* * *

THE READER IS then informed that, not across town or county line or anything so specific, there is a moustache. And a beard. A very weak beard. This is the meager brand of facial hair found on the cheeks of adolescent boys and moderately hirsute women. But the face is not a juvenile or feminine one. There are wrinkles—shallow grooves—at the corners of the eyes and across the forehead. The skin is light acorn; in the sun, which might now be shining briefly through the clouds, the face appears wet, and almost golden. The hair is straight, dark, shorn close, bristly. The face’s features are still, quiet. Except for the nostrils. The nostrils flare and contract, as if a lesson on how to flare and contract nostrils. Far below the nostrils, the tongues of several men and women lick a set of male genitals, and to the left and right and below and above them more tongues and breasts and penises and vaginas and anuses rub on and in each other, their bodies, like rolling pins, flattening the soft green grass. This goes on for days, weeks, with a few of them taking breaks beside a bay shore only to play on the skins of bongos, rhythmically, pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat, matching the rise and fall of the other naked bodies. Finally, the man with the flaring nostrils stops his flaring and his mouth opens wide, gasping for air as he rolls onto his back and drifts asleep on the grass, the white clouds in the sky above shifting and aligning to form letters and then words. Soon the clouds say ‘Xiang: you stupid hippy. Quit wasting all your time on sex.’

* * *

PART SEVEN: DANNY (the giant) has taken a job at the coast diner, slinging shakes and fries. His mobility, however, is limited. Yet, just as the surfboard has become a nuisance, it has also become an attraction, and Danny wisely quits the diner. Fat Midwestern children with sunburns pay three dollars to have their pictures taken standing on the board as Danny moves it like a rocking horse. The board is numb.
     It feels good.
     Danny begins taking Percosets he filched from an ex-girlfriend with a torn ACL.
     While wandering lamely the dunes, Danny wonders why he was so quick to start a Percoset habit. He feels a hole, a hole in his heart. Or his leg. This hole may represent the ocean, but it may not. Danny has been wandering the dunes for days and passes out. He awakes to a woman who dabs water on his forehead. Shortly, this woman moves into a trailer bungalow with Danny.
     When she caresses the board while they watch TV infomercials, Danny feels his arms and legs which he swears he hasn’t felt in weeks.
     They feel thick. And hollow.

* * *

EXPECTANTLY, WE RETURN to Xiang, who has sworn off sex for good and who has been holed up in his garage, wearing nothing but flared jeans, for months, secretly building a device out of wood, metal, plastic, and sand. When he’s done, he opens the garage door and shouts through a megaphone to lure passers-by to his curiosity. Trains of SUVs loaded with pickaxes, shovels, and tin trays roll steadily past and into the hills; none of them heed Xiang’s calls. He lazily flips the switches on the invention: it doesn’t work anyway.
     Xiang considers going to a brothel to clear his mind, but quiets these urges by examining a keepsake his mother gave him long before she died. A photo of two arms, each of a different child, each reaching for opposite edges of the photo, the portion between the two arms burned away, the center rippled and black like the surface of a burnt log. It was said that one of the arms was Xiang’s, and it often comforted him to contemplate the photo skin and photo bones, comparing them to his own, wondering which was his, and who the other arm belonged to. Now, in his driveway, Xiang sees the foolishness in unlocking the mysteries in machines when his past is riddled with them. He has always longed to place a body on the other arm in the photo, but now he understands that he must finally seek out the place depicted in its background: a concrete wall with waves painted on it.

* * *

DANNY SEES A very good movie and begins carrying a George Clooney figurine in his pocket.
     Danny has been popping Percosets with regularity, and the bottle has emptied. The surfboard slowly begins to tingle. Danny searches the trailer for something to occupy his mind or the hole somewhere in his body. He stays up all night reading Johny Got His Gun. When he drifts to sleep on the couch, he dreams his board has been severed from his body, and rats are gnawing on his toes, which may in fact be his knees. "God!" he yells, waking himself, sickened.
     In a fit of rage, Danny throws Clooney past the lowered ragtop of his new Mustang.
     Danny begins taking advice from a phone psychic named Vendetta, who predicts Danny will soon have someone new, but strangely not new, entering his life. Danny is curious and expectant, but chooses not to tell his girlfriend.

* * *

FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT of Xiang, who, in his years of travel, has lost most of his hair, but still wears a long ponytail from the back of his neck:
     I tire of my search for the wall of waves, for the other photo arm, and yet, at the same time, there is nothing I want more to do. But I am a hungry traveler: for food and for love. I spot an organic café and take up at a tiny table that barely embraces my book (the photo is a bookmark) in the café’s corner. I am giving the woman across the way ‘the eye.’ She is entirely indifferent. The females here are all bohemian sophisticates—never not in charge.
     I might act indifferent in return, quietly insisting on the brand of pathetic friendship based on apparent chance encounters at the STD clinic where she works. She would come to respect me not only for my (perceived) indifference toward her but also for my opportune, seemingly spontaneous, perspectives on the subjects of loss and childhood and damaged photographs. She would begin to burn with curiosity of my life, of which I would remain remarkably reticent. In what would be a slow and meticulous process of her giving and me not taking, one that would coalesce over several purgatorial months, I would come to signify a section that had been burned, without her knowing, from a photo from her future.
     Alternately, I could badger her.
     - Did you get that necklace in the city? I ask.
     She glances at me, but doesn’t answer.

* * *

WHILE THE MONEY Danny has collected from the rocking board photos has been modest, his fame has multiplied exponentially, predominantly in the Midwest. Danny does not realize this until he begins seeing highway billboards of plastic men on surfboards, wearing brand name jeans or smoking brand name cigarettes or eating brand name cereal. Danny hires a lawyer and agent, who both worry that it may be too late to capitalize on his already over-exposed likeness, outside of lawsuits, that is. But Danny’s prayers are answered, as he quickly lands a movie deal opposite Gwenyth Paltrow.
     Months later, as Danny departs his palatial estate in the hills (the trailer and the girlfriend have been dumped) for an autograph signing at a nearby Mission, he reminisces about the psychic, Vendetta, who correctly predicted Gwenyth, and those of her inner circle, would enter his life and move in with him. He has deduced this hole of his does not represent the ocean, which he nevertheless wishes to not stand atop again.
     At the Mission, addressing the crowd, Danny’s bare arms shine like a dashboard.
     Looking at this, an Indian becomes alarmed: the plastic is bubbling.
     Danny’s arms are moved out of the sunlight.

* * *

THE NEXT THREE sections feature Xiang in threadbare T-shirts, accompanied by severe body odor, diligently returning to work on his invention. He subjects the device to several difficult tests, including the following Spanish language exam.

FILL IN THE BLANKS WITH THE CORRECT SPANISH NOUNS:

(albaricoques) (papera) (buscadors) (árboles) (pueblos) (amasada) (ladrillo) (campana) (árboles frutales) (bellotas) (criatura) (ganaderos) (alambres) (pistas) (Amazonias) (computador) (almeja) (tiempo) (cazadors) (casas)

Our imaginary island is populated by pagan [         ]. It is before [         ]. When we wish to eat, we carry the fish and [         ] from the ocean, pound the acorns into [         ], and pick berries. The Mission [         ] now tolls, it is time to eat, pray, work. Homes may be made of tile and adobe [         ]. Our oak [         ] have disappeared, the [         ] are no more. We are met with chicken pox, [         ], and measles. There are rumors of fur [         ], cattle [         ], and gold [         ]. We are linked by telegraph [         ] and railroad [         ]. The [         ] have swelled. We see miles of planted fruit trees, [         ]. We must pit prunes, cut [         ], boil cherries. The hills are filled with subdivisions of turreted gingerbread [         ]. If something confuses us, we can now ask the [         ]. The heart of every [         ] is a metronome given one billion beats.

     The machine gets every answer correct. What’s more, the machine has intimated to Xiang that Spanish was once likely the lingua franca of both himself and his fire-eaten companion from the photo, who he is more determined than ever to one day converse with.

* * *

STILL AT THE Mission, Danny reads from something he scribbled on a matchbook cover on his way over this morning:
     We have had uncommon good health and luck on our route, not having had a case of sickness in the company for the last four weeks. The country is becoming very hilly; the streams rapid, more clear, and assuming the character of mountain streams. The air is very dry and clear, and our path is lined with wild sage and artemisia.
     The crowd compliments Danny on his observances. He begins weeping. He tells them the words on the matchbook actually read:
     It was predicted someone new but not new would enter my life. I now suspect that person is myself, and yet I continue to grieve for something or someone unknown to me. The ocean may not be a place for men on small pieces of wood or fiberglass, but this coast is most certainly not for men bearing cellulose or fiberglass hearts.
     The crowd is doubly impressed and cries for Danny. With their support, he pledges to pursue his enigmatic emotional journey and to avoid the water. A few intimate members of the crowd finger his surfboard.
     Danny’s eyes are riveted to their fingers.

* * *

THE READER THEN experiences an even more rapidly delivered split-narrative:
     Xiang is seen doing his Tai chi and studying his photo.
     Danny is taken to closely examining mirrors.
     Xiang closes his eyes.
     Danny bends to pick up a piece of torn or burned paper.
     Xiang’s feet sink deep into wet sand, the sun setting orange.
     Danny’s surfboard senses waves and a salty breeze lapping at its side.
     Xiang extends one hand to cup a mountain peak.
     Danny’s torso is consumed by a patch of smog.
     Xiang spots half of a figure, along the coast, in the distance.
     Danny’s torso emerges from the smog and he eyes a faint silhouette, on the horizon.
     Xiang peers at a man-made object, familiar, at the figure’s base.
     Danny squints and considers waving.
     Xiang lays his hands out to feel taps of rain.
     Danny’s head is encircled by sea birds.

* * *

THE NEXT CHAPTER finds Xiang at a table in a convention hall, calmly finishing a bowl of crab soup. When he is done, he eats the bowl, as it is made of bread. He flips the makeshift Lunch Break sign at the table, and dozens of convention attendees again rush to purchase his machines. Xiang sells out in two hours. Pleased with himself, he picks up his bongos and begins to play, and with each flattened and cupped palm, one, the other, one, the other, Xiang experiences an inebriation of conventional hall harmony.
     Without noticing it, Xiang has stopped playing the bongos and is walking in the park, in the rain. He pulls his burned photo from his pocket, where it has been gobbed with chocolat au lait. There seems a dark chasm, not including the chocolat au lait smear, between Xiang and the photo. He now senses he may never recover the portion that turned to ash and probably drifted away in the wind. He puts the photo away and reviews the prospects of visiting the STD clinic yet one more time. The woman will be there. He’ll offer to make a mixed tape for her.

* * *

SEVERAL CHAPTERS THEN detail Danny experiencing temporal narrative as well as flashbacks to previous chapters. The reader is also allowed brief glimpses of Danny in future chapters. When the future is depicted, the narrative appears in italics to indicate these are events which have not yet occurred.
     G carries Danny to the shore and boards his plank. G looks expectantly to Danny. Danny is anxious, but tells G to place G’s feet wider.
     - That’s better, he says.
     - I wish I had one, says G.
     - You have no idea how naïve you sound.
     - I want to let the waves carry me to the end of the earth.
     - They won’t carry you anywhere.
     Danny can feel everything now, there is saltwater insidiously coating the board, and the flatness of G’s bare feet on the board is unnerving. They squeak and tickle him in a need-to-be-rough sort of way. They make him feel impenetrable, but hollow, a fiberglass obelisk. They make him feel like a Danny.