After twenty minutes, she got a little bored and decided to pull out her paperback.
One longed for the Robinson Crusoe experience only to a point. Spirits picked up considerably when the character Friday showed up. No fun at all to be shipwrecked with nothing: no food, no clothing, no communication, no companionship. What Ann had was perfect — a day alone, topless, and then a gourmet dinner, a luxurious bungalow, a companionable-enough husband. It was the precarious balancing act between solitude and community that made perfection. She got to her feet, leaving her string bag behind for later. No one would steal it. Another part of the Crusoe experience: the lack of crime. It was as if you were president of your own country. Forget that — the president had hardly any control over the country. Instead you were benevolent dictator, king, or, better, you were a god, little g, over your terrain, and could make it over to your own liking.
A swim would be perfect — the water would be deliciously calming on her burning skin. She did a strong breaststroke parallel to the shore, the straps of the pulled-down bathing suit dragging like an underwater parachute, bunching uncomfortably between her legs. Why not go for the full experience?
She did a sidestroke perpendicular to shore and bodysurfed till her stomach scuffed against sand, hesitated, then unpeeled herself from the suit as if it were an old dead skin. In many ways it was harder for Ann to take off her bathing suit than to give up being an attorney — she had never seen herself as a lawyer, but she thought she knew what kind of woman she was, and that didn’t include being a nude woman on a beach. Neither assumption ended up being the whole story.
Fearing the incoming tide, Ann wadded the suit into a ball and threw it back into the tree line so that it wouldn’t get swept out. She took a mental snapshot so that she could find the suit again — a clump of five palms, some boulders, more trees. The interior was so repetitive one could circle the island without ever realizing it. The key was to face out and memorize the shape of the cove — hers was heart-shaped.
Only a few days ago, she had been waylaid by the sight of a partially clad Wende, and now look at her. Filled with pure animal good spirits, she ran, kicking up the sand (she may have even let out a little victory howl), and jumped into the surf, splashing up drops of water that briefly sparked in the sunlight before gravity recaptured them. Then she dove deeply into the salty embrace of the lagoon.
The green fairy incident in Loren’s bungalow had set off an estrangement between Richard and her that she was at the moment not at great pains to fix. As much as she loved her husband and wished to protect him, Ann admitted to a dark streak of wanting to shake him up.
Although she was mildly jealous of his lust for Wende, she wasn’t jealous enough for the simple reason that she knew Richard wouldn’t act on it. The reason for nonaction had less to do with fidelity than with a basic tentativeness on his part, a timidity that extended from his personal life to his professional — Richard simply didn’t believe in himself enough to have an affair. Ann had always suspected that this was why he got swept up by Javi; they were so clearly opposites.
* * *
After Ann and Richard had been dating about a year, he went through a period Ann later called his depression. It coincided with a master class that included a trip to France to learn butchery. Ann had just started to work, and there was no way she could leave for a month. Javi had already moved to LA to work as commis at a famous restaurant; Richard would join him once the course was over.
Richard came back changed, and the only logical conclusion was that it was due to meeting a girl. Ann waited for the announcement that he was breaking up with her, but it didn’t come. Instead Richard worked at the restaurant longer and longer hours. When he came home, haggard, he went straight to bed. Their sex life sputtered out. Ann figured he was too nice to break up with her, or didn’t know how. When he began talking about apprenticing with a famous pastry chef in Paris, that was the last straw.
Ann called Javi up and asked him to have a drink with her after work. She needed to run something by him.
She waited for him at a trendy Westside bar he chose. Ann felt guilty and out of place to even be in such a place without Richard knowing. It was happy hour, and she had been elbowed off the bar, and crowded at her table, and one by one her empty chairs had been removed by adjoining parties. She feared that if she went to the bathroom, the table would be gone on her return.
When Javi walked in — jeans, black T-shirt, wetted-down hair — men and women turned to stare. Javi had charisma; he looked like someone whose name you should know. A chair miraculously reappeared along with a menu. The cocktail waitress whom Ann couldn’t flag down for a glass of water was now all attention while he ordered shots of a little-known brand of exclusive tequila. Then he turned to Ann.
This was Javi’s great gift — when he directed all that magnetism, charisma, and wattage on a poor single female entity, said entity felt so grateful. Now Ann fumbled over how she would inform him she was breaking up with his best friend and wanted his help.
His dark eyes pooled themselves into hers. He hunched over in his seat and held her hand in both of his, almost like a confessional.
“You want to dump Richard?”
“How did you know?”
“How could I not know? Question to you: How did you last this long? Richard’s messed up, man.”
Ann hung her head in guilt and, worse, started crying. Smeared black raccoon eyes. “I’m a terrible person.”
“He doesn’t see you, mi amor. He is too caught up in his own shit.”
The classic pot calling the kettle black, but she didn’t know it at the time. “He’s good-hearted.”
“And hardworking. Blah, blah, blah. Pour me another.”
The waitress hovering nearby made eye contact with Javi, nodded, and shot away like a hunting dog for more tequila.
“He’s a talented chef,” she said, digging in. “Better than you.”
To his credit, Javi nodded his head at this blow. “I’ll give you that. Maybe. But it’s about more than dry technique, isn’t it? Where’s the passion? He doesn’t like to sweat. Answer me: Does he take care of you?”
Ann was startled out of her tears by the question.
“You know.” He ran his index finger along her wrist.
“I don’t care—”
“You don’t care?!” he said with such force that people at other tables turned to look at him. “It’s a crime! Beautiful woman such as yourself. Leaving you at home every night while he goes out for a beer with Alicia. Nice girl, but not a thought in her head. Just ‘You’re the bomb, Richard.’”
He had said the magic words to release her (although didn’t the very act of choosing lacy, special-occasion La Perla lingerie that morning indicate premeditation on her part?). Half an hour later, she was at Javi’s place with said lacy underwear around her ankles. He was on his knees, making her feel as if she had never known what sex was before. Multiorgasmic, no-strings-attached sex. Afterward he gave her an affectionate peck on the forehead. No talk of love or a relationship in the future. Only years later did he also admit there had been no Alicia.
Javi’s cool professionalism as a lover balanced nicely against Richard’s maudlin tenderness, his recent postcoital crying in bed, his lack of initiative pretty much all the time. But somehow Ann put off breaking up with Richard even as she continued to sleep with Javi. She rationalized that this technically was the definition of a transitional stage.