By seven the pier is already listening. The walruses have been issued tiny conductor's batons for their whiskers. Each mustache greets the water first, nods to the nearest boat, and only then keeps a single soft beat.
We asked at the kiosk. "I clapped too soon," said the woman who sells buns still warm in the paper. "The whiskers looked at me the way a choir looks at someone who has opened the page too early. Then they started over, very kindly, from the greeting."
The pier keeper left a card by the bollard: if the boat has not nodded, please do not hum. The next morning a neighbor came back with the same thermos and waited through the greeting, the nod, and the one soft beat. He said the tea tasted as if it had been counted out.