“I don’t mean it’s interesting that they float,” Teddy said. “It’s interesting that I know about them being there. If I hadn’t seen them, then I wouldn’t know they were there, and if I didn’t know they were there, I wouldn’t be able to say that they even exist. That’s a very nice, perfect example of the way—”
“Teddy,” Mrs. McArdle interrupted, without visibly stirring under her top sheet. “Go find Booper for me. Where is she? I don’t want her lolling around in that sun again today, with that bum.”
“She’s adequately covered. I made her wear her dungarees,” Teddy said. “Some of them are starting to sink now. In a few minutes, the only place they’ll still be floating will be inside my mind. That’s quite interesting, because if you look at it a certain way, that’s where they started floating in the first place. If I’d never been standing here at all, or if somebody’d come along and sort of chopped my head off right while I was—”
“Where is she now?” Mrs. McArdle asked. “Look at Mother a minute, Teddy.”
Teddy turned and looked at his mother. “What?” he said.
“Where’s Booper now? I don’t want her meandering all around the deck chairs again, bothering people. If that awful man—”
“She’s all right. I gave her the camera.”
Mr. McArdle lurched up on one arm. “You gave her the camera!” he said. “What the hell’s the idea? My goddam Leica! I’m not going to have a six-year-old child gallivanting all over—”
“I showed her how to hold it so she won’t drop it,” Teddy said. “And I took the film out, naturally.”
“I want that camera, Teddy. You hear me? I want you to get down off that bag this minute, and I want that camera back in this room in five minutes—or there’s going to be one little genius among the missing. Is that clear?”