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Have you done that? she asks quietly. Have you imagined the
whole of us?
Yes, he answers, and you have done so as well.
She stands and walks to a window, having long since lost her
modesty in his presence. The house will be ready by the weekend?
she asks.
Yes.
Then Catherine and the children will be returning for good,
she adds, stating an obvious truth that has been gnawing at her for
some time.
Yes, he answers simply. He climbs out of the bed and stands be-
side her at the window.
What is it? he asks, although he already knows.
The future lies like a thickening gas all around them. They both
dread Catherine s return, for not only will it mean that the house,
their house, the one Olympia and Haskell have christened and have
loved in, will be occupied; but also it will mean that Haskell will
have to move out of the Highland Hotel. Thus, they will have
nowhere to meet. For Olympia, the tenth of August looms in the fu-
ture not as a date of celebration, but rather as a day on which a par-
ticularly painful sentence is to begin.
We have run out of time, she says.
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fortune s rocks
If we wallow in the pain, he says, we shall have spent all our
pleasure already. It was you who taught me this.
My father s gala will be a grotesque charade. I shall feign illness.
Though they both know that she cannot.
Beyond the salt-encrusted windows, they can see the noontime
bathers on the beach. They watch as a man in a bowler hat constructs
an elaborate canopy of wooden stilts and canvas around and above the
stiff figure of a woman. She sits rigidly on a collapsible wooden chair
and stares at the water. The day is hot, with a sort of lemon haze all
along the shore, and she is overdressed in a heavy black taffeta suit. And
though she wears a hat, and her husband is frantically trying to con-
struct the canopy, she holds a black ruffled parasol at a precisely verti-
cal angle. The haughty and cold demeanor of the woman is a painful
contrast to the too-eager-to-please mien of the husband and seems to
suggest an imbalance in the marriage, if indeed it is a marriage, or a de-
sire on the part of the man to make amends for an unknown trans-
gression. Olympia wishes suddenly, looking at the water, that she could
bathe in the sea right now and that Haskell could join her.
She rests her head on his shoulder. She knows much about him
now: the tufts of hair between his knuckles, the cords at the back
of his thighs, the hushed pause, as though all the world held its
breath, and then the low, quick exhalation of pleasure. But some-
times doubts creep into her thoughts, and she cannot help herself
from wondering: Might Catherine know things about Haskell that
Olympia has not had time to learn?
What a silly woman, Haskell says, watching the sad comedy of
the chastened husband and his overdressed wife.
He moves behind her and wraps his arms just under her breasts.
He looks out the window over her shoulder. Now, they look to be
having a better time, he says, pointing through the window at a
couple with a young child sitting on a rug near the water.
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anita shreve
The wife is dressed in a loose white shift and has her skirts pulled
up to her knees. She seems relaxed, though Olympia notes that she
does not take her eyes off the child playing in front of her in the
water. The woman s husband has been bathing, for his costume
droops with the wet. He sits beside his wife and runs his fingers
up and down the thin cloth of the back of her dress. Olympia feels a
keen, not to say ferocious, pang of jealousy and regret. For Haskell
and she will never have what that couple have and, perhaps because
it is so easy for them, cannot value as much as they might: a child, a
marriage, the ability to sit outside in public and touch each other.
She turns quickly toward Haskell. There is again the lightning
within her body, that endlessly repeatable lightning. The need for
the relief and release only he can offer. She puts her face against the
pad of his shoulder.
We have only one more day, she says.
As if echoing the man and wife outside, Haskell strokes her back
with his fingers.
In our imaginations, he says, we have a lifetime.
" " "
She is later than she has said she would be, and as she walks, she
composes excuses: Victoria s mother asked me to stay for tea. They were
getting up a croquet match at the hotel. Julia and I were playing
duets on her piano, and I lost track of the time. The sand is hard, and
her dress is wrinkled. She looks up toward her house, dreading hav-
ing to enter it, and when she does, she is startled to see that her
mother and Catherine Haskell and Zachariah Cote are sitting on
the porch.
But surely Catherine is in York, Olympia thinks.
Olympia instinctively turns and bends to the sand as if she had
dropped a handkerchief or purse.
My God, she thinks. We might have been caught.
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fortune s rocks
Slowly, she stands and tries to smooth her skirts. Her fingers
feel for the buttons at her collar to see that they are fastened. She
checks to see that the locket is inside her dress. When she turns, her
mother is already waving to her, beckoning her to join them.
Olympia walks toward the house and makes her way up the porch
steps.
Olympia, Catherine says when she has reached them. I am so
glad to see you. How are you surviving this ghastly weather?
Olympia seems to have a secret life these days, her mother an-
swers for her.
Indeed, says Cote, flashing her a smile.
Tell me about it, Catherine pleads. You have a young man.
No, Olympia says in a confused manner.
Olympia, do sit down, her mother says.
It is just that I have made a number of friends here this summer,
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