Finally, one afternoon, Vincent arrives and asks, “Please, how is your foot?” Less says he can now walk around without crutches. “Good,” Vincent says. “And now, please, Arthur, get ready for an exceptional outing.” Less asks, teasingly, where are they going together? Perhaps Vincent is at last going to show him some of India. But no; the man blushes and replies: “I, alas, am not going together.” He says they are offering this exceptional outing to guests when the resort opens. A buzzing outside; he looks out the window to see a speedboat, helmed by two expressionless teens, approaching the dock. Vincent helps as Less limps to the boat and shakily boards. The engine starts with a tiger’s roar.
The boat ride is half an hour, during which Less sees leaping dolphins and flying fish skipping like stones over the water, as well as the floating mane of a jellyfish. He recalls an aquarium he visited as a boy, where, after enjoying a sea turtle that swam breaststroke like a dotty old aunt, he encountered a jellyfish, a pink frothing brainless negligeed monster pulsing in the water, and thought with a sob: We are not in this together. They arrive, at last, at an island of white sand no bigger than a city block, with two coconut palms and small purple flowers. Less steps ashore gingerly and makes his way to the shade. More dolphins leap in a darkening ocean. An airplane underlines the moon. It is unmistakably paradise—until Less turns around to see the boat departing. Castaway. Is it possible this is some final plot of Carlos’s? To imprison him in a room for weeks and only now, when he is one chapter away from finishing his novel, abandon him on a desert island? It is a New Yorker cartoon fate. Less appeals to the setting sun: He gave up Freddy! He gave him up willingly; he even stayed away from the wedding. He has suffered enough, all on his own; he is crippled, uniplegic, forsaken, and bereft of his magic suit. He has nothing left to take away, our gay Job. He drops to his knees in the sand.
A nagging hum from behind him. When he looks around, he sees another speedboat headed his way.
“Arthur, I have an idea,” Carlos tells him after dinner. Carlos’s assistants have made a quick campfire and grilled them two harlequined fish they speared along the reef, and Less and Carlos are sitting down among cushions to share a bottle of cold champagne.
Carlos reclines on one of the spangled cushions; he is wearing a white caftan. “When you get home, I want you to find all your correspondence about the Russian River School. From all the men we knew. The important ones, Robert and Ross and Franklin in particular.”
Less, caught awkwardly between two pillows, struggles to right himself and wonders, Why?
“I want to buy them from you.”
Above the slow washing-machine sound of the surf comes a series of plops that must be a fish. The moon is high overhead, wrapped in a haze, casting a gauzy glow over everything and spoiling the view of the stars.
Carlos stares intently at Less in the firelight. “Everything you’ve got. How many do you think there are?”
“I’ve…I don’t know. I’d have to look. Dozens, you know. But they’re personal.”
“I want personal. I’m building a collection. They’re back in style now, that whole era. There are college courses all about it. And we knew them. We were part of history, Arthur.”
“I’m not sure we were part of history.”
“I want to get everything together in a collection, the Carlos Pelu Collection. I have a university interested; they can maybe name a room in the library after me. Did Robert write you any poems?”
“The Carlos Pelu Collection.”
“You like the sound of it? You’d make the collection complete. A love poem of Robert’s for you.”
“He didn’t write that way.”
“Or that painting by Woodhouse. I know you need money,” Carlos says quietly.
And so here is the plan: for Carlos to take everything. To take his pride, to take his health and his sanity, to take Freddy, and now, at last, to take even his memories, his souvenirs, away. There will be nothing left of Arthur Less.
“I’m doing okay.”
The fire, made of coconut shells, finds a particularly delicious morsel and flames up in delight, lighting both of their faces. They are not young, not at all; there is nothing left of the boys they used to be. Why not sell his letters, his keepsakes, his paintings, his books? Why not burn them? Why not give up on the whole business of life?
“Do you remember that afternoon on the beach? You were still seeing that Italian…,” Carlos says.
“Marco.”
He laughs. “Oh my God, Marco! He was afraid of the rocks and made us go sit with the straight people. Remember?”
“Of course I remember. That’s when I met Robert.”
“I think about that day a lot. Of course, we didn’t know it was a big storm out in the Pacific, that we were out of our minds to be on the beach! It was incredibly dangerous. But we were young and stupid, weren’t we?”
“That we can agree on.”
“Sometimes I think about all the men we knew on that beach.”
Little parts of the memory light up now in Less’s brain, including Carlos standing on a rock and staring at the sky, his trim and muscled body doubled in the tide pool below. The fire crackles, throwing helicoids of sparks into the air. Other than the fire and the sea, there is no other sound.
“I never hated you, Arthur,” Carlos says.
Less stares into the fire.
“It was always envy. I hope you understand that.”
A mob of tiny translucent crabs crosses the sand, making a break for the water.