Linda had the food put away by the time I got back, and had started unpacking our bags. When we were through we took a walk down the beach. The big hot red sun was just sliding into the Gulf. About four hundred yards south of us was a big house with hurricane shutters over the large windows. Almost an equal distance north of us were four small beach cabins that were deserted and badly in need of paint.
“We’re certainly alone here.”
She didn’t answer me. With darkness came more mosquitoes. We took refuge on the porch. Linda made sandwiches. I plugged in our new portable radio and we listened to Cuban music from Havana. The waves made a soft sound on the beach. I couldn’t stop yawning. I went out and moved the car around to the bay side of the cottage so there’d be less chance of salt spray damaging it. When I went to bed Linda was still listening to the music.
When I got up in the morning, Linda was gone. I put on swimming trunks and went out on the beach. I could see her on the beach, far to the north, a tiny figure that bent over now and then to pick up shells. I was on my second cup of coffee when I heard her under the outside shower. She came into the kitchen in a few minutes wrapped in a big yellow towel, her soaked bathing suit in her hand. “That water must be eighty degrees!” she said. “And there were big things out there, sort of rolling. I’ll bet they were porpoises.” Her eyes were shining, and she looked like a child on Saturday.
I picked up a burn that afternoon that was still uncomfortable when we drove up to Sarasota on Wednesday to meet the plane. It was a small plane that brought them down from Tampa International. It was dark and Jeff said that I better keep right on driving because I knew the road. They said they had a fine trip down. They said it had snowed a little at home on Sunday but it had melted as soon as it hit the ground. Jeff seemed boisterous and exuberant, but I thought Stella was rather quiet. Linda spent most of the trip back turned around in the seat telling them about the layout. We all seemed a little strained with each other, and I guessed it was because we were all wondering how it was going to work out, four people taking a vacation together. It could be fine, or it could be a mess.
Jeff was awed by the primitive condition of the key road as shown by our headlights and by the lurching of the big car. I drove them up to their door with a flourish, and Linda went in first and turned the lights on for them. She had turned on their refrigerator the previous day, and stocked it with breakfast things.
They seemed pleased with the setup, particularly Jeff. That surprised me a little because, as with Linda, I thought he would be more likely to be enthusiastic about a more civilized environment. When they were settled we went over and sat on their porch and talked for a while. Stella said she was sleepy but not to go yet. She went in to bed and the three of us talked some more.
That evening was the last time that the four of us were what I would call normal with each other. It all started the next day. It started without warning and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it, or Stella could do about it. Here is exactly the way it happened.
At about ten o’clock we were all out on the beach. We had two blankets and towels and a faded old beach umbrella I had found in the pump house. I remember that I had a program of dance music on the portable radio. Both Stella and I had to be careful of the sun. Jeff had a good tan. Linda, of course, was browner than anybody. Our voices sounded far away and sleepy, the way they do when the sun is hot.
Linda got up. She stood there with her shadow falling across me. I thought she was going to go in swimming. She said, “Come on, Jeff.” I thought she was asking him to go in with her. But her tone of voice had seemed oddly harsh. Jeff got up without a word and the two of them walked down the beach, headed south.
I don’t think I can explain exactly why it created such an awkward situation. Certainly Linda and Jeff could walk together, as could Stella and I, should we want to. The four of us were, I thought, friends. But it was the manner in which they left us. Linda’s tone had been peremptory, autocratic. Jeff had obeyed immediately. It spoke of a relationship that I had not suspected. Had it been done in a normal way, they would have said something about walking down the beach, and coming back soon, and don’t get too much sun — like that. They just left.
Though you could see up the beach a long way to the north, you could not see far to the south. The big house south of us was on a sort of headland, and beyond it the beach curved inward and out of our range of vision.
Each time I looked they were further away, walking steadily. Then I looked and they were gone. Now this is also hard to explain. Their action made me revert to the way I had felt about Linda many years ago. She had walked off, out of reach. She was back with the beautiful people. I was again the Paul Cowley who worked after school and knew so few people in our class.
I could not help glancing at Stella, wondering how she was taking it. She wore heavy sun glasses with tilted frames and very dark lenses. Her eyes were hidden behind them. I thought of any number of inane things I could say, but in the end I said nothing.
After a time Stella got up without a word, took off her sunglasses and watch, tucked her pale hair into a white bathing cap and went down to the water. She swam far out with a lithe power at odds with the frail look of her body. I watched her float out there. After what seemed a long time, she swam slowly in and walked up and sat in the shade of the beach umbrella, arms hugging her knees, looking out to sea. Our silence with each other was awkward. The longer Jeff and Linda stayed away, the more awkward it became. I thought back over the relationship between Jeff and my wife. There seemed to be nothing to justify what they had done — rather, the way they had done what they had done.
A quiz program started and I turned off the portable.
“Well, Paul,” Stella said quietly. She came originally, I believe, from Hartford. Her voice had that flat quality, that special accent that women who come from that area and go to exclusive finishing schools acquire.
“I... what do you mean?”
“You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t know. She could have had a sign painted, I suppose. Or branded his forehead. I don’t think she could have made it any more obvious.”
“I don’t think it’s that way.”
“I don’t think it’s any other way. I didn’t want to come here. I did at first and then I didn’t. I tried to talk him out of it. I could have talked to walls or stones.”
“Now, Stella.”
“Don’t sound soothing. Please. We’ve got ourselves a situation, Paul. A large one. It isn’t pretty. I guessed at something of the sort... but not so blatant.”
“We’re all friends.”
She turned the dark lenses toward me. “I’m your friend, Paul. I’m Jeff’s friend, I hope. Not hers. Not hers, ever again. She made it plain enough. I should pack now. That would be smart. But I’m not very smart, I guess. I would rather stay and fight.”
She picked up her things and went to their cottage. At noon I picked up my things and went in too. I sat on the porch and read and finally they came down the beach. They separated casually in front of our place and Linda came in.
“Long walk,” I said.
She looked at me and through me. “Wasn’t it, though,” she said, and went on into the house.
The was the beginning. That was the way it started. Linda and Jeff were together whenever they pleased. It would, perhaps, have been better if I could have gone to Linda and demanded an explanation, if I could have shook her, struck her, raged at her. But, with Linda, the roots of my insecurity went deep. I tried to use reason.