As Eric stepped from the door, out on the water, beyond the postage-stamp lot, a wave broke to sputtering foam, aglitter across green sea beside them, advancing shoreward with the inexorability of distilled time itself. As Eric reached the bottom step, it vanished under the shoal, and, as he put runner to gravel, he heard it /roooosh/ the shingle. (Thirty yards out, another wave gathered.) He thought:

I'm going to remember /that/ wave for the rest of my life!

He recalled it a dozen times that day--and half a dozen that night; and even a few the next day. But within the month its sound and look had melded with so many thousands he'd seen, both outside where Barb worked and from the Harbor's main docks and marina and local beaches, from places among the trees that looked over the sea, some in leaden storms and some on glass clear mornings, neither that first nor any other could retain its specificity.