The blue woman froze, still bent over with her head between the man’s legs. The slurping sound had stopped.

Jiro swallowed.

“Um,” Jiro said, slowly getting to his feet. “Terribly sorry to interrupt.”

The woman stood and turned to face him.

“Oh no, not at all,” she said. Her voice was thick and low, like that of a man. There was something hypnotic about it, as if she were whispering to him from somewhere deep below the ocean’s surface.

“Is everything alright?” He immediately regretted his question.

She looked at the man lying still beside her. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Then she looked past Jiro, to the pool where Aya and the others lay.

“You mean these things?” she said. “Yes, they are fine. I found them swimming. Or failing to swim, rather. So I saved them from near death.”

“I see …” Jiro thought about the trails in the sand. “And after you saved them … you pulled them into this cave.”

“That’s right.”

Jiro cleared his throat.

“They lost their swimsuits in the current?”

“Oh yes. Terribly strong current out there, under the rocks. Undertow, is that what you call it? Children drown all the time. The bodies look terrible.”

Jiro wondered if it would be better to ditch his flip-flops. Maybe he could run faster that way.

“Why were you, uh, slurping that man’s, um … Why were you slurping him?” he finished lamely. That was usually how things ended, when you spoke just to have something to say.

“Man? Oh, you mean this thing here. Man, woman: I can never tell them apart. Same size, same flavor. I don’t know how you do it. As for what I was doing … Yes, I was performing, oh what do you call it … PCR?”

“CPR.”

“Yes that. Anything to save a life you know.”

“You’ve got something on your chin.”

A long tongue slithered out of the woman’s mouth and slowly began to lap up the fluid. The tip of her tongue, he noticed, was split down the middle, as if someone had cut into it with a knife. The two heads moved independently like those of a hydra. When the heads finished cleaning, they slid eagerly back into the woman’s mouth, leaving behind a white, half-translucent smudge.

He coughed awkwardly. “And, uh, there’s a bit more there, under your eye.”

The woman’s tongue slid out again, moving deftly to lap up the fluid off her cheekbone. Her cheeks sparkled in the sunlight like mica powder. She had an oval face, with eyes that turned slightly upward at the ends, kind of like the kabuki actors Jiro had seen in movies. She didn’t look very Japanese, but then again, Jiro didn’t know much about Japan.

I hope what she just licked up isn’t what I think it is, thought Jiro. As if to answer him, the man moaned and rolled to his side, muttering something and smacking his lips happily.

“Thanks,” the woman said. “Must have gotten some on me during the, uh, PRC.”

“CPR.”

“Yes.”

“I thought that, uh, CPR was usually done to the, you know …”

The blue woman was looking at him. Her pupils, Jiro noticed, were gold. And the irises … They weren’t round but instead taller than they were wide, like the eyes of a cat or a lizard. Not good.

“Awfully nice of you to save them,” Jiro said, taking a step back.

“I try to be of service.”

Jiro swallowed. He could feel the saliva go down his throat, heavy and hard, almost like the core of a peach. He thought about the karate classes he had taken in the fourth grade. Once a purple belt, always a purple belt, right? Then he thought about the trails in the sand. About what kind of power it would take to drag along four grown humans at once. And about why this woman was blatantly lying to him.

“So you’re all good here? You’ll make sure everyone gets back alright?”

“Of course. When I’m done with them.”

“Done … Hmm. Yes. Well. It was great to meet you,” Jiro said. “Always an honor to meet a Good Samaritan. But I don’t want to interrupt your, uh, activities. So I’ll just be on my way. I’ve got important work to do you know. Proprietor of an important business. Always busy in the service industry. Now if you’ll excuse me …”

He turned to go.