He took a step toward the sea.
“Don’t!” she said.
He looked down at her, oddly, as if she were not there. He was still listening.
She turned the portable radio up full, loud. It exploded words and rhythm and melody:
“—I found a million-dollar baby—”
He made a wry face, raising his open palm violently. “Turn it off.”
“No, I like it!” She turned it louder. She snapped her fingers, rocking her body vaguely, trying to smile.
It was two o’clock.
The sun steamed the waters. The ancient pier expanded with a loud groan in the heat. The birds were held in the hot sky, unable to move. The sun struck through the green liquors that poured about the pier; struck, caught and burnished an idle whiteness that drifted in the offshore ripples.
The white foam, the frosted coral brain, the kelp pip, the tide dust lay in the water, spreading.
The dark man still lay on the sand, the woman in the black suit beside him.
Music drifted up like mist from the water. It was a whispering music of deep tides and passed years, of salt and travel, of accepted and familiar strangenesses. The music sounded not unlike water on the shore, rain falling, the turn of soft limbs in the depths. It was a singing of a time-lost voice in a caverned seashell. The hissing and sighing of tides in deserted holds of treasure ships. The sound the wind makes in an empty skull thrown out on the baked sand.
But the radio on the blanket on the beach played louder.
The phosphorescence, light as a woman, sank down, tired, from sight. Only a few more hours. They might leave at any time. If only he would come in, for an instant, just an instant. The mists stirred silently, aware of his face and his body in the water, deep under. Aware of him caught, held, as they sank ten fathoms down, on a sluice that bore them twisting and turning in frantic gesticulations, to the depths of a hidden gulf in the sea.
The heat of his body, the water taking fire from his warmth, and the frosted coral brain, the jeweled dusts, the salted mists feeding on his hot breath from his open lips.
The waves moved the soft and changing thoughts into the shallows which were tepid as bath waters from the two o’clock sun.
He mustn’t go away. If he goes now, he’ll not return.
Now. The cold coral brain drifted, drifted. Now. Calling across the hot spaces of windless air in the early afternoon. Come down to the water. Now, said the music. Now.
The woman in the black bathing suit twisted the radio dial.
“Attention!” cried the radio. “Now, today, you can buy a new car at—”
“Jesus!” The man reached over and tuned the scream down. “Must you have it so loud!”
“I like it loud,” said the woman in the black bathing suit, looking over her shoulder at the sea.
It was three o’clock. The sky was all sun.
Sweating, he stood up. “I’m going in,” he said.
“Get me a hot dog first?” she said.
“Can’t you wait until I come out?”
“Please.” She pouted. “Now.”
“Everything on it?”
“Yes, and bring three of them.”
“Three? God, what an appetite!” He ran off to the small café.
She waited until he was gone. Then she turned the radio off. She lay listening a long time. She heard nothing. She looked at the water until the glints and shatters of sun stabbed through her eyes like needles.
The sea had quieted. There was only a faint, far and fine net of ripples giving off sunlight in infinite repetition. She squinted again and again at the water, scowling.
He bounded back. “Damn, but the sand’s hot; burns my feet off!” He flung himself on the blanket. “Eat ’em up!”
She took the three hot dogs and fed quietly on one of them. When she finished it, she handed him the remaining two. “Here, you finish them. My eyes are bigger than my stomach.”
He swallowed the hot dogs in silence. “Next time,” he said, finishing, “don’t order more than you can use. Helluva waste.”
“Here,” she said, unscrewing a thermos, “you must be thirsty. Finish our lemonade.”
“Thanks.” He drank. Then he slapped his hands together and said, “Well, I’ll go jump in the water now.” He looked anxiously at the bright sea.
“Just one more thing,” she said, just remembering it. “Will you buy me a bottle of suntan oil? I’m all out.”
“Haven’t you some in your purse?”
“I used it all.”
“I wish you’d told me when I was up there buying the hot dogs,” he said. “But, okay.” He ran back, loping steadily.
When he was gone, she took the suntan bottle from her purse, half full, unscrewed the cap, and poured the liquid into the sand, covering it over surreptitiously, looking out at the sea, and smiling. She rose then and went down to the edge of the sea and looked out, searching the innumerable small and insignificant waves.
You can’t have him, she thought. Whoever or whatever you are, he’s mine, and you can’t have him. I don’t know what’s going on; I don’t know anything, really. All I know is we’re going on a train tonight at seven. And we won’t be here tomorrow. So you can just stay here and wait, ocean, sea, or whatever it is that’s wrong here today.
Do your damnedest; you’re no match for me, she thought. She picked up a stone and threw it at the sea.
“There!” she cried. “You.”
He was standing beside her.
“Oh?” She jumped back.
“Hey, what gives? You standing here, muttering?”
“Was I?” She was surprised at herself. “Where’s the suntan oil? Will you put it on my back?”
He poured a yellow twine of oil and massaged it onto her golden back. She looked out at the water from time to time, eyes sly, nodding at the water as if to say, “Look! You see? Ah-ha!” She purred like a kitten.
“There.” He gave her the bottle.
He was half into the water before she yelled.
“Where are you going! Come here!”
He turned as if she were someone he didn’t know. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong?”
“Why, you just finished your hot dogs and lemonade—you can’t go in the water now and get cramps!”
He scoffed. “Old wives’ tales.”
“Just the same, you come back up on the sand and wait an hour before you go in, do you hear? I won’t have you getting a cramp and drowning.”
“Ah,” he said, disgusted.
“Come along.” She turned, and he followed, looking back at the sea.
Three o’clock. Four.
The change came at four ten. Lying on the sand, the woman in the black suit saw it coming and relaxed. The clouds had been forming since three. Now, with a sudden rush, the fog came in from off the bay. Where it had been warm, now it was cold. A wind blew up out of nothing. Darker clouds moved in.
“It’s going to rain,” she said.
“You sound absolutely pleased,” he observed, sitting with arms folded.