Body Language

‘Stan’s never said a word. This is my decision.’

‘This is just a workout, Alex. Staying sharp. Primed, focused.’

‘It’s becoming more than that. We both know it.’

‘Well, yeah, I wish it were. I’m not going to deny that. But I’d say we’ve been doing a damn good job of keeping it sex-free so far. Both of us acting responsible, very adult.’

He turned back to her, fixed his eyes on hers, then abruptly swung his leg over her waist and saddled her again.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Get off me, Jason.’

But he brought his face close to hers, held it there, vulnerable to anything she wanted to do.

When she didn’t move, he tilted down and pressed his lips against hers. Alex kept her mouth rigid, fighting it, but gradually the hard knot in her chest relaxed and began to melt away, and after a moment more she yielded, lips loosening, finding the fit. Softening and opening, a whisper of breath passing between them. His tongue moving in, slipping past her lips. A moan from one of them – she wasn’t sure who.

She heard the surf and the raucous laughter of a gull and the insistent shriek of her blood. Then she drew her head away, twisted hard to her right, arched her back and bridged, stepped over his left leg with her right, and pried out of his grasp.

On her feet, breathing hard, she looked down at him. His knees were bent, hands locked behind his head as if he meant to do a few dozen sit-ups.

‘Now that,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t exercise. That was kissing. There’s a hell of a difference, Alex. Just so you know.’

At the surf line, the shirtless old man and his wife slapped their hands together slowly.

‘Bravo,’ the old man called out. ‘Encore.’

She looked down at Jason Patterson for a long moment, his eyes working on hers, until he seemed to read the depth of her resolve. Then his face changed, going slack, flattening like a time-lapse film of a man falling into profound slumber.

‘I’m sorry, Jason. I really am.’

‘So how are you going to accomplish this, fixing your marriage?’

‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’

‘I think I’m entitled to an answer. What’re you going to do, go to marriage counseling? Cook him his favorite foods, butter him up?’

‘A romantic vacation,’ she snapped. ‘Up in Seaside, a pretty little town in North Florida.’

‘Oh, of course,’ he said. ‘A second honeymoon. Yeah, yeah, that should fix it. That should bring old Stan around. Romantic vacations always work.’

‘Goddamn it, I have to try, Jason. I have to do something.’

A few hundred yards offshore, a powerboat raced across the morning chop, the happy voices of fishermen echoing ashore.

‘Well, I’ll be here,’ he said quietly. ‘Every morning, same time, same place. In case you change your mind.’

‘I won’t,’ she said, and turned and headed up the beach toward her car.

3 (#ulink_f262a5be-a09a-5879-8e18-f8da1302eb90)

What she had in mind was two weeks in the Panhandle. Fly up to Panama City, rent a car, drive over to Seaside, rent one of those purple-and-yellow cottages. Then later on, she and Stan could drive around, maybe try to locate that beach house where she and her parents had stayed almost twenty years ago.

The beach, the sunsets. That’s what they needed, two weeks in the sun. She and Stan lounging on the white sand, watching the dolphins roll, dining on boiled shrimp and good wine. Both of them on the same schedule, midnight strolls, make love all night, sleep through the morning. Take a shot at rekindling things. A final shot, perhaps. That’s how it felt these days, the last embers losing their glow. A puff of breath might just as easily extinguish as revive them. But she wasn’t going to let it slip away without a fight. Her folks lasted nearly thirty years, weathering rougher seas than anything she and Stan had known. She was determined, by God, to do as well as they.

She had all the arguments ready. She’d arranged for her dad to stay with her friend Gabriella Hernandez. Both Stan and Alex had lots of furlough time stored. It was off-season up in the Panhandle, prices down from their summer highs, the first cool October nights, a nice break from the Miami heat. She’d even gotten a brochure from a downtown travel agency with great wide-angle shots of Seaside, Florida, the pretty rainbow houses, the immaculate white sand, dunes and sea oats, the gorgeous wrinkled blue of the Gulf.

Stan was finishing his breakfast when Alex set the skillet in the drain and dried her hands, drew out the brochure from the kitchen shelf.

She spoke his name, but he was lost in the sports page. The Dolphins’ latest blunder.

‘Stan,’ she said.

He managed a grunt.

‘You got a minute to talk about our vacation?’

‘Vacation?’ He kept on reading.

‘You remember. Two weeks off, somewhere exotic. Cuddle late in bed, all that.’

He put his finger on the passage and looked up at her.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Like before you got so goddamn busy.’

She held her smile in place, unfolded the brochure, the words gathering in her throat. She’d plead if she had to. Threaten, nag, whatever it took.

‘You win the Publishers’ Sweepstakes or something?’ He looked back down at the newsprint. ‘What makes you think we can afford a vacation?’

‘Stan,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we can afford not to take one.’

‘Oh, is that a fact?’ Stan kept his eyes back on the paper. ‘And what about the old man? He going along with us? Keep us company?’

‘Gabbie’s agreed to take him for a couple of weeks.’

With a bitter grin, he looked up again.

‘You’ve got to be kidding. That woman’s a magnet for disaster. You might as well turn the old man loose, let him wander the goddamn interstate. He’d be safer.’

‘Gabbie’s fine. She’s in a secure place now. I wouldn’t leave Dad with her if I didn’t think he’d be a hundred percent safe.’

‘Forget it, Alex,’ he said. ‘All the money we’ve been throwing away on that old man, we can’t afford a goddamn vacation. What’re you thinking about?’

‘Look, Stan …’

In the hallway, the flinty click of her father’s police dress shoes sounded against the tile and Alexandra sighed and turned to watch Lawton Collins march into the kitchen.

He’d shined the black shoes to a high polish and his police tunic was buttoned tightly across his small potbelly. Instead of pants, he was still wearing his pink-and-blue pajama bottoms, shorties that exposed his spindly white legs.

‘Christ,’ Stan said. ‘Here we go again.’