*
Trouble, trouble, trouble, she said to herself as they walked, but his hand was warm in hers and she thought maybe she’d give herself this. Maybe it was all right. The wife was probably one of those women with hard, perfect faces, blond hair that gleamed around huge diamond studs. She wore short white skirts and flirted with the tennis instructor. So why should Janie care? But, no, that wasn’t right, was it? This man’s eyes were warm, genuine, even, if you can be calculating and genuine at the same time, which maybe you couldn’t be. And he liked her, Janie, with her imperfect face, her pretty blue eyes and slightly hooked nose and curly hair. So probably—probably the wife was lovely. She had long, swinging brown hair and kind eyes. She used to be a teacher but stayed home now, caring for the little ones, patient and gentle and too smart for the brutality of that life, it was sucking the lifeblood out of her and yet feeding her at the same time—she was loving, that’s what it was, this man was well loved (something in the relaxed way he moved, the shine on his face) and right now the wife was sleeping with all of their little ones in their big bed because it was easier that way, and she liked the warmth of their small bodies nestled against her, and she missed him so very much, and maybe she thought that sometimes on those long, long trips he was up to something but she trusted him because she wanted to because he had that boldness in his eyes, that life—
Why do this to herself? Can’t she let herself have anything?
He was pointing out the shells scattered across the beach while she was stuck there in her thoughts.
She nodded absently.
“No, look,” he said, taking her head in his big warm hands and pointing it toward the shore. “You need to look.”
The shells were scuttling across the beach to the water, as if the sea was drawing them in with the power of its charm.
“But—how?”
“Sand crabs,” he said. His hands were still on her face, so it wasn’t hard for him to turn it toward him and kiss her once, twice, only twice, she was thinking, just a little taste and then they’d turn right back, but then he kissed her a third time and this time she felt all of her hunger rise up like a perfumed plume of smoke from a genie that had been locked in a bottle for a hundred years, encircling this man she barely knew—though her body knew him, it wrapped itself around him fiercely and kissed him as if he was the dearest of the dear. Their defenses fell away, like their clothes. And maybe it was some uncanny combination of chemicals triggering pheromones, and maybe they’d been lovers back among the pharaohs and had just now found each other, and who knew why, really? Who fucking knew?
“Jee-sus,” he said. He pulled back from her a little, and she was pleased to see that all the confidence was rubbed clean away from his face and he was as stunned by it as she was—by the force of this passion that had no business being there but was there just the same, shocking the bejesus out of both of them, as if some Ouija board hijinks at a slumber party had summoned an actual ghost.
To have sex on the beach (Wasn’t that a drink? Was this really her life, a cheesy cocktail?) with a man she didn’t know, who fooled around with women, without using a condom, was a very, very, very bad idea. But her body didn’t think so. And she’d never surrendered fully to anything in her life and perhaps it was time. She could hear the steel pan drums ringing like metallic bubbles loop de looping in the air, and the happy shouts of the revelers who were dancing, and the laughter of the bride and groom who were dancing, too, under that high, thatched roof. And she was almost forty and might never marry. And there was that lovely wife sleeping in that big bed with all those rosy-cheeked children and she had no one she was going back to, no house and no children and no husband, there was no one to love her at all except this warm body with its quick steady heartbeats and its burning life force. It was as if the page she’d been living on had been suddenly ripped from the binding, and she was on the loose side now, the torn, free side, fluttering down to the sandy shore, the moon rearing up high overhead.
When their bodies had had their fill at last they clung to each other on the beach, gasping.