“Oh you do, do you?”
“Yes,” he said decisively. “Like a frame around a painting. Makes them look official.”
“I think I might take my top off,” Sara said.
“Okay.” George reached to the hook.
“Not yet,” she said, batting his hand away. “I meant later.”
“Okay,” George said, capping the lotion and watching Sara flop down again.
Up and down the beach, George saw other couples sitting just as he and Sara were, some talking, some not talking. It was early in the travel season, and the beach wasn’t crowded. Little tables sat empty, with umbrellas open to shade the vacancies beneath them. Everyone was quiet, except once in a while a group of students would pass by, at least five or six speaking loudly in Czech or Swedish or Polish. Sara thought it was probably Europe’s spring break. There had been a lot more of them around last night, wearing cheap wristbands and neon-banded sunglasses and sneakers without socks or laces.
Suddenly Sara sat up, businesslike, a good ten minutes before her timer would go off.
“Hi,” George said quickly. “This is nice, isn’t it?”
“I think we should take our hike to scatter Irene’s ashes tomorrow.”
He was surprised. “I thought — we had it planned for the, um, end of the week, after Monte Carlo and all that.”
“I think we need to get it out of the way. Don’t you feel like it’s sort of hanging over us? As nice as this all is, I can’t quite relax.”
She could tell that George was annoyed, possibly even a little upset. Which was just as she’d suspected all along — he really didn’t want to scatter her ashes. Maybe even he was hoping that by the end of their ten days in France, he’d be able to persuade Sara to abandon the plan. Here he was, trying to wallow in the waist-deep water, and she was going to make him go right ahead and cannonball into the deep end of the pool? But she couldn’t take it anymore. The sulking, the despondency, the pondering. He was a born problem solver, a doer of puzzles. And she believed in him. She believed he would comb through the data on 237 Lyrae V and correctly identify the variables and reengineer his hypotheses until they were tested and proven. He would discover great things, but this — this couldn’t be solved. The answer to grief didn’t lie in the appendix of a philosophy book or even in Ecclesiastes. He would never be able to drink enough scotch, or stay up late enough on the couch, to unravel it. X equaled nothing. Not zero, nothing. X equaled a waste of time. But what could make him see that? What could make him let it — her — go? Day by day she tried to make their love the greater problem to be solved.
“Let’s do it,” George agreed. “Tomorrow first thing.”
Sara leaned her back against his chest and felt his arms wrap tight around her and his chin rest firmly on top of her head. Together, at last, they stared out at the waves at the shoreline. One of the bands of roving students was passing by. Someone with green streaks in her hair did a cartwheel and fell backward into the water, laughing. Another grabbed a cigarette from the hand of a third, and a game of keep-away began, with the red-hot ember flying around like a sparkler. George wondered if they had ever been that young; Sara remembered that they had been.
Slipping one of her arms behind her back, in the space between it and George’s chest, she thought for the first time that even if being married meant that she would spend every day from here forward watching George grow older (as he would watch her), then she was extremely lucky that the two of them had known each other when they were young. No matter how they changed from here on, they would still have that between them. She’d be able to see behind the bags under George’s eyes and find that spark of still-twenty because she’d seen it before. They could always save that for each other.
Gingerly, she unhooked the top of her bikini and let the straps fall down. George’s hands instinctively rose to cover her up, but she gently nudged them higher to her shoulders. In her whole life she’d never been naked in public. There were so many first times left to come.
• • •
That evening they took a cab into Cannes to dine at the famous La Palme d’Or, and between Michelin-starred courses, they strategized the next day’s hike. On the way, Sara had contacted their tour operators and made arrangements. The group they’d originally planned to hike with wouldn’t start out until the end of the week, and there was nothing scheduled for the upcoming day. But they could make their own way to the Chalet Castellane and pick up some basic supplies and a map of the national preserve. They spent the entire meal talking about the things they expected to see on the hike, getting more excited with each delicious course and each paired wine.
They were just coming to the last of three desserts when George looked up and noticed someone familiar sitting across the restaurant from them. “It’s Santiago!” he said, a little too loudly. “From ¡Vámonos, Muchachos!”
Sara squinted and saw George was right. “Wow. He looks much handsomer in person.”
“We should say hello,” he said. “Just that we’re fans. You know?”
“Do you know his name? You can’t go over there unless you know his real name.”
“It’s Victor. Something.”
And before she could stop him, George was crossing the room with almost frightening speed. She watched, afraid that he would say or do something very drunk and they’d be asked to leave. But to her surprise, with each step, she could see him pulling himself back together. There was her old George! The consummate and confident host. Had he been capable of this all this time? Santiago — Victor — seemed polite and friendly, not at all put out by the intrusion. He gestured to the gorgeous woman next to him, introducing her to George, who in turn, pointed back at Sara, who waved excitedly in their direction. They spoke for a minute or two, and George shook his hand again and returned to the table.
“Well?” she squealed. “What did he say?”
George stared at his dessert plate and played with his fork. “He said the show’s over. He’s here celebrating with his wife.”
“George! What a great story! I can’t—”
And she had been about to say she couldn’t wait to tell everyone, when she remembered that the only someone who cared besides them was back at the hotel in an urn. Which explained the gloomy look she now saw on George’s face.
“The last episode aired in Mexico a week ago. It won’t air in America until next year.”
She tried to cheer him up. “Well, did he tell you what happens? How does it end?”
“Oh, yeah. He gets Renata, and there’s a big wedding.”
Sara clutched her heart. “I knew it!”
Neither of them said anything for a minute, and finally Sara said, “Well, I can’t wait to watch it!”
George took her hand. “Let’s get the check. Big day tomorrow.”
Leaving the restaurant, both of them waved cheerfully at Santiago’s table, and then they were quiet all the way back to the hotel, just watching the city lights going by and playing with each other’s hands. They were both so full and tired that they went straight to bed. Sara fell asleep almost right away, but George lay awake. He couldn’t quite figure out why it made him so sad to know the show was over. Renata and Santiago would be together, married, out there in TV land, forever. It was stupid. Just fucking television. But it bothered him that Irene, who had watched every episode from the beginning, would never know the ending.
• • •
They left in the morning with everything mapped out: where to find the Styx (the local name for a series of lovely natural bathing pools), as well as spots suitable for kayaking, fly-fishing, or rock climbing if they were interested. They had a tight schedule to keep if they were to get back to their hotel in Antibes by dark and then travel up the coast to Nice as planned. They’d go nine miles through the rocks along the turquoise riverbank to reach Point Sublime, an elevated spot at the far end of the canyon that offered breathtaking views of sheer cliffs and the pristine water, with miles of untouched woodland all around — the perfect spot to scatter Irene’s ashes. Carried off by the mountain winds, they would dissipate into a scene of natural and epic beauty that, they agreed, would be beautifully fitting.