar, dropped the tray on it, and skipped and danced toward him. "I knew you would come!"  Michelle almost yelled and Robby's felt his face turn red; as she hugged and kissed him, teasing with her tongue, then took his hand and introduced him to all her friends.  The big dude behind the bar, Robby decided he looked like Rock Hudson with blond hair.  Shel called him Konrad with a 'K' and he said how do you do, in a voice way too bass to be a homo.  Then there was Michael, don't call me Mike, one of the pink Speedo guys who talked like a girl and had the mannerisms of one too, and Robby felt the eyes ogling him. "Oh, don't be such a prude.  Haven't you ever seen a queen before, you sweet thing you?  Where have you been hiding this little hunk of a man, my dear?" "You keep your hands off him Michael," replied Michelle.  "He's mine.  And it's his first time here, so you make sure you treat him nice, okay?"  Michelle's eyes swept the Whale, and it seemed at least a dozen heads nodded. "Robby, why don't you sit down at the bar.  Konrad will get you a drink, won't you Konrad?"  He smiled at her and said sure.  Robby looked at them both, shrugged and let Shel walk him to a bar stool at the far end of the bar, furthest from the door.  "I'll be off in thirty minutes or so. 'kay?" So that's how Robby began his investigation of Konrad and all those like him.   Turned out he worked in the city most of the year, some kind of stockbroker or something, but spent the summer bartending at the Blue Whale, where he usually picked up more clients in three months than he did all winter.  Said he'd played football in high school and college, and had season tickets to the Giants games.  He laughed at the look on Robby's face.  "What, you think just because I'm gay I don't like football?  You should see the look on your face, young man.  We're not any different from you straight kids you know."  This statement concerned Robby to no end, but he ignored it and tried to keep up a conversation with Konrad as he went about his business of making drinks.  What stunned Robby, really racked him, was how normal Konrad seemed. After Michelle got off work, he took her to a restaurant down the boardwalk, still on the bay side, and they had burgers and drinks, and talked while the crickets chirped outside the window away from the boardwalk.  He felt like an adult here.  As if he'd stepped forward in time.  With his baby face, he had never convinced a mainland bartender to serve him drinks.  Here the waiters treated him with a strange combination of attention, anonymity and respect.  When it was time to leave, Shel playfully mentioned she had to start walking home and Robby said like hell you do, I'll take you in my boat, so they drove, letting the moon guide them to the docks at Water Island.  He docked the boat, and without saying a word, did what he'd been dreaming the last few days while digging the whispering clams, watching The Pines from afar. Robby spent the next three days there.  He'd wake in the morning; kiss Michelle like a husband off to work, though more than once, mutually obsessed hormones made him late.  But he'd get to the boat eventually, before the sun was too high, go to his spot a couple of miles down the beach.  Robby dug until around four in the afternoon, then drove back, and picked up Michelle who waited at the Water Island dock.  She'd hug him, and sometimes he'd pick her up to take her back to the house.  She never let him though, laughing but letting him know she couldn't be late for work, so he'd take her in the boat to The Pines, then bounce through the afternoon waves back to the mainland to sell the clams.  The buyer he used, Harris McCombs, who parked his truck on Corey Creek, asked him if Robby had found some kind of secret spot.  "You usually bring in a count, maybe a count and half.  Last couple of days though you been packing three at least.  I was you, I'd make sure no one sees you leaving in the morning.  Looks like you found you a magic spot."  Rob smiled, assured him he'd be careful. On Friday evening, he called from the office phone at the Blue Whale, and told his mom he'd be staying at the beach over the weekend.  She had many questions, but he deflected most of them, let her know no one had kidnapped him and he'd see her Sunday night.  This process went on for weeks.  He'd come home on Sunday nights, and leave on Monday mornings.  By this time, Robby was on a name basis with most of them—he called them the people at The Pines.  They were a hilarious group of characters he had to admit.  He couldn't tell when he'd stopped thinking of them as faggots, and began to think of them as people.  Maybe it had been the first night Michelle and he had gone dancing at the Helter Skelter, a dance club further down the boardwalk toward the ocean.  Or maybe it was the time he'd stopped by for lunch on a Wednesday, and Thomas, the other guy who tended bar on Konrad's day off wouldn't let him pay for his lunch, said it was on him, for making Michelle's sun shine, was how he said it. Shel's parents and little brother Gerry, took the ferry over on Friday nights, and they'd all have dinner together at the Whale.  Later, Mr. and Mrs. Parker left to walk home with Gerry, sometimes they'd accept a boat ride.  While her parents were at the house, Robby slept in another bedroom, wondering what Mr. Parker was thinking, unable to sleep until he heard the gentle snoring emerge from the bed with changed sheets, in the bedroom he used the rest of the week.  One Friday night some weeks later her parents came and had the usual dinner, but Gerry said he wanted to stay with Robby and what the hell, he wasn't such a bad kid.  All of thirteen, he acted as if Robby was some kind of famous Army general or something.  It could be annoying, but he was Shel's brother, and Gerry wasn't much trouble.  And he knew when to get out of the way. Robby and Gerry walked around for a while watching the surroundings.  Friday nights, the boardwalks filled with city dwellers out for the weekend.  Robby had no idea there were so many gay people in the world.  He had to remember to ask Konrad or Michael or Thomas this sometime.  He just never could figure out a way to ask the question, or he'd forget until the next Friday, when he'd think of it again.  On one side of the boardwalk stood all the stores and restaurants.  On the other side boats swayed like drunken soldiers, leaning on piers.  Then the docks ended and as they walked toward the ocean, the boardwalk met at intersections, left and right towards the beach houses that cluttered the ocean village.  This junction of boardwalk wood housed the Police Station.  As they walked toward the ocean, the boardwalk rose over the dunes, then led to stairs on the ocean side and the rolling waves of the Atlantic.  They walked on the beach for a while, Gerry always gawking at grown men walking hand in hand, Robby noticing it, but it no longer seemed a sick thing anymore, just another puzzle with pieces gone forever.  After an hour or so, they walked back up to the boardwalk and sat down, their feet hanging over the dunes.  Gerry said he was gonna join the wrestling team next year.  Robby asked what'd he want to do that for?  Have to lose all that weight every winter, can't eat much of any of the food that covered Thanksgiving tables, never mind the Christmas feast or New Year's Eve, and besides he was too skinny, and played basketball better than Robby ever could.  Gerry smiled, said Robby was probably right.  They lapsed into silence.  Robby listened to the bright wind whistle through the dune grass and the intermittent crashing of the heightening tide. With legs dangling off the side of the boardwalk, Robby heard approaching footsteps and turned to look.  A bunch of Sayville kids.  He had seen one of them around before on the mainland, though Robby couldn't remember where.  While the gang passed them one of the kids muttered under his breath "fucking faggots…", the words too heavy for the breeze to carry away as far as Robby was concerned. Robby looked up, "Who do you think you're calling a faggot?  The only faggot I see is a punk who gets his rocks off calling other people—"  Next thing he knew Robby lay on the dunes—some foot had leaped out and hit him square on the jaw.  He shook his head, trying to clear his vision.  He looked up, saw the four of them laughing and poking fingers at Gerry, all five-eight and ninety pounds of him.  The next few minutes were a whirlwind hidden behind red angry eyes.  Then red turned to silent black.  He woke up and realized he was on a cot in a room with yellow walls. "Robby?  Are you okay honey?"  Robby turned his head and held in a moan.  His brain felt light as a beach ball and heavy as the world.  He tried to focus, saw Michael put a damp cloth in water and then handed it to Michelle.  On her knees by the cot she placed the washcloth on his forehead and stroked his cheek.  He couldn't figure out who had called him honey, then realized it didn't matter. He tried to leap from the bed.  "Gerry!  Where's Gerry?" "Is he okay?"  Words sounded funny coming out of his mouth.  He felt around with his tongue, felt a loose molar and tasted blood. "He's fine Robby.  Gerry told me everything.  That was really stupid of you, you know." "Those punks called us faggots.  Like they were looking for a one-sided fight.  I saw them picking on Gerry, so I couldn't just walk away though.  But I don't remember anything after that." "Well, one of the kids is still on the dunes.  Another one got carried off by his gang.  Gerry said you broke his arm.  We don't know what's wrong with the guy who's knocked out.  At least I hope he's just knocked out and you better too." "I sure don't.  Those punks got what's coming." Michael interrupted her.  "Oh they did, did they?  Well, how many of us do you think would be alive, young man, if we tried to kill every asshole that walked by us and called us names?  The newspapers would start talking about sadistic, perverted faggot gangs and the preachers would start a rally cry.  They're just words Robby.  Heck, most times they don't even say anything.  They just beat us to a pulp." "This happens a lot you mean?" "Oh, you silly boy.  You silly, beautiful, naïve boy.  I just want to hug you and kiss you.  Look at your face.  I'm just kidding you foolish man.  Yes, it happens all the time.  We let the beach cops know and some of them are okay.  They try to patrol the area, but most of the cops—they think we have this coming to us.  We deserve it.  It's just a part of our life.  We deal with it and move on.  You can't go through life chasing wind through windmills, my darling, young Don Quixote.  Wherever did you find this man Michelle?" Michelle smiled, while Robby replied, "Well that stinks Michael." "What, you think it's easy being gay?" "No."  Robby felt woozy and closed his eyes.  When he woke again a man in some kind of nun's outfit, holding a medicine kit was standing over him. "You're awake.  Good.  You've had a heck of a concussion.  Someone needs to keep an eye on you for the rest of the night.  And I don't think it's a good idea for you to move.  We would've helicoptered you to the mainland, but the chopper only fits two patients and there are two kids about your age, one with a broken arm; the other has a concussion and enough splinters in his ass to build a boardwalk-pine dollhouse.  They both appeared worse off so they won the ride.  Besides, the police arrested them.  Let's talk about you.  Someone is going to have to keep an eye on you tonight.  You have to be wakened every couple of hours.  I'll be on the island, so if there are any complications, these two can reach me." Robby looked confused.  "Is that a nun's outfit or am I hallucinating?" The doctor-nun did a dancer's twirl, offering a coyote grin.  "Isn't it just the nastiest dress you've ever seen?" Robby couldn't help but laugh.  It hurt to laugh.  "Where's Michelle?" Michael cut in. "Michelle took Gerry home.  She used your boat.  She'll be back in an hour or so.  In the meantime, Konrad and I have offered to keep an eye on you."  Konrad winked at him. Robby looked over at Michael.  "Well, ok, but no hugging, no kissing and definitely no tongue.  Got it guys?"