Summary

Still in the flashback, the couple realizes that the lights they see belong to police vehicles, and a group of police officers pours out onto the sand. Some of them run into the water while the couple scrambles to dress themselves. They join the group of police officers just as they are pulling the body of a woman from the water. The narrator notes that her face was covered by her hair, and one of the officers says that she has been in the water for a while. When they pull the hair from her face, the narrator sees that she has her eyes closed and her face is swollen with either a bruise or a birthmark near her eye. The narrator is wearing his cutoff shorts and his girlfriend has wrapped herself in her Navajo blanket.

The narrator continues to describe the drowned...