As if she knew what I was thinking, Lola called out to me. “You see this? He should do this every other day. On land or in water, but water is best. More stable.”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to tire him out,” I said, and Dennis looked over at me. It was my tone, I suppose: snappish.
“He’s not too tired,” she said. “Are you too tired?”
“No.” He smiled at me. “Not tired.” He lifted the bottles over his head.
Early the next morning, Stuart showed up at our doorstep. This was his new thing: early morning runs from their house to ours. When I opened the door, he said, “Is the captain awake?”
“He’s in the kitchen,” I said, and Stuart bounded past me down the hallway. From the living room, where I was straightening up, I could hear Stuart’s horsey laugh and Dennis’s brief pauseless sentences, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. The phone rang, and it was Marse, confirming dinner plans for that Friday night, with Paul, and even as I was saying I looked forward to it, my stomach tightened. I could not imagine a situation in which Dennis could socialize normally, or even close to normally, with an old friend. After I hung up, the doorbell rang again. Stuart went past me up the stairs—getting a swimsuit, he said—as I went to answer it. It was Gloria. “I bought a pie,” she said, and handed me a white box with a cellophane lid. “It’s lemon chiffon. Very soft.”
I thanked her and invited her in. We stood in the foyer.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” she said. “I was doing the shopping, and then I just bought this pie and drove over.” She looked around as she spoke. The cutout in the entranceway, where she’d once kept a marble bust that she’d inherited from her parents, was littered with mail and keys.
“You’re welcome anytime,” I said, and because she looked so lost and out of place, standing in the foyer of what used to be her home, I meant it.
“I don’t want to intrude,” she said.
“No, no. Stuart’s here. I think he and Dennis are going to swim.”
“I could make lemonade,” she said. “I bought lemons.” She put up a finger and slipped back out the door. Her car trunk slammed, and then she appeared again with a bag of lemons. “Grady likes them in his water,” she said.
“I have to get to work in a little bit,” I said.
Gloria looked disappointed. “It’s Saturday.”
“It’s only until one, and then I’ll be home.” This was a four-hour shift that I took twice a month, at time-and-a-half pay. It was a sleepy shift with only one doctor working. The few patients were worried mothers and their toddlers, or the occasional case of chicken pox or spontaneous diarrhea. It had occurred to me that I might have to give up working altogether, but then, as Stuart rushed down the stairs wearing swim trunks, waving hello to Gloria as he passed, I realized that this might not be necessary. For better or worse, our lives, Dennis’s and mine, had opened up in a way they never had before. From this point forward, our door would never really be closed. It was not even eight in the morning, and already we had guests. Lola was due at eleven. Grady would stop by at some point, I knew, to watch a home building show with Dennis or to check on the boat engines. Marse would rush by on her way somewhere and end up canceling her plans and staying for dinner, which we would fashion from the delivery food that had already started to arrive in tightly packed boxes. My privacy wasn’t a priority anymore. I knew, even before the tide was under way, that I had no choice but to ride it out.
That Friday night, Marse arrived with Paul while I was in the kitchen, arranging a plate of vegetables and hummus, and Dennis was in the guest room getting dressed. I had decided to cook, not because the delivery food wasn’t good—it was—but because it wasn’t special. It was green beans and manicotti and mushroom lasagna and steamed spinach, and no matter what I did to arrange it prettily on a plate, it always looked to me like it had come from a box. Instead, I’d grilled salmon and asparagus outside while Dennis looked on, giving me directions, and we’d argued over whether the salmon was overcooked. He’d told me I was incapable of taking directions, and I’d told him I couldn’t read his mind, and he’d said it would be a hell of a lot easier if I could. We’d ended up laughing.
Paul was wearing a white guayabera and tan slacks, and Marse was wearing a lime-green tank dress that accentuated her smooth tan neckline and thin arms. I was running behind schedule, and still needed to change out of the black cover-up and shorts I’d been wearing all day, so after pleasantries at the door—Paul handed over a bottle of wine, which he said he’d bought on his last trip to Spain—I led them onto the back deck and filled their glasses and put out the hummus plate, then excused myself and went to change. Paul looked to me a tad paunchier and maybe a little less cocksure than the young man I’d known more than two decades earlier, but essentially he was simply an older version of himself, with thinner hair. Dennis rolled out of the guest room as I headed up the stairs. He’d washed his hair and it was still damp. “They’re on the back porch,” I said. “I’m just going to put on a dress.”
“I’ll see you out there,” he said. “Relax, please.”
I changed into a sleeveless navy dress that I had worn only once, and that I thought showed off my legs, which were, at this point in my life, my best feature. When I came out onto the deck, Paul was talking and Dennis was laughing. “What did you do?” Dennis said, and Paul—to his credit—understood his slurred speech, and answered. “I fired his butt, and hers.”
Marse said to me, “Paul found his accountants having sex with each other in the break room.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, wondering how the topic of sex had been broached so early in the evening, with so little wine.
Paul said, “It was like something out of a movie. They’re both these mousy types. No one I’d suspect.”
“And you fired them,” I said.
“On the spot. But you know, it was only me who saw—we were closed, everyone was gone—and after, I thought that might have been rash. I mean, they were just having some fun.”
“Maybe you should let them come back.”
“That’s what I told him,” said Marse.
“I agree,” said Dennis.
“Maybe I should,” said Paul. He stood at the deck railing and looked out at the lawn and the water. “You’ve got quite a place here.”
The house was not, certainly, the fanciest or most well appointed of our friends’ (surely Paul’s Fisher Island bachelor pad was grand, and Marse’s condo downtown was virtually a palace, almost as large as our home), but living on the canal was a rare gift. The waning sunlight on the water was golden and rich.
“I don’t know if you remember,” said Dennis as clearly as he could, “but I grew up in this house.”
This time Paul didn’t understand. Marse spoke up before I could. “He said he grew up in this house.”
Paul nodded. “I’ve been here before. We stopped by once, before you were married. We picked up your father to go fishing. I didn’t come inside. I didn’t get to see this view.”
“We caught two marlins that day,” said Dennis, and Paul understood.
“This big,” said Paul, his arms wide, and we all laughed politely.
“It’s been too long,” said Dennis. “When was it? The air show? Margo was just a little kid.” I was surprised at how much he was talking. I could see the toll it took on him. He stopped after every sentence to swallow, then continued. “I remember being eaten alive in the Everglades.”