With her suit humming and teeth shivering, no one could hold her down.

A ram of buried sand flew up from beneath Marco and slammed into his chest, launching him and the two cases into the air. Vic heard an oomph escape from Marco’s lungs. She flowed herself up to the sand’s surface as Marco shot skyward, yelping now, waving his arms fruitlessly, an explosion of clothes around him like a flock of startled birds. Fuck. She’d hoped to send him up three feet. Marco went up thirty. Asshole was gonna break his neck.

Vic knelt and slid one hand into the sand. With her other hand, she adjusted the band around her forehead. She watched Marco plummet back to the earth, screaming like a crow, half a clothing shop raining down around him. He hit the flowing sand with a splash, and Vic had to avert her face from the grit. She flowed him up to the surface, but he was face down. Using the sand, she rolled him over, worried he’d blacked out, but Marco was spitting grit and coughing, his face up toward the sun. She froze him like that, partly submerged, shoulders pinned in hard pack, and crawled across the sand to lean over him.

“Fuck me—” Marco whimpered.

“Wow,” Vic said. “Still in the mood?” She ran her hand across the sand until it was over his crotch. “Maybe a few sand needles will take the edge off?”

“Please—” Marco said. “My ribs—”

Vic put a finger to her lover’s lips. “What I want to hear right now is the most goddamn convincing apology that pretty little mouth of yours has ever uttered. I want to fucking believe you. I want tears in those big brown eyes of yours. I want you to shed water for me. Say something to make my heart flutter. Go.”

A pair of pants struck the sand right by Marco’s face, knocking more sand into his mouth. He spit and sputtered and closed one eye.

“Not very convincing,” she said.

“I’m fucking sorry,” Marco told her. “It was goddamn stupid of me. I wanted to surprise you, just wanted to hold you down and kiss you so fucking hard because I love you. You’re the only one for me. I swear on all that’s holy I’ll never do it again, and I’ll rip the balls off anyone who tries—”

A pair of pink panties, caught in the wind, fluttered down and struck Marco in the face like a bright bird dive-bombing his worm-pink tongue. Marco yelped, the sound muffled by the underwear, and began shaking his head, trying to get it off. He spat and made blowing sounds. The panties fluttered but stayed in place. Vic covered her mouth and howled. She pounded the sand with the flat of her palm and rolled onto her side, doubling over with laughter.

Marco screamed for her to help. He shook his head back and forth, but Vic could barely see. She had a brief panic at the thought of not being able to stop laughing—ever. It was more difficult to breathe right then than it had ever been in the deepest of sand.

“Goddamnit,” Marco shouted through the underwear. “Help me!”

Vic managed to sit up straight. She wiped her eyes and looked down at her fingers. “Holy shit,” she told Marco, laughing and disbelieving. “You fucking made me cry.”

20 • A Scrounger’s Trade

Vic was still laughing fifteen minutes later. It took that long to round up the clothes scattered by the wind. She shook the sand out of every piece of underwear she found and asked Marco if he needed a new ker. While she howled, he ignored her. He seemed morose as they lugged the bags and her dive gear over a dune and to his sarfer. Marco had laid the mast back to make it hard to spot. A mast upright in the middle of nowhere was a homing beacon for other scavengers—or a warning to a girl that her boyfriend was gonna fucking prank her instead of just picking her up at the dive site like she asked. But she had gotten the last laugh. Was still laughing as they reached the sarfer.

“It totally isn’t as funny as you’re making out,” Marco said. He loaded her dive gear into his haul rack. “Maybe if the bag was full of clean clothes. Maybe then.”

“Oh, shit.” Vic grabbed his arm. She hadn’t smelled the clothes to see if they had been worn or not. The seals in those Samsonites were really that good.

“Yeah,” Marco said. “Shit is right.”

After half a minute, Marco had to help Vic up from the sand. Dabbing her eyes and seeing the tears there, she told Marco, “This is the happiest day of my life.”

“Yeah, you suck. Lesson learned and all that. And Jesus, can you please take it easy on who you tell?”

Vic smiled at him.

“Ah, fuck, Vic, I’m gonna hear about this for weeks.”

“Oh, hell no. This is going to last a lot longer than that. And if these clothes fetch a coin less for all the sand you got in them, that’s coin you owe.”

Marco looked like a kicked dog. Vic almost felt sorry for him. Almost. She loaded the black bag into the haul rack, and Marco did the same with the silver. Behind them, twin sets of ruts streaked their way across the dunes. Already, the lines in the distance were fading, filled in by the wind. Vic marveled, not for the first time, on all the wheeled conveyances she’d seen buried beneath the deep sand. To think there was some distant past or place where wheels made any sense—

“Ho, Marco!”

Vic turned. She saw where Marco was looking, hand shielding his eyes in the low morning sun. A figure stood atop a nearby dune, a silhouette with a tall lance in one hand, the other arm raised in salute. The mast of a sarfer could be seen jutting up beyond the dune, the sail tightly furled.

“While you were screwing around, someone spotted your sarfer,” Vic said.

“Shit.”

“Wait, is that Damien? Oh, he’s gonna love this.”

“Please, please, please,” Marco begged. “At least wait until we get to town. Or tonight when everyone’s drunk and no one will remember. Don’t let him be the first to know. Not Damien.”

Vic squeezed Marco’s neck and laughed. “Some freedom fighter you are.”

Marco tensed. “That’s just it. I’m a fighter.” He made a fist, and his great and tan bicep bulged, scars and tattoos straining.

Vic stopped smiling. “I was stressing the freedom part. You forget that, and all you are is fighting. I’ll tell who I want, when I want. Freedom, Marco. Don’t get like these assholes and fall in love with the fighting. Then you’re just setting off bombs because you like the noise they make.”

Marco didn’t say anything as Damien glissaded down the dune toward them, causing a gentle avalanche and using his spear for balance. He stomped over with a grin, and his eyebrows lifted when he spotted the two bags in the haul rack. “Jesus. Nice find, guys.” His eyes went to the trails left in the sand, quickly filling. “How the hell do you two score every time you go out? And way out in the middle of nowhere?”

Vic didn’t say that it was usually her scoring while Marco watched their things on the surface. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“Clothes?”

“Mostly underwear,” she said. And before Marco could respond, she added: “For the ladies.” She fought off a bout of giggles.

“Hey, my wife could use some. Maybe hook me up before you sell to Jimbo or Sandy and they get their squeeze. I’ll pay what they pay.”

“Slow down,” Marco said. “Don’t be in a rush to get our panties off us.” He laughed.

“Maybe they’re for him,” Vic said, teasing Damien.

“Yeah, fuck you two. And here I was getting ready to do you a favor. But I guess you can wait until you get to town to find out the news yourselves. To think I was gonna ask you to tag along—” He turned and marched back toward his sarfer.

“Wait. Tell us what?” Marco asked.

Damien held up his middle finger and kept walking.

“Tell us fucking what?” Marco demanded.

“I’ll trade you,” Vic called.

Damien slowed. He turned and glanced at the bags. “Trade for what?”

“Give me the news, and I’ll tell you the funniest story you’ve ever heard in your entire fucking life.”