Текст книги "The Vacationers"

Автор книги: Emma Straub

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

“No,” Charles said. He let himself fall back into the water with a splash. “We’re trying to get a baby.”

Franny wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “Get a baby?”

Charles swam over and put his hands on Franny’s shoulders. She let her legs straighten out and put her hands on his hips, so they were both standing in the shallow end, in fifth-grade-dance pose.

“Get a baby. I mean, adopt a baby. We’re trying to adopt. It’s close. I mean, it could be. Someone picked us, and we said yes, and now we’re waiting.” Charles didn’t expect to be nervous telling her this, but then again, he supposed there was a reason he hadn’t brought it up until now. The process had been going on for a year! More than a year! And Charles had wavered from the beginning, he’d wavered until the day before, when he saw once again how patient Lawrence was, how loving, how forgiving. How could anyone want more than that in a parent, or a spouse?

Franny didn’t flinch. “My love,” she said, and closed the gap between them, pressing her wet body against his. She wanted to tell him that he would be a wonderful father, and that having her babies—that’s what they were to her still, her babies, no matter how old they got—was the best thing she’d ever done, no matter the stress and complications. She pulled back and saw that Charles’s eyes were wet, either with pool water or tears, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter, because hers were, too. “Yes,” she said. “That is a wonderful, wonderful idea.”

Day Twelve

JOAN ARRIVED PROMPTLY AT ELEVEN AS USUAL, BUT instead of coming inside, he stepped back and held the door open for Sylvia to come out. She blinked in the bright sunlight and put on her sunglasses, a pair of Franny’s from the 1980s, giant ones that took up half her face and made her look like either a grandmother or a movie star, she wasn’t sure which. She’d had trouble deciding what to wear for their day out and about, and had finally chosen a short cotton dress with daisies on it. Joan then opened the car door for her and jogged around to the driver’s side. The car was so much bigger than the two rental cars that it felt like a Humvee, but it was probably just a regular-sized sedan. It smelled like Joan’s cologne, and she inhaled deeply, wanting to fill her nostrils. Sylvia tucked her hands under her thighs on the leather seat. It was already hot outside, and unless Joan immediately put on the air-conditioning, she was going to sweat and stick to the seat and there would be gross red marks when they got up, like she’d been attacked by a giant octopus who happened to live in his car. Sylvia smiled when Joan sat down, turned the key, and a great big blast of cold air shot out of the vents.

“So, where are we going?” Sylvia asked.

“It’s a surprise,” Joan said. “But don’t worry, I won’t make you wear a blindfold. You can swim, yes? You have a bathing suit?”

“Yes,” Sylvia said.

“Then we go,” Joan said, and they were off.

Once she got over the embarrassment of her tennis lesson, Franny decided that she was a professional journalist, not a lovesick teenager, and called Antoni at the number he’d given her, an extension at the tennis center. She booked the late afternoon—not for tennis, for talking. She could always pitch it to someone later, if she felt like it: Travel + Leisure, Sports Illustrated, Departures. Sylvia was out with Joan, the lucky duck, and the boys seemed content to sit by the pool and read, Jim with a hat pulled low over his wounded eye and Bobby with a frown so deep she thought it might leave a scar. Charles and Lawrence were on Bobby duty—making sure he didn’t hurt himself or, worse yet, call a taxi and book the first flight back to Florida. Franny wanted him there—miserable or not. It was the same philosophy she’d had about the children drinking alcohol as teenagers: better in her house, where she could keep an eye on it, than in the streets, where they might get arrested. She’d presented her afternoon out as work, but she wasn’t sure. Franny patted Jim on the arm and then drove herself back to the tennis center, stalling only once.

Antoni was waiting for her in the office, his arms crossed. Instead of his handsome gym teacher outfit, he was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans and a white button-down shirt that made his skin look as if the sun had kissed each pore individually. His sunglasses hung around his neck on the cord, but when she came in, he pulled them off over his head. Antoni walked toward her, his hand outstretched. When Franny met him in the middle of the room, she was surprised to find herself being pulled even closer, and Antoni quickly kissed her on both cheeks.

“Oh,” Franny said. “Isn’t that a lovely way to start the day.”

The phone rang, and the girl behind the desk picked it up and started speaking quickly in Spanish. Antoni ushered Franny back in the direction of the parking lot. When they were outside, Franny realized that they hadn’t made an actual plan—clearly he didn’t expect her to play, but they hadn’t talked about what they’d do while they talked. That was her favorite part of interviews: the starlet who scarfs down a plate of french fries in her favorite diner; the chef who walks around his small town with his dogs nipping at the heels of his wellies, a sandwich in his pocket. Franny liked to see what people ate.

“Have you had lunch?”

Antoni looked at his watch. “No, it’s early. Are you hungry? I’ll take you to the best tapas on Mallorca. Tourists aren’t allowed, but for me, they’ll make an exception. First we have a tour of the center, then we eat.”

“Well, yes,” Franny said, though Antoni was already walking through the lot and toward the chain-link fence at the far end. He strapped his sunglasses back on his head, and pulled a baseball cap out of his back pocket. Franny’s sandals thwacked against the ground, forcing her to walk with her knees jutting forward like a child playing dress-up.

There were thirty courts in all, in two long rows on either side of the administrative office. They ran camps for children, more serious training for competitively ranked juniors, and lessons for adults who were hopelessly past their prime but still interested in getting a better serve. Antoni looked at Franny when he mentioned the serve. Nando Filani was their most famous export, but Antoni was clearly proud of the center’s entire staff. Every time they passed a lesson in progress, or a sweating teenager hitting ball after ball, Antoni would clap twice and then nod or offer a few words of encouragement. Nando’s name was on the door, but it was Antoni’s clubhouse. Franny took notes that she doubted she’d ever use: Sound of auto tennis-ball machine. Sneakers sliding on dusty clay courts. Red ankles, white socks. AV/peacock, feathers extended.

She’d been writing a bit over the last few months, what would ultimately wind up condensed into a first chapter, or a prologue, if she kept it at all. That was where the anger lived, the hurt. The rants about Jim and the sanctity of their union. It was crazy, what young people believed was possible, what so many earnest twenty-three-year-olds took for granted about the rest of their lives. Franny’s parents had been married for a hundred years, and she doubted that either of them had ever strayed, but what did she know? What did anyone know about anyone else, including the person they were married to? There were secret parts of every union, locked doors hidden behind dusty heavy drapes. Franny thought she must have them, too, somewhere deep inside, drawers of forgotten indiscretions. She certainly hoped so. It wasn’t any fun to be on the other side, to be the wronged party. Franny liked the idea of doing a little bit of wrong. Maybe that’s what the book would be, a memoir in the future tense. A Catalogue of My Future Sins. A middle-aged woman’s post-divorce sexual reawakening. There would be a mirror on the cover.

Antoni was speaking to a student, a young girl, maybe twelve years old. She had the steely gaze of a professional but hit two slightly wobbly backhands in a row. He stood behind her, his back at the fence, and murmured words of correction. Her third shot sliced through the air like a Ginsu knife.

“Sí,” he said, and clapped twice. Franny clapped twice in response, and he looked over at her and winked.

The roads were faster on the back of a motorcycle, the turns sharper. Jim hadn’t been on the back of a bike since he was in college, and the physical logistics were more challenging. His arms were wrapped around the pediatrician’s thick waist, and his helmet kept knocking against Terry’s. It seemed unlikely they would end up anywhere but at the very bottom of a very steep cliff, but after only about twenty minutes of silent prayer, Jim felt the vibrations of the motor slow beneath him. He opened his eyes and saw the gate for the Nando Filani International Tennis Centre. Once they’d reached a complete stop, Jim tugged off his helmet.

“This is it,” he said. As requested, Terry had stopped outside the entrance, some twenty feet down the road.

Terry tipped the bike over to one side so that Jim could dismount. He swung his left leg over the back of the bike and felt something pop. Riding motorcycles—hell, even just getting off a motorcycle—seemed to be a younger man’s game, but Jim didn’t want to appear too stodgy. Ignoring the pulled feeling in his groin, Jim walked over to the stone wall and peered into the tennis center. He could see the parking lot, which was all he really needed. That way he could see if Franny and her Don Juan took off. Jim wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to follow his wife, but he had. It wasn’t sweet or romantic. It was possessive, and a little bit desperate, and he knew it. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that he kept Franny in his sights as long as he could, even if it meant giving Terry a bear hug for the next few hours.

Terry was used to sitting on his bike on the side of the road, taking in the scenery, and didn’t object to waiting. He closed his eyes and turned his ruddy face toward the sun. The bike wasn’t large enough for Jim to sit on without feeling like things had taken a turn for the truly intimate, and anyway, he couldn’t stop pacing. He walked up and down the road beside the entrance. The shoulder wasn’t wide enough for a car, but the bike tucked in nicely, allowing the regular traffic to zoom by. Every now and then a car would slow and pull into the parking lot of the tennis center, and every now and then, a car would pull out. When that happened, Jim would duck behind the bike as quickly as possible, or bend over as if he were inspecting the back tire. Terry would peer into the car, and say “Nope” if Franny wasn’t in it. This happened three times, until Terry said “Yep.” Jim stayed crouched behind the bike, his back facing away from the entrance, until the car turned onto the road, and then he climbed on the back of the bike as quickly as possible, wrapping his arms around Terry with genuine affection.

“Let’s go,” he said, and Terry revved the engine. Jim had never been a car guy, or a speed guy, but he was starting to understand the appeal of life on the blacktop. If he hadn’t cashed in his chips on Madison Vance, he might have splurged on a midlife crisis on wheels. He could see it so easily—he and Franny zipping up I-95, or smaller, prettier roads, taking in the fall foliage al fresco, at a sixty-mile-per-hour clip. He’d get her a helmet in whatever color she wanted, though of course she would want black, or maybe gold. Franny Gold. That was her name when they met, Franny Gold, Franny Gold, Franny Gold. He’d always loved her name, even though Franny joked that it was “shtetl chic.” How could you do better than gold? Terry turned the bike around slowly, and then they were off, Antoni’s BMW directly ahead of them. When he turned, they turned. When he stopped, they stopped. Jim couldn’t see what was directly in front of them—that was just the back of Terry’s helmet—but he watched the arid countryside turn into the streets of downtown Palma. They were on the ring road by the marina, curving underneath the shadow of the cathedral. Jim wished he knew what they were talking about, how much thicker Antoni’s accent had gotten since he left the spotlight. He prayed briefly for some sort of brain injury but then retracted the prayer from the record. Franny had done nothing wrong. If she wanted to sleep with a handsome Mallorcan, he wouldn’t stop her.

Joan had four CDs in his car: Tomeu Penya’s Sirena, Enrique Iglesias’s Euphoria, Maroon 5’s Hands All Over, and One Direction’s Take Me Home, which he claimed belonged to his younger sister. They started with One Direction, at Sylvia’s request, and Joan tried not to nod in time with the beat. It was a perfect day—warm and breezy, and once they were driving, they didn’t even need the air-conditioning anymore. Both Joan and Sylvia rolled down their windows and let the actual air do the trick. Sylvia’s hair whipped around her face like a blond tornado, but she didn’t care. When she’d had her fill of pop confection, she ejected the CD and put in the Tomeu Penya, the one person she hadn’t heard of. In the photo on the CD cover, Penya (she assumed) looked like a creepy hitchhiker, in the same way that Neil Young looks like a creepy hitchhiker. A song began—Joan hit fast forward to the second track, and Sylvia clapped along.

“This sounds like a lullaby by a guy in a tiny jacket playing in the corner of a Mexican restaurant.”

Joan looked at her as if she’d called his mother a whore.

“What? Do you actually like this?”

Joan shook his head, which at first Sylvia took as him agreeing with her, but his face turned red, and that was clearly not the case. “This is Mallorcan music,” he said, pointing at the stereo. “This is our national, country music.”

“Right. And everyone knows that country music sucks, Taylor Swift notwithstanding. Makes perfect sense.” She turned the CD case over in her hand. “Wait, we have to listen to the ‘Taxi Rap.’” Sylvia hit the forward button a few times and waited for Tomeu to start rapping about taxis, which he did.

“Oh my God,” she said. “This is like seeing your grandfather naked.”

Joan slammed the stop button, silencing the car. “You are such an American. Some of us have actual pride in our history, you know! You sound so stupid!”

Sylvia wasn’t used to being yelled at. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the window. “Whatever,” she said, until she could think of something more cutting.

“There are five languages in Spain, plus dialects, did you know that? And Franco tried to demolish all of that. And so yes, it is important that we have a Mallorcan singer, who sings Mallorcan songs, even if they are sometimes not the best.”

Sylvia sat as far back against the seat as possible, as if she were in the dentist’s chair. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not all about your swimming pool and whether or not your brother is an asshole,” Joan said.

“You’re right,” Sylvia said again, and said good-bye to the idea of Joan ever coming close enough to kiss her again, and to the idea that the rest of the day would be any good whatsoever. She almost told him to turn around and take her home, but she feared it would make her seem too petulant, and so she just kept her mouth shut and stared out the window.

The restaurant was on a pier, and shabby in the way that Franny liked, with tablecloths that were soft from being washed a thousand times, and dusty decorations hanging on the wall. It wasn’t for tourists—there was no English menu, no German menu, only Spanish. The waiter brought them two glasses of wine and a plate of olives and fresh bread. Antoni took his hat off and put it on the empty chair beside him. There was a faint mark across his forehead that Franny thought was from the hat, but quickly realized was a tan line.

“Do you enjoy coaching? It must be exciting to work with Nando.” Franny let a piece of bread soak up some olive oil and then dropped it into her mouth.

Antoni took a short sip of wine. “It is good.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but Antoni turned his attention to the menu. A moment later, the waiter returned, and he and Antoni had a brisk exchange. Franny thought she understood the word pulpo and the word pollo, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Did you ever think about leaving Mallorca?” she asked. “When you were playing on the tour, you must have gone all over the world. Was there ever another place that spoke to you? You know, somewhere you wanted to stay?” She cupped her hand under her face. “Do you have any kids?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” Antoni said. “Or maybe you’re still recovering from your brain injury.”

Franny laughed and patted herself on the head, which did indeed still have quite a lump, but Antoni didn’t smile. He wasn’t kidding.

Joan and Sylvia stopped for a coffee in Valldemossa, a charming little town with pitched cobblestone streets and a robust number of tourists wearing backpacks and Coppertone. They sat outside and drank their coffees out of proper little cups, which made Sylvia feel like she’d been a hobo all her life, carrying disposable paper cups down the street. Mallorcans knew how to slow things down. After their coffees were done, Joan directed them up a small hill to the monastery where George Sand and Frédéric Chopin had spent a miserable winter.

“Seriously, if you were going to move into a monastery with your boyfriend . . .” Sylvia said. “No, even if it was in the summer, that still seems like a bad idea.”

Despite scolding her in the car, Joan seemed happy to play tour guide. He pointed out everything—ikat fabric in a shop window that was made on the island; powdery ensaimadas, even better-looking than the ones Franny had made; wild olive trees twisted into snarling shapes. He pointed out cats dozing in the sun. When Sylvia began to fan herself, he produced a bottle of water. Every time she accidentally brushed against his arm, Sylvia felt an electric jolt running the length of her body. It wasn’t that he was perfect for her, or even that they had so much in common. Sylvia had more in common with the sullen girl selling the pastries, she was pretty sure, but that didn’t matter. Joan was as handsome as a man in a Calvin Klein ad, one of the ones where it looked like clothes had never been invented, and thank God. He could have been steering a sailboat wearing only a skimpy pair of underwear and no one would have complained. Complained! Tourists would have paid money to have their photographs taken with him. Sylvia doubted that she would ever be so close to anyone that naturally good-looking ever again. The odds just weren’t good.

It was almost time for lunch, and Joan had a place in mind. They were driving farther north, to the water, but he wouldn’t say more. He put on the Maroon 5 CD and sang along.

“You know Maroon 5?”

“They’re okay, yeah,” Sylvia said. In her normal life, she would have made fun of him, but now she felt like a stupid American who no longer had the right to say if things were good or bad.

Joan took this as encouragement and turned up the volume. He danced in his seat as he drove, mouthing the words. Sylvia couldn’t tell if he was being serious or ironic, but decided it didn’t matter, some people were beyond reproach. They drove for almost an hour, on roads that made her wish she’d packed a Dramamine, before Joan made a sharp turn and the car started to go down the mountain instead of up. Tall pine trees lined the road on both sides, and the abundant sunlight was quickly gone.

“Are you going to murder me?” Sylvia asked.

“Hmm, no,” Joan said, and kept driving, now with both hands on the wheel.

They drove for a few more minutes before coming to a small, empty parking lot. “We walk from here,” Joan said. He hopped out and opened the trunk, removing a sizable backpack and cooler.

Sylvia had never been on an actual date before. She’d gone out with bunches of people, some of whom were boys, and Gabe Thrush had shown up on her doorstep a thousand times, but at no point had anyone ever called or texted or passed her a note that asked her out on a real, serious date. Even before Joan had yelled at her, she’d had no indication that this was an actual date. She wasn’t sure how to behave.

“So you, like, planned this?” Sylvia said.

“Did you want to eat sand?” Joan shrugged. He was a professional.

“Only if you packed sand sandwiches, I guess,” Sylvia said. She sounded like a moron. Get it together, Sylvia. The key to being cool was pretending that you’d done everything before; she knew that.

Joan pointed to Sylvia’s feet, clad in her dirty slip-on sneakers. “You can walk in those? It’s a little hike.” She nodded, and then followed him down a narrow path into the trees.

By the second hour, even beatific Terry seemed ready to get on with it. “Oi,” he said to Jim. “You sure you want to stick around for this?” They were perched on a bench in a park along the water. Franny and Antoni had been sitting on the restaurant’s sunny patio for what seemed like eternity. From his bench, Jim could just make out Franny’s arm movements.

“Yes,” Jim said. “Please.”

Terry acquiesced. “Whatever you want, mate. I’ll just shut my eyes for a moment.” He lay down on his back along the wooden bench, and let out a satisfied groan. “That’s the stuff.” His enormous leather boots rested against Jim’s thigh.

Franny and Antoni must have had at least four courses—the lunch went on forever, and waiters kept coming back to the table, holding aloft more dishes. Jim’s own stomach began to gurgle with hunger. He thought about sneaking into the restaurant and ordering something to go, but he didn’t want to take the risk of getting caught. And so he waited. Every few minutes he thought he could hear Franny’s laugh carrying over the sound of the water, which was enough motivation to keep him going.

Eventually, Franny and Antoni stood up. Antoni put his hand on Franny’s lower back as they walked through the restaurant, and he kept it there all the way until they reached the car. He opened the door for her—Franny always had liked nice cars, even though they thought it was silly to have one in New York. When they got home, if she took him back, Jim vowed he would buy her a car, whatever she wanted. A car and a motorcycle and anything else. He wanted to be the one to drive her wherever she wanted to go. Jim nudged Terry awake.

“Oi,” Jim said. “We’re back on.”

Jim’s biggest fear was that Antoni would take another route—have another destination, like a hotel, or maybe his house—but the car went back the way it had come, straight to the tennis center. Terry and Jim stayed enough of a distance behind that they weren’t obvious, but close enough to catch up if necessary. They stopped in a different spot from where they had the first time, a little ways farther back, because Franny was a nervous driver and was sure to look both ways several times before attempting to pull out into traffic. It didn’t take long—Jim peered over the wall and watched as Franny and Antoni said good-bye. She was facing the courts, and Jim could only barely make out the lower half of her body, the rest hidden by trees. It was clear that Antoni was embracing her, and leaning toward her face, but Jim couldn’t see what was actually happening. Then Franny started to clomp away, always unsteady in those shoes, and Jim hurried back to the bike, pulling on his helmet. He hid again behind Terry’s leg, accidentally hitting himself in the wounded eye on Terry’s knee. “Shit,” he said.

“Okay, there she goes,” Terry said, and Jim hopped back on. He was starting to feel like he’d lived his whole life wrong—maybe he should have been a motorcycle cop, or a private investigator. He’d spent too much of his allotted hours on earth indoors, staring at a page with words on it. Franny would have cried hallelujah to hear him say it—she’d been telling him that for years, that life was lived outside, on the move, out of one’s comfort zone. She’d gone so many places without him, and Jim mourned them all now. Franny was driving slowly, and Terry matched her pace. Jim wanted to move to England and retroactively send his children to see Terry, clearly the world’s greatest pediatrician.

Terry shouted something, but Jim couldn’t hear him. They were still slowing down. Over Terry’s shoulder, Jim saw the tiny rental car swoop over to the shoulder of the road and come to a halt. Jim knocked on Terry’s back and then pointed at Franny’s car. He held up his palm, STOP in the name of love, and Terry did just that, gracefully exiting traffic and pulling over just in front of Franny’s car.

She hadn’t gotten out but was squinting through the windshield. Jim took off his helmet and tucked it under his arm like an astronaut. He hoped that he looked handsome and rugged, and not like he’d just removed a scuba mask, but he feared the latter was probably true. Recognizing her husband, Franny shook her head and dropped her chin to her chest, just what she did in dark movie theaters when a serial killer was about to jump out and claim his next victim. Jim walked to the driver’s-side window and waited for Franny to press the button to roll it down. She didn’t want to laugh—was trying not to laugh—but she couldn’t quite keep it in.

“Jim,” she said. “Are you following me?”

He crouched down, holding on to the bottom of the car’s window. “Maybe.”

“Have you been following me all day? On the back of that guy’s motorcycle?” Franny gestured with her chin toward Terry, who really did cut an imposing figure when you didn’t know him. He was on the phone now, scowling into the middle distance. He saw them looking and waved.

“Maybe.”

“Why, if I may ask such a pedestrian question?”

“Because I love you. And I don’t want to lose you. Not to some tennis pro, not to anyone.” Jim stood up and opened the car door. He reached a hand down for Franny. She paused, put her foot on the clutch, and turned off the car.

“I keep fucking that up,” she said, once she’d climbed out. “I think we’re going to have to buy it when we return it. I’m pretty sure that I’ve ruined it completely.”

Jim put his hands on Franny’s shoulders. She was so much smaller than he was, almost an entire foot. His parents, who’d wanted him to marry some gangly sylph from Greenwich, had never understood. They were worried about the gene pool, about producing generation after generation of tall blonds. But Jim loved her, only Franny, only his wife. “I’m the one who fucked up. Fran, I am so sorry. I will do anything. I can’t be without you, I can’t.”

Franny reached up and traced the outline of Jim’s black eye, which had started to turn green. “It’s healing,” she said, and tilted her head up in the way that meant he could kiss her, and so he did. Behind them, Terry let out a wolf whistle, triumphant.

After walking through a short tunnel cut into the side of the mountain, Sylvia and Joan finally found what they were looking for. The beach was magnificent—a tiny horseshoe of sand, completely empty. Sylvia could see the bottom of the water for fifty feet, bright blue and clear. Joan set down his bag and the cooler, and quickly got them set up. He unrolled a thick blanket, and stacked heavy things in the corner to keep it down, though the beach seemed totally protected from the wind. There were no waves, not even small ripples. Sylvia kicked off her shoes and waded in.

“This is literally the most beautiful place I have ever been in my entire life,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure that will always be true.”

Joan nodded. “It’s the best. No one knows about it. Even local people don’t know. My grandparents live right up there,” he said pointing up the mountain behind them. “They would bring me here when I was little. Very good for toy boats.” He had packed enough food for four: ham and cheese sandwiches, wine, thin butter cookies his mother had made. “Do you want to swim first, or eat?”

Sylvia walked over to the blanket, her wet feet and calves now caked with sand. “Hmm,” she said, turning back to face the water. “Normally I would pick the food, but right now, I don’t know.”

“I have an idea,” Joan said. He pulled the corkscrew out of the bag and opened the bottle of wine. He took a slug and then handed the bottle to Sylvia, who followed suit. When she’d passed it back, he recorked the bottle, set it in the cooler, and peeled off his shirt.

Everyone on earth had a body, of course. Young people had bodies and old people had bodies and all bodies were different. Sylvia would never have described herself as someone who cared about muscles; pecs and abs did nothing for her, theoretically. That stuff was for idiots who didn’t have better things to think about. That was for girls like Carmen, who didn’t know enough to see that their boyfriends treated them like garbage. Working out was a punishment, a gym-class nightmare. Sylvia tried to remember if she could even touch her toes, but couldn’t, because she was hypnotized by the sight in front of her. All of her speculation about Joan made the actual physical reality of him without his shirt on seem like a joke. She didn’t even know which muscle groups to imagine! They were all there, the little ones and the big ones and the ones like arrows pointing toward his crotch. She truly had had no idea that bodies were actually made like that, with no Photoshop in sight. Joan folded his shirt and laid it on the blanket, and then reached for his fly. Sylvia had to turn around.

“I’ll race you,” she said, mostly because she wasn’t sure her legs could take seeing any more, like they might just give out from under her and then she’d die on the spot. She quickly pulled off her dress, revealing the tank suit underneath. She threw her dress in a ball behind her, not caring where it landed, and then ran into the water. She ran until the water was as high as her hips, and then closed her eyes and dove.

When her head bobbed up a yard later, Sylvia could hear Joan in the water behind her. She turned around, treading water, and watched him swim to her. She felt like a flounder swimming next to a dolphin. When Joan raised his head, his hair still looked perfect, just wet. Sylvia smoothed her own hair back, feeling all the knots from the windy drive.