Body and Soul : Two strangers meet. The connection is instant and deep--a bond sealed with a lifesaving kidney transplant.

Frank Rembert stares into the curling, cresting waves as they chop into the Hermosa Beach pier.

“There are friends who pretend to be friends,” he says, leaning against the railing, “but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Rembert, reciting Proverbs 18:24, says the verse fits the moment, a sunlit afternoon on the pier shared by two men. One who needed a lifesaving kidney transplant, the other who could make it possible.

That was five years ago. At the time, Rembert, an airport skycap on long-term disability, was on dialysis, his condition diagnosed as chronic renal failure; he was not given much hope without a new kidney. For almost two years his name had been on waiting lists for a transplant. Depressed, Rembert grabbed his fishing rod and drove to the pier to forget his problems.

So did Rick Wilson.

For six weeks, a restless Wilson, a machinist then, says he had been inexplicably drawn to the pier. Sometimes he’d fish. Other times he’d wake up at 2 a.m. and walk the mile and a half to the pier, kicking trash cans along the way because he could not understand his compulsion to go there.

Then on a September morning in 1990, he met Frank Rembert.

Their lives would be changed forever.

Rembert, who was fishing a few feet away from Wilson, cut his finger while baiting a hook. Wilson gave him a Band-Aid, and a sudden and amazing friendship began. Two days later, Wilson offered Rembert a kidney. Eight months later--on April 17, 1991--the transplant was successfully performed, bonding the two men for life.

To get to Wilson’s kidney, surgeons had to remove one of his ribs. Wilson had part of the bone broken into pieces, polished and set on silver chains so that he and Rembert could wear them as necklaces--another tie that binds them as friends today.

“I never had a brother in my life, but I have one with Rick,” Rembert, 58, says, turning to Wilson, 42, who has joined him--fishing poles in tow--for a visit at the pier on the spot where they met.

“I’m closer to Frank than to my own brothers,” Wilson says of his friend. “I just feel that I can talk to Frank about anything. I can confide in him. I can share my deepest thoughts with him. I value his advice.”

“That’s what friends do for each other,” Rembert adds.

“Well, if we don’t help each other, who’s gonna help us?” Wilson says.

The men marvel--and talk nonstop with conviction, with affection--at how a chance meeting has led to their unique friendship. Indeed, a love story between friends, Rembert says.

He thinks back to the day they met.

“When I started bleeding from the hook, I said to my wife, ‘Yvonne, gimme something, I cut myself.’ Then this voice came to me from my left: ‘Would you like a Band-Aid?’ Johnny on the spot. That’s how I met Rick. Had never seen him before.

“We got to talking about different things, about everything,” he says. The two swapped stories, talking into the afternoon about their families, careers, dreams. About life. About death.

Rembert learned about Wilson’s love for music and his talent on the keyboard and drums and as a singer. Wilson learned about Rembert’s respect for the sea and his work with his church. The two discovered they had similar interests, including fishing and boating. Their wives, Yvonne Rembert and Kimberly Wilson, were from Dayton, Ohio.

“We just clicked,” Rembert recalls.

Says Wilson: “Our meeting each other had to be spiritual. I can’t explain it any other way.”

Wilson recalls asking Rembert the day they met, “ ‘What would it take for you not to be on dialysis?’ I couldn’t imagine him dying when all it took was to get a kidney in him--and I had one to give.”

“Hey, you gonna be here tomorrow?” Wilson asked Rembert as they left that day.

“No. I gotta go to dialysis,” Rembert said. “I’ll be here the next day.” The two traded phone numbers, stuff from tackle boxes. Rembert tore off a piece of a leopard-print cloth tied around his hat and gave it to Wilson.

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Thinking back, Wilson, controller for the store chain Pet Wonders store chain, says he never had second thoughts about donating a kidney. Blood type, tissue type, everything matched. No one in Rembert’s family, including his only son, Nick, 34, had matched.

The surgery was a go--paid for by Medicare and a health plan from Delta Airlines, Rembert’s employer at the time--despite opposition from Wilson’s parents and friends and his wife. Kimberly, Wilson says, couldn’t understand his willingness to give a kidney to a stranger. She threatened to leave him if he went through with the risks of major surgery.

The couple has two daughters, Kelly, now 15, and Katie, 14, both of whom call Rembert “Uncle Frank.” What if one of them needed a kidney one day? Wilson remembers his wife asking. She already had been through his motorcycle accident in 1984 when he broke his back, a leg and an arm. Almost two months later, they lost a daughter to sudden infant death syndrome. And two years later, Kimberly’s father died of a heart attack. But, after she found family members who matched their daughters, Kimberly Wilson relented.

“If it was gonna take losing my wife and friends, well, to me, life is more important than that,” Wilson says.

“Here was a man who wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread without telling his wife,” Rembert says. “He would not let anybody sway him from what he was doing for me. How can you not be close to someone like that?”

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Just about every day, the two talk on the phone--Wilson from his home in Lomita, Rembert from his in Windsor Hills. Sometimes, as many as four times a month, they share their story and talk about the importance of being a donor to groups at churches, men’s clubs and schools.

Whenever time permits, they fish. And, they worry about each other. Wilson is concerned about Rembert’s health--a bad heart and diabetes make for good and bad days. Rembert frets about Wilson’s new interest--scuba diving. Wilson is studying for his master’s license and hopes to give lessons this summer.

“I ask him, ‘Is it very dangerous?’ ” Rembert says. “Look, suppose your brother was jumping off the side of a boat, wouldn’t you worry?”

Says Wilson: “Frank is a funny guy. He’s the kind of guy that you talk to for five minutes and you want to shake his hand. He is just a sweetheart, someone you want to spend your free time with.”

And the future.

One day, the two hope to co-own a marina, fix boat motors, run a cafe.

“It’s a dream,” Wilson says.

“So was getting my kidney,” Rembert adds.

“I only loaned you this kidney,” Wilson often tells his friend, jokingly. “You better take care of it, because if you don’t, I’m gonna take it back.”

“See,” Rembert says, “you can’t feel anything but love toward this person.”

The two men turn to face the ocean, Point Mugu in the distance on one side, Redondo on the other. Nearby, a sea gull lands on the pier.

“Every time I take a breath and look out there,” Rembert says, his gaze on the Pacific, “I think about what Rick has done for me. I not only got a kidney. I got a friend for life.”