Bethany Beach, Delaware, July 20, 2016

★★★★ A tow truck was circling the parking lot outside the window in the depths of the night, its flashing light coming through the blinds so insistently that it fully broke through sleep, at which point the strobe could be understood to be no truck at all but lightning, unimagined quantities of lightning, coming without break or pause. Minutes went by with no slackening, as water sluiced down the windows in a solid sheet. There were more than 100 flashes as the stopwatch on the phone counted 60 seconds, once it was even possible to think and count. The morning was calm under a dusty blue haze. The temperature reading seemed mild but the water was boiling back up out of the gravel margins of the street and the soggy fake turf of the miniature golf course. The coffee shop was planning to shut down at noon for lack of air conditioning, and there were grounds in the bottom of the iced coffee cup. In the afternoon, the skates or rays were jumping and flipping out where the ocean turned from greenish to bluish. An inflatable boat, loaded with children roasted brown by the sun, was steered by adults in water up to their knees. When something big—a skate? a dolphin?–swam closer to shore, the little children were put ashore so that older youths could paddle out to try to find it. There were dead insects in the top of the water and dead-looking jellyfish floating below, sloshing in and out with the waves. Back ashore, a small rabbit nibbled grass at the edge of the sand patch where the grill sat. The time came for the full moon to rise, but the shapeless blue on the horizon must have been clouds, and the only brightness that could be discerned was the flickering lights of a ship, all but out of view.