Maybe she knew you were married, Evelyn said. Some women like married men, it’s a challenge.
I stepped on my foot so hard the pain shot up my leg and I had to bite down on my lip to stay quiet. Releasing my heel, I could feel my toes throbbing.
I don’t really believe that, said Nick. She also seemed pretty disappointed when I mentioned it.
Evelyn and Derek went down to the beach after breakfast, while Bobbi and I stayed to unpack our things. We could hear Melissa and Nick talking upstairs, but only the cadence of their voices, not the actual words. A bumblebee flew through the open window and cast a comma of shadow on the wallpaper before flying out again. When I finished unpacking I showered and changed into a sleeveless grey cotton dress, listening to Bobbi singing a Fran?oise Hardy song in the next room.
It was two or three o’clock when we all left the house together. The route to the beach was down a little paved hill, past two white houses, and then a zig-zag of steps set into the cliff rock. The beach was full of young families lying out on coloured towels, applying sun lotion on each other’s backs. The tide had receded out past a crust of dried green seaweed and a group of teenagers were playing volleyball down by the rocks. We could hear them shouting in foreign accents. The sun was beating onto the sand and I was starting to sweat. We saw Evelyn and Derek waving to us, Evelyn in a brown one-piece swimsuit, her thighs pocked like the texture of whipped cream.
We laid our towels out and Melissa put some sun lotion on the back of Bobbi’s neck. Derek told Nick the water was ‘refreshing’. The smell of salt stung my throat. Bobbi undressed down to her bikini. I averted my eyes from Nick and Melissa while they undressed together. She asked him something and I heard him say: no, I’m fine. Evelyn said, you’ll burn.
Aren’t you getting in the water, Frances? Derek said.
Everyone turned to look at me then. I touched the side of my sunglasses and lifted one shoulder, not even a full shrug.
I’d rather lie in the sun, I said.
The truth was that I didn’t want to change into my swimsuit in front of them. I felt I owed it to my own body not to. Nobody minded, they left me where I was. When they were gone I took off my sunglasses to make sure I didn’t get tan lines on my face. There were children playing with plastic toys nearby and yelling at one another in French, which sounded urbane and sophisticated to me because I couldn’t understand it. I was lying on my front, so I couldn’t see the children’s faces, but occasionally in my peripheral vision I caught a blur of primary colour, a spade or bucket, or a flash of ankle. A weight had settled in my joints like sand. I thought about the heat on the bus that morning.
After I turned to lie on my back, Bobbi came up from the water, shivering and looking very white. She wrapped herself in a huge beach towel, with another light blue towel draped over her head like the Virgin Mary.
It’s Baltic, she said. I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.
You should have stayed here. I’m a little too warm if anything.
She removed the towel from her head and shook her hair like a dog, until a shower of droplets hit my bare skin and I swore. You deserved it, she said. She sat down then and opened up her book, her body still swaddled in the big towel, which had a picture of Super Mario on it.
On the way down to the water everyone was talking about you, she said.
What?
Yeah, there was a little group conversation about you. Apparently you’re very impressive. It’s news to me, obviously.
Who says so? I said.
Can we smoke on the beach or not?
I told her I didn’t think we were allowed to smoke on the beach. She sighed performatively and squeezed out some remaining seawater from her hair. Because Bobbi would not tell me who had complimented me, I felt certain it had actually been Bobbi herself.
Nick didn’t really say anything, she said. About whether you’re impressive. I was watching him, though, he seemed very awkward.
Maybe because you were watching him.
Or maybe because Melissa was.
I coughed and said nothing. Bobbi took a cereal bar out of the bottom of her handbag and started chewing on it.
So how bad is this crush, from one to ten? she said. Ten being the kind of crush you had on me in school.
And one being a really serious crush?
She laughed, even though her mouth was full of cereal bar.
Whatever, she said. Is it like, you have fun talking to him online, or like, you want to tear him open and drink his blood?
I don’t want to drink his blood.
I landed a little heavily on the final word of this sentence without meaning to, which made Bobbi snort. I’m not ready to think about what else you want to drink, she said. That’s fucked up. I thought about telling her what had happened between me and Nick then, because it could be framed in the format of a joke, and anyway it was over now. For some reason though, I didn’t say anything, and she just said: sex with men, how weird.
13
The next day we were clearing up the breakfast dishes and Melissa asked Nick if he would take the car to some shopping complex outside town to get new deckchairs. She said she had planned to go the day before but she forgot about it. Nick didn’t seem wild about the suggestion, although he said he would go. He said something like: oh, that place is fucking miles away. But not with any particular conviction. He was washing up the dishes in the sink and I was drying them and handing them to Melissa to put back in the cupboard. Standing between them I felt clumsy and unwanted, and I was sure Bobbi could see I was flushed. She was sitting on the kitchen table swinging her legs and eating a piece of fruit.
Take the girls with you then, Melissa said.
Don’t call us girls, Melissa, please, said Bobbi.
Melissa gave her a look and Bobbi bit into her nectarine innocently.
Take the young women with you then, Melissa said.
What, like for my amusement? said Nick. I’m sure they’d rather go to the beach.
You could take them to the lake, Melissa said. Or you could go to Chatelaudren.
Is that place there still open? he said.
They discussed whether the place in Chatelaudren was still open. Then Nick turned to look at Bobbi. His hands and wrists were wet.
How do you feel about long car journeys? he said.
Don’t listen to him, it’s not that long, said Melissa. It’ll be fun.