Tower 7

Powerboat racing is akin to a visit to a nautical insane asylum.
 It’s a high-stakes game of chicken played by multi-million-dollar boats that hurtle across the 
ocean, piloted by steel-nerved drivers wearing more safety gear than an astronaut. It’s a rock 
concert with the roar of 2,000-horsepower motors blasting out at every condo balcony lining the 
beach without prejudice. Rich or poor, year-round resident or weekend visitor, you were going to 
hear them.
 The 21st annual East Bay Offshore Races were a tradition in town that had taken over the first 
week of August and turned it into the de facto champion for the noisiest week of the summer… 
until Bike Week, of course, in September. Even though it was cited as the worst week of the year 
to try to catch a fish in town, and every surfer in a fifty-mile radius complained about the 
disruptive wakes that jumbled up peaceful morning sessions, the event was a spectacle to behold.
 Giant plumes of water sprayed off the sterns of the boats thirty feet high, and the paint jobs—
 ranging from black as night to pink as a flamingo at a rave—glistened as they flew along the sun
soaked beach, pushing the limits of physics and good judgment with every tweak of the throttle. 
Now with a beach day to make all the other beach days jealous, the boats entered the home 
stretch as thousands of “non-powerboating” aficionados took the opportunity to cheer for 
something that didn’t have a ball involved, with the bravado of a person in the Southeast on 
Saturdays in the fall.
 On the straightaway, a menacing-looking jet-black stallion with a closed cockpit and twin hulls 
like a catamaran roared past the pack. The boat looked angry, like maybe it had eaten all the 
other catamarans in East Bay. If there was a purpose to the driver, it looked like the boat believed 
it as well. It toyed with them, the pilot seeming to enjoy staying neck and neck with one until he 
pressed slightly harder on the throttle, rocketing his craft in front of theirs. The beast glided 
softly over the water, while their competitors couldn’t stay stuck to the surface, bounding the 
entire frame of the boat airborne out of the sea.
 “I hope we don’t have to swim after them, Captain,” Tom Ace said to Captain Hank “Harley” 
Dixon, the commanding officer of the East Bay Marine Division, which included oversight of all 
the lifeguard towers and damn near everything that touched the waters around town.
 “You might be able to catch ’em, Ace. I saw your time last week in the swim.”
 He knew it made the young kid feel good, and he could see his chest puff up with pride. Ace 
didn’t need his head to get much bigger, but it didn’t hurt to let your best guys know they were, 
in fact, the best. Dixon stood on the deck and took out his binoculars, looking south down the 
beach as the next pair of boats came blazing toward them. The crowd on the beach was massive, 
revved up, liquored up, and likely not wearing enough sunscreen. Screams filled the sand as the 
pair blasted by—two forty-foot marvels of engineering capable of over 120 mph on the water.
 “They are turning at the buoy, Captain,” came a tinny voice through his walkie-talkie. “Coming 
back your way.”
 “Roger that, Morgan. We’re ready,” Dixon said.
A slight breeze picked up out of the south, and Dixon felt it against his face.
 “Wind changed, Ace.”
 Ace nodded at him.
 “Gonna get bumpy on the way back,” Ace replied.
 The crowd grew louder as the boats drew closer, America’s national pastime of yelling at people 
driving fast machines not being reserved solely for the asphalt. Dixon watched the #1 boat—the 
Black Stallion—come into sight; its ride this time had much less poise than before. The boat got 
airborne on at least three occasions as it went past, when suddenly the breeze coincided with a 
boat on the edge of control. It heaved forward against the choppy surface waters. The boat’s nose 
launched into the sky as the breeze pushed against it, holding it there like a kite, perpendicular to 
the ocean below. The entire crowd’s breath collectively held and then released in a gasp as it 
f
 lipped backward.
 Two times.
 And then another.
 And another.
 Pieces of the boat were sent sailing into the sea, and the cockpit was mangled on three sides from 
the force of the water.
 Snapping from his disbelief, Dixon shouted into the walkie-talkie.
 “Tower 7, go! Get your guys out there!”
 Harley slammed down on the throttle on the center console, imploring the rescue boat to channel 
its inner racer so he could reach a boat that was quickly starting to sink from sight.
 +++
 Harley and Ace broke the surface of the water and swam hard for the cockpit, which was missing 
the lion’s share of its roof. Two bodies sat motionless in their seats, still clipped into their 
harnesses. They each went to work with a knife, trying to shear away the seatbelts, and after 
some struggle successfully managed to float the two bodies free of their restraints.
 Harley felt his lungs ache for air, and he suppressed the need to breathe by trying to relax his 
mind and stay focused on the task at hand. The driver was a smaller man but muscular, with 
broad shoulders, and he struggled to wriggle him out of the seat and through what was formerly 
the roof of the boat. He cradled the driver and kicked hard to the surface, gasping as he broke 
through and drinking in a deep gulp of air. A jet-ski streaked across the water, dragging a rescue 
sled behind it, piloted by an athletic and powerful redheaded woman named Jessi Evans, who 
masterfully navigated the ski in front of them and arced the sled perfectly into position for 
pickup.
“I gotta go back under for Ace and the co-pilot!” Harley shouted.
 “Go. I got him!” Jessi yelled back as she dove off the ski to stabilize the man on the sled.
 Harley took a deep breath and plunged back under the water, where he saw Ace struggling to lift 
the heavier co-pilot out of his seat, blood pouring from the man’s nose and mixing with the ocean 
around him in vibrant red. Dixon zipped through the water and got to the men, then helped Ace 
break him free from the seat and upward toward the surface. The boat gurgled as its nose fully 
disappeared under the water, beginning a rapid descent to the sea floor.
 A bright yellow paddle-board appeared next to them, and a middle-aged balding man named 
Yancy “Yankee” Thigpen—whose biceps were encircled in tattoos and seemed to defy the fifty
plus years on his odometer—yanked the co-pilot out of the water and onto the rescue board with 
little effort. Dixon and Ace swam toward the boat and climbed quickly up the ladder at the stern. 
In the boat, the woman had resuscitated the driver, who lay on the deck trying with all his might 
to pull fresh air into his lungs.
 Harley and Ace climbed up the glistening silver ladder of the boat, and he grinned at the younger 
man.
 “Welcome to East Bay.”
 +++
 Harley’s cupboard at the Bahama Breeze Mobile Home Park could, at best, be called spartan. At 
worst, it could be called a bachelor pad. It had four plates, two bowls, and three glasses in the 
cupboard—one for water, one for wine, and one for bourbon.
 Tonight called for the bourbon.
 His friends at work always joked with him about what would happen if he ever wanted to throw 
a party. His response was standard: if I ever want to throw a party, it’s probably an imposter, and 
they likely live somewhere much nicer with a full complement of table settings.
 Marianne had taken the vast majority of the stuff in the divorce, and though she had offered him 
as many plates and glasses as he wanted, he had kept the number low, because if he had to start 
over at fifty-one, he was going to do so with limited trappings. He would see the world—if he 
could ever take a day off, that was—and his reasoning for the limited assortment of cutlery was 
that a mountain of things at home meant more things he had to contemplate getting rid of down 
the road if the pull of a new place or person uprooted him from his castle on Eleuthera Court.
 He pulled a bottle of Beam off the counter and slopped in a healthy serving of the amber liquor 
against the walls of the tumbler. Staring out the kitchen window onto the bay, he watched a 
towering white crane that had been looking for dinner along the shoreline leap into the sky with 
its spindly legs and large flat wings in search of a buffet that might still be serving at this hour.
 There was nothing wrong with the Bahama Breeze. The trailers were immaculately maintained, 
and it was perfectly sized for a guy living on his own. One bedroom, one bath, a small kitchen
and-living-room combo, and a storage shed outside that was crammed tightly with surfboards, 
paddle-boards, and fishing gear. The park was mostly filled with retirees, hospitality workers, 
and a handful of other divorced guys, and the biggest threat of crime was that someone might run 
you over with their golf cart after leaving one of the community’s legendary Friday-night 
bonfires.
 His unit, which he had decided to rent instead of buy, was a freshly painted royal blue with 
maroon accents on the windows and even had a collection of three small plants on the front of 
the deck. Angela Simpson provided the flowers and maintained them free of charge for every 
resident. She believed plants were the gateway to the universe and felt compelled to share that 
gift with all the neighbors. A retired criminal-defense attorney, she didn’t need to live here and 
could certainly afford more elegant digs on the oceanfront in a high-rise condo, but she loved the 
camaraderie of the Breeze, and she had stated that unless they ever allowed spring breakers to 
overrun the park, she would never leave.
 The first sip of bourbon felt good, and Harley pushed open the screen door and walked out onto 
the small wooden deck that housed his aging gas grill and a pair of two-tone wicker chairs he had 
picked up at a garage sale a month earlier. He flopped onto one of the chairs and let out a sigh. 
His body was whipped, and the cushion seemed to welcome his tired limbs with arms wide open. 
He propped his feet on the opposing chair and took in the beauty of the evening in front of him.
 There were some benefits to the Bahama Breeze, none greater than the sunsets that he watched 
from this very spot every night. A small headland jutted into East Bay from the Nine Mile Forest 
named Fisherman’s Point, and every evening, the sun descended over the water in a spectacular 
display of color as the 1812 Overture floated across the water from Big John’s Beach Bar. It 
served to not only celebrate the culmination of another sun-soaked day at the beach but also as 
an audible Bat-signal to the night owls set to descend on the town that their time to shine was 
forthcoming. That ceremonial sunset sendoff hadn’t changed since the place was founded fifty 
years earlier, and he remembered those nights at Big John’s his first summer with the rest of the 
team—a first-year lifeguard fresh out of his sophomore year, living at the beach “just for the 
summer.”
 Now here he sat, thirty-one years later, staring at the same sunset and regretting exactly zero 
percent of that decision.
 A booming voice from across the gravel road briefly disturbed the walk down memory lane.
 “Come join us for a drink, Captain!”
 Harley turned his head to his neighbor Quentin Cook, an athletic dark-skinned man in his early 
thirties in the trailer across the sidewalk. Quentin bordered on the edge of local celebrity due to 
the nearly decade he had spent behind the bar at Fish Tales, one of the most popular spots in 
town for dorado, drinks, and good old-fashioned debauchery. Cook’s smile was so pronounced 
and authentic that there was no way to dislike him. No greater confirmation of that fact could 
have come than when Dixon was sitting at his bar one night having a beer when a group of three 
portly men in Confederate-flag T-shirts bellied up to the bar and proceeded to grill Quentin on 
the specials. Dixon remembered setting his beer on the counter and readying a plan of attack 
should the men’s antics get violent.
 But true to form, Quentin not only served them but befriended them by the end of the night. 
Dixon had never seen a display of mental jujitsu like that in his life, and from that point on knew 
that Mr. Cook could handle himself no matter what or who the world wanted to throw his way.
 Dixon smiled and yelled back.
 “I can’t stay out all night, and I know that this one-drink thing with you is the start of a terrible 
but entertaining idea.”
 Quentin laughed.
 “Not like that. I’ve got an early start tomorrow and the night off, so I’m actually just going to be 
one or two and done.”
 “I heard the ‘or’ in there,” Dixon said, crossing the street and giving his friend a hug.
 “Well, I’m not a priest or anything. I think it’s important to leave yourself options.”
 Quentin’s trailer was banana-boat yellow, with a teal-blue door, and a small army of Angela’s 
potted plants on the wooden steps.
 “The lotus is new,” Dixon said.
 “Angela brought it over this morning.”
 Dixon leaned against the railing and sipped his drink.
 “Funny how conversation changes for guys as we get older. When you’re younger it’s girls, girls, 
girls. Then it’s work. Then it’s plants.”
 Quentin’s laugh was easy, and he adjusted the sleek black frames on his face.
 “It’s a beautiful plant, isn’t it?”
 Dixon nodded.
 “Hey, Angela came by looking for you earlier,” Quentin said, trying to hide his grin behind the 
lip of his glass.
 Dixon was noncommittal.
 “Back to girls pretty quick, huh?”
 Quentin laughed and rattled the ice in his glass.
 “I don’t know. I think it’s unavoidable. She asked if you would be home later tonight.”
“What did you tell her?” Dixon asked, trying to play down some of the enthusiasm in his voice.
 In the canal, a fish broke the surface and slapped back into the water, apparently needing to just 
get out of the house for a second. Maybe a fight with the spouse. Maybe a desire to get a closer 
look at all those things it always saw floating over it.
 “I told her I thought so.”
 “Did she seem …?”
 Quentin cut him off.
 “Interested in that fact?”
 Dixon grinned, and Quentin let him off the hook.
 “She did.”
 “Good to know.”
 Quentin reached over to the bottle on the glass tabletop and poured a stream over the remaining 
ice cubes. He held the bottle out to Dixon and topped him off. They clanked their glasses 
together and smiled, Quentin the first to speak.
 “It is good to know … for you.”