And every love would always send the ship of my heart over the rolling sea

rushthatspeaks picked me up around two-thirty.

I gave them the hardcover of Iain Sinclair's Downriver (1991), which had presented itself to me at Lorem Ipsum on Saturday night when I walked in to look for a suitable gift. (Had I gone in without Rush in mind, I am willing to believe it would not have been there. Psychogeography is like that.) They gave me Jessica Mitford's Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (1979) and one of the best cards I have ever received, including the statements I love you for your . . . (check all that apply) taste in carrion, discreet fetishes, and unconventional pets books. We had talked about trying to find real barbacoa in Boston, but we'll go to the Lone Star Taco Bar some other night.

We went to Julian's.

We don't know who runs their hothouse, but we are very grateful to the supplier of year-round Cucurbita who enables Julian's to keep on their regular menu the beer-battered zucchini blossoms stuffed with five-spiced rice and garnished with tiny, perfectly seared zucchini and a sweet chutney I was the only one eating because of its onion content—I could eat around the little crunchy cubes, but they would have damaged my dining partner. Having been alerted of an onion allergy, the restaurant gets serious points for double-checking that the onion powder in their fish-and-chips batter was not going to be more than Rush's system could handle. It wasn't, which we are all very glad of, because their beer-battered local cod was crispy and puffy without being oily and the cajun fries and the cilantro-curry mayo were just a kind of ridiculous cultural fender-bender all on their own. I was a little worried about ordering the Southern-glazed pork belly over sweet corn grits, as it was an ingredient I had heretofore encountered mostly in small, intensely rich bites in other dishes and I didn't know if as a featured meat it would overwhelm; I waffled between it and the herb Spätzle with shrimp and avocado frites and I knew I wasn't going to order the chipotle-glazed seitan with grilled fennel and carrots, but I kept looking at it anyway. They were all specials of the night. (We'd watched the waitress write them on the board. The ice cream flavor in flowery script that looked like "Smurf Cream" turned out to be just that. We didn't get it. We're still pretty sure it would have been blue.) I went with the pork belly and regret nothing. It was incredibly tender, but not cloying; I was given a serrated knife to get through the glazing crust, but after that it pulled apart with a fork. It reminded me more than anything of a barbecue version of twice-cooked pork. Underneath were thin slices of grilled summer squash and under them the grits, which were almost a succotash with the density of corn and pepper and peas. For dessert, we asked about the trifle of the day, since trifle had come up in discussion of The Great British Bake Off on our way down. (Short version: I've never seen the show, Rush has been watching it since at least the second season, I'm really interested. It sounds like it actually cares about its chosen subject, which for reality television is rare.) What we actually got, Rush is pretty sure, was more like a parfait—a layer of chocolate syrup, a layer of chocolate mousse studded with chocolate chips, a layer of (vegan) whipped cream with slivered almonds and coconuts, which Rush was the only one eating because I can't digest that—but it was delicious and filled with theobromine and the server called it an Almond Joy, so we ate it.

The drinks were as interesting as the food. I could not turn down the Mexican Radio, with mezcal, maraschino, chili-infused honey, mole bitters, and sea salt; it had an incredible long, smoky, burnished finish. Rush's Batesy was a gin and tonic with tonic syrup and damson plum gin and they wrote down the names, because it was apparently their Platonic G&T. We split a Cocoloco with dessert: spiced rum, mango pulp, coconut water.

The television in the bathroom was not playing original Star Trek, as it had been on our last two visits; this time it was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) followed by a behind-the-scenes promo for the movie, complete with Mel Stuart comparing Wonka to Rube Goldberg. The action figures on the walls, however, remain unchanged.

We had intended to walk around Providence after dinner, but the weather was stultifyingly muggy, so we decided to cut straight to the sea. This was accomplished by unfolding a map of mostly Massachusetts from Rush's glove compartment, determining the routes that would take us in the direction of the Atlantic between Providence and Boston without running us into Fall River (as happened the last time we drove back from Rhode Island) or too far out on Cape Cod, and then taking any exits that looked like the right ones, after which we were in the hands of chance and dead reckoning. I texted derspatchel: "We are driving chaotically around Buzzards Bay looking for water." We found it. We ended up in Bourne, near the grounds of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The stadium was glaring; we think a game had just let out, which at least made it less suspicious-looking that we pulled first into the dead end of a parking lot somewhere beyond the USTS Kennedy, then reversed and followed the chain-link perimeter of the sports field until the wind underneath the turbine smelled sharply and strongly of salt flats, even more than the general air of night sea we had been following since the streets graded from strip mall to beachfront houses, saltbox roofs and boats in the back yard. I don't know the name of the cove we were looking across. There were signs about no shellfishing without a permit, which we had no intention of doing even with. There was a haze-yellow crook of moon and black mud rippling into black water, some ducks we never saw quacking unsubtly as we stepped out onto the sands. Commercial lights on the other side of the water, private homes with steps climbing up the seawall behind us. The tide was very low, but turning as watched. We found a gravelly strip to walk across, a jut of granite covered in barnacles and periwinkles and wet black seaweed to rest our feet on; we used Rush's open-toed sandals as a benchmark of when we needed to return to dry ground. I don't know how long we were there. I wasn't paying attention. Holding Rush-That-Speaks, breathing sea. The tide came in to our feet and we walked back to the car. I saw razor clam shells in the sand, the sea-matted feathers of a bird's outstretched wing. We stopped at the Cumberland Farms for gas, seltzer, and gratifyingly non-scary restrooms, and drove home by Route 3.

I left my umbrella in the front seat of their car, but it's not like I'm never seeing them again.