Paul picked up my other hand, examined it, dropped it. “Hand me that, would you?” he said, motioning to a duffel bag at the foot of the stairs. I turned and bent down for it. Paul had a way—I’d felt it before—of making me feel like I had a stake in giving him what he wanted. “Get something on that cut within the hour,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and he turned away, as if I’d been keeping him.
After dinner, we sat in rocking chairs on the porch, our legs perched on the railing, eight feet pointing toward shore. The world had gone from blue to purple, and the only lights in the sky were the distant windows of downtown Miami and the stars. Dark water stretched in every direction. I said, “What does everyone want to do tomorrow?”
Dennis’s hand was on my thigh. “I want to fish,” he said, stroking my skin with his thumb.
“Me, too,” said Marse. This surprised me. “And I want to swim.”
I collected the empty beer cans and took them into the kitchen. While I was inside, I saw the others get up from their chairs and move to the porch railing. I heard Paul’s laugh swell, and it was a wholehearted laugh, the laugh of someone relaxed. I felt the muscles in my neck and shoulders soften. Marse appeared in the doorway. “Frances!” she said. “We’re jumping—get your suit.”
“In the dark?” I left the beers on the counter and joined her. Dennis had a leg over the porch railing and held on to the roof with one hand. Next to him, Paul leaned out, scanning the water. Dennis swung his other leg over the rail and faced the water. “Here goes,” he said. He jumped.
We’d never jumped at night before. I held my breath and searched the black water until a notch of moonlight glazed Dennis’s wet hair. “Who’s next?” he called.
Paul took off his shirt and turned to Marse. “You are,” he said.
Marse was already wearing a suit, so she stepped out of her shorts and stepped over the railing. “Ready,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes on the ledge, and then Paul edged away and she jumped. Mid-flight, it occurred to me to hope she didn’t land on Dennis.
She didn’t. Dennis cheered her and together they swam around the dock, talking in breathy fragments. The tone of their talk was open and friendly, lacking subtext. “Our turn,” said Paul. He took off his shirt.
“Me first,” I said. But I wasn’t wearing my suit.
“I’ll wait while you change.”
“OK,” I said. But I just stood there. The humidity pressed against the back of my neck. I unzipped my shorts and stepped out of them, tugging on the hem of my T-shirt.
“Indeed,” said Paul, stepping aside. I climbed over the rail and watched Dennis and Marse as they rounded the dock. The wind lifted my T-shirt and brushed against my thighs. It occurred to me that afterward, I’d have to walk back upstairs with my shirt wet against my skin. But it was too late to change my mind. I jumped.
The water was warm. I swam under the dock to the ladder, where Marse sat on the lowest rung and Dennis held on with one hand. After cheering me, Dennis went back to talking with Marse about sharks in the bay. Marse was saying she’d seen tiger sharks and hammerheads, but Dennis said he had seen only nurse sharks. “It’s the same as with anything else,” he said. “They’re more afraid of you.”
Paul jumped and swam to us, then challenged Dennis to a race around the dock. They kicked away in a splash of elbows and ankles, dark heads bobbing. Marse sat down on the ladder, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“Do you want to get out?” I said.
“I don’t know.” She looked off. “You two usually sleep on the porch, right?”
The burden of hosting returned: Were there enough clean sheets? Would Dennis’s snoring keep everyone awake? I said, “I usually do, but Dennis likes to sleep inside sometimes, when it’s windy.”
“I love sleeping outside.”
“I can sleep inside with Dennis.”
“Or we can all sleep on the porch.”
The idea gave me pause. How widely apart would we space the mattresses? Would I be able to sleep with them beside us? If Marse had been with us alone, without Paul, I wouldn’t have thought twice. There was practically nothing I wouldn’t share with her. She’d been the one to first bring me to Stiltsville, after all—she’d introduced me to my husband. Over the years we’d shopped and cooked and exercised and boated together, and though she was not typically a person who fawned over children, when Margo was born she’d bought a slew of books and outfits and stuffed animals, and had come every weekend to hold the baby while I catnapped on the sofa. Margo called her Aunt Marse, and had believed until recently that Marse, like Bette, was a blood relation. Every few weeks Marse picked up Margo and strapped her into the backseat of her car, and they spent the entire afternoon together. When Margo came home, breathless with tales about their day, Marse smirked at me, as if reminding me that although I was the mother, she had license to buy the kid both ice cream and cotton candy in the same afternoon, then drop her off and drive away.
A few years earlier, we’d started a tradition of lending the stilt house to Marse’s extended family for a long weekend every summer. We’d cautioned them about the electric eel beneath the dock, and a couple of years passed without incident, but then Marse’s cousin Warren, a college student, had dove down with a machete and chopped off the eel’s head. Marse, who hadn’t known about Warren’s plan, apologized to us, but Dennis told her very calmly that although she was like a sister to him and he expected her to continue to treat the stilt house as her own, her family was not welcome there again. To my surprise, he kept his word. The eel’s severed head dried atop a piling for weeks, untouched by the pelicans that bothered our lobster traps, until I was sick of how angry it made Dennis and how lonely it seemed, perched there with its raisin eyes and bald head, and I knocked it into the water with the back of my hand. When I did this, Dennis closed his eyes for a moment, as if in eulogy.
There was a flurry of splashing. Paul and Dennis rounded the dock, heading toward us with their heads in the water. This had become, apparently, a serious race. Marse climbed the ladder and I followed. Marse called it. “Dennis had an arm’s length on you, Paul.”
“He’s got practice,” said Paul, breathing hard.
I went to get towels from the generator room, and when I returned they were standing on the dock, looking down at the water. Below—I didn’t see anything at first, but then I caught the flip of a fin—was the smooth, pale body of a manta ray. It flickered across the surface and beneath the dock. We stepped across to watch it, but it dove and was gone. I wished Margo had been there to see it. I shivered with longing for her—how well was she sleeping, without me or Dennis to tuck her in? Would she have nightmares? Would she have fun?
The swim had worn us out, and after the clamor of bedtime—brushing teeth and changing clothes—Dennis turned off the generator, and the house lights faded and died. We towed four mattresses out to the eastern stretch of porch, four salt-damp pillows and four white sheets. Paul slept nearest the railing—Dennis warned him not to roll over during the night—and Marse slept beside him. Then me, then Dennis. There were no boats in the channel, no voices riding the waves from other stilt houses. The night closed in. I lay on my side, facing Dennis, and listened to his breathing and the rhythms of the water.
I woke from the feeling of a hand moving in slow circles across my hip. The rubbing stopped when I opened my eyes; Dennis stared at me. His hand moved to my waist, then he pulled me to him and kissed me. His teeth grazed mine and his fingers moved under the elastic of my underwear. My blood warmed. He rose to his knees and looked beyond me, at Marse and Paul, then put a finger to his lips and gestured for me to follow. The soles of our feet made sandpaper sounds against the weathered wood floor. He paused in front of the door to the living room, looked in, then continued walking, to the western porch, where the wind blew loudly. I watched the movement of his hair, raising up and flattening again.