"Get it out, Fataqua," my brother said as he neared us. He had a towel in his hand and leaned over to wipe her mouth and then looked at me. "Who the fuck is Delicious?"

"Brian," I told him.

"I need ginger ale!"

"It's coming, Feliqua," I told her.

"So am I!" she moaned, and threw up again.

When I turned to go back into the water, Sylvan and Wendy were heading toward us, with Wendy very unstable on her feet. The sand was not her friend, and Sylvan was having trouble keeping them both upright at the same time. She stopped halfway to the lounge chairs and turned around to face the ocean. She pulled the back of her bathing suit in between her ass cheeks and started shaking her ass.

"Aaaahhahahahahahahhh," shrieked Delicious again.

"Oh, my Lord," Sylvan said, taking a step back and looking at me. "People wonder how the Caribbean was formed, Chels, and now I know. A black woman shook her ass, and a bunch of islands were created as aftershocks."

Paul instructed them to both bend over for a snapshot.

Wendy lost her footing. She didn't fall on her ass, which would be the obvious gravitational pull-probably for the entire island-but face-first, a header straight into the sand. Sylvan went down after her but managed to land on his side. Paul was the first on the scene with his camera in tow, and what he captured has been seen only in National Geographic. Two chocolate sand dabs, washed ashore.

There was sand in every crevice of Wendy's face. Her eyes, her ears, her nose. Brian grabbed one of the ginger ales that he'd brought for Feliqua and poured it over Wendy's head. "We're going to need a two-liter, Brian," Ray told him. "Sorry, I mean Delicious."

Ted had reappeared from the ocean and was running toward us yelling, "Oh, my God! Is she dead? Wait, keep her alive. I know CPR."

That was all Wendy needed to get her groove back. She was howling harder than any of us, but the sand was still pissed.

She was attempting to spit out some of the sand when we all played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board and carried her back into the ocean, where she could properly rinse off. Stephanie, of course, could assist with only one hand.

"Aren't you out of cigarettes yet?" I asked her.

"Stephanie, I didn't know you smoked!"

"Paul, shut up!" everyone yelled at the same time.

As luck would have it, the dip in the ocean was exactly what the doctor ordered for Wendy, because after that she was at least able to manage her footsteps in a more reasonable manner. We all sat in the water, exhausted, for a good hour before it started to get dark out, but Feliqua was not anywhere close to moving. She had stopped throwing up, sort of, but was firm about staying where she was. "Don't fucking touch me!" she yelled. Wendy said she needed help getting Feliqua to her room, and then she would be available to have dinner with us.

Sylvan volunteered to stay with the girls, and Stephanie announced that she had only two cigarettes left.

"It might be time to give it a rest, Steph," Paul told her. "Your breath is like eighty proof."

Stephanie walked off in a huff, and Eva followed her. Ray was floating on the noodles, watching everything from the water. Ted nudged me and said he'd like to talk to me privately. "In the ocean, please."

Once we were back in the water, Ray took two water noodles out from under him and handed them to us. "What an amazing day. I taught a man how to swim, and he took that knowledge and saved another person. I don't think I've ever felt more alive."

"That's fantastic, Ray," Ted told him, and then turned to me. "We need to discuss dinner. Are these women joining us?"

"I don't think Feliqua is having dinner tonight, Ted, but Wendy doesn't look like she misses many meals."

"Oh, my God!" exclaimed Steph. "Oh, my God!"

I looked back and saw Delicious, Paul, and Sylvan wheeling Feliqua on a chaise longue away from the beach up to the pool area. "I'll be back for dinner!" Wendy yelled over her shoulder as she mounted the steps to the hotel. The three of us ran out of the water and followed them.

"What are you doing?" Ted yelled. "Are you taking her to her room?"

"We're not fucking staying here. We heard there was a swim-up bar. Our hotel's down the beach!" Wendy told Ted. "You better put on your dancing shoes. I hear you move like Michael Jackson."

Boom was the sound the lounge chair made every time it hit a step.

Feliqua would groan a little each time. "Ow."

"This is some crazy shit," Wendy announced. "You white people are CUH-razy."

After getting Feliqua up the stairs, we had to pass the pool area, which to our surprise was holding a screening of Pirates of the Caribbean. Delicious and Sylvan put on their happy faces as they strolled through various couples watching a movie over a candlelight dinner.

"You guys," I whispered. "We can't wheel a black woman through a movie screening in a chaise longue. There's got to be some sort of law against that."

"We've got to get our girl into a taxi, Tracy. Chunky Chocolate is going to ride back with me to drop off my girl, and then I'll be heading back for that barbecue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A girl's gotta eat. I swam the shit out of that ocean today!"

There was no point in trying to make less of a scene than we were already making, as we were in full view of all the moviegoers. We just kept our heads down while we pushed a person in a chaise longue along the path in our bathing suits. I volunteered for Feliqua to sleep in Sylvan's room until I looked at Sylvan, who wasn't smiling. At least it looked like he wasn't smiling; it might have been too dark to tell.

A security guard came running over to us and handed me a bathrobe. "Mrs. Handler? Can we be of some help?" That's when Ted decided to make a quick left and go up to our room.

"We're good, thanks," I reassured him. "We're playing hide-and-seek. She's just pretending to be asleep." Wendy and I walked on either side of the chaise longue in order to stop Feliqua from falling onto the concrete. Paul was following closely behind, vacillating between picture mode and video mode. There was clearly too much footage to capture for any documentarian. We had to make sudden, corrective moves every time we hit a set of stairs or a proverbial speed bump, which would result in more grunts from Feliqua.

"This is the best fucking night of my life," Wendy shouted. "I think I might pee myself. Sylvan, you're gonna come with us in the taxi, right, motherfucker?"

"Aahhahahahahahhhh!"

"Brian, do you need me to give you the Heimlich?" I asked him.

"It's fucking Delicious, Tracy!" Wendy corrected me.

"Baby, I ain't gonna let nothing happen to you or Feliqua," Sylvan told her. "I'll come back to your hotel and make sure you are safe."

"Damn, you motherfuckers know how to party!" Wendy screamed. "Especially you, white bitch! I'm 'bout ready to piss myself!"

"You think you're going to pee yourself?" I snapped back at her. "Do you have any idea what condition I'm dealing with? I can't take much more of this. We just wheeled a person in a wheelbarrow off a beach, through a movie screening, and on our way to a lobby."

Feliqua grumbled again, and Delicious asked if she was okay. "It's too bumpy," she slurred.

Wendy was Feliqua's closest kin and had made it clear she would be speaking for her until Feliqua came back to life. "She's gonna be fine if this little anorexic bitch would stop her bitchin' and enjoy the beautiful night." I guess Wendy wanted to show me some affection, because her next move was to shoulder-check me into the bushes, which turned out to be a fitting place to relieve myself. When I was done, I rolled over and lay on the sidewalk while Paul took pictures of me in my own puddle.