Eventually, Franny and Antoni stood up. Antoni put his hand on Franny’s lower back as they walked through the restaurant, and he kept it there all the way until they reached the car. He opened the door for her—Franny always had liked nice cars, even though they thought it was silly to have one in New York. When they got home, if she took him back, Jim vowed he would buy her a car, whatever she wanted. A car and a motorcycle and anything else. He wanted to be the one to drive her wherever she wanted to go. Jim nudged Terry awake.
“Oi,” Jim said. “We’re back on.”
Jim’s biggest fear was that Antoni would take another route—have another destination, like a hotel, or maybe his house—but the car went back the way it had come, straight to the tennis center. Terry and Jim stayed enough of a distance behind that they weren’t obvious, but close enough to catch up if necessary. They stopped in a different spot from where they had the first time, a little ways farther back, because Franny was a nervous driver and was sure to look both ways several times before attempting to pull out into traffic. It didn’t take long—Jim peered over the wall and watched as Franny and Antoni said good-bye. She was facing the courts, and Jim could only barely make out the lower half of her body, the rest hidden by trees. It was clear that Antoni was embracing her, and leaning toward her face, but Jim couldn’t see what was actually happening. Then Franny started to clomp away, always unsteady in those shoes, and Jim hurried back to the bike, pulling on his helmet. He hid again behind Terry’s leg, accidentally hitting himself in the wounded eye on Terry’s knee. “Shit,” he said.
“Okay, there she goes,” Terry said, and Jim hopped back on. He was starting to feel like he’d lived his whole life wrong—maybe he should have been a motorcycle cop, or a private investigator. He’d spent too much of his allotted hours on earth indoors, staring at a page with words on it. Franny would have cried hallelujah to hear him say it—she’d been telling him that for years, that life was lived outside, on the move, out of one’s comfort zone. She’d gone so many places without him, and Jim mourned them all now. Franny was driving slowly, and Terry matched her pace. Jim wanted to move to England and retroactively send his children to see Terry, clearly the world’s greatest pediatrician.
Terry shouted something, but Jim couldn’t hear him. They were still slowing down. Over Terry’s shoulder, Jim saw the tiny rental car swoop over to the shoulder of the road and come to a halt. Jim knocked on Terry’s back and then pointed at Franny’s car. He held up his palm, STOP in the name of love, and Terry did just that, gracefully exiting traffic and pulling over just in front of Franny’s car.
She hadn’t gotten out but was squinting through the windshield. Jim took off his helmet and tucked it under his arm like an astronaut. He hoped that he looked handsome and rugged, and not like he’d just removed a scuba mask, but he feared the latter was probably true. Recognizing her husband, Franny shook her head and dropped her chin to her chest, just what she did in dark movie theaters when a serial killer was about to jump out and claim his next victim. Jim walked to the driver’s-side window and waited for Franny to press the button to roll it down. She didn’t want to laugh—was trying not to laugh—but she couldn’t quite keep it in.
“Jim,” she said. “Are you following me?”
He crouched down, holding on to the bottom of the car’s window. “Maybe.”
“Have you been following me all day? On the back of that guy’s motorcycle?” Franny gestured with her chin toward Terry, who really did cut an imposing figure when you didn’t know him. He was on the phone now, scowling into the middle distance. He saw them looking and waved.
“Maybe.”
“Why, if I may ask such a pedestrian question?”
“Because I love you. And I don’t want to lose you. Not to some tennis pro, not to anyone.” Jim stood up and opened the car door. He reached a hand down for Franny. She paused, put her foot on the clutch, and turned off the car.
“I keep fucking that up,” she said, once she’d climbed out. “I think we’re going to have to buy it when we return it. I’m pretty sure that I’ve ruined it completely.”
Jim put his hands on Franny’s shoulders. She was so much smaller than he was, almost an entire foot. His parents, who’d wanted him to marry some gangly sylph from Greenwich, had never understood. They were worried about the gene pool, about producing generation after generation of tall blonds. But Jim loved her, only Franny, only his wife. “I’m the one who fucked up. Fran, I am so sorry. I will do anything. I can’t be without you, I can’t.”
Franny reached up and traced the outline of Jim’s black eye, which had started to turn green. “It’s healing,” she said, and tilted her head up in the way that meant he could kiss her, and so he did. Behind them, Terry let out a wolf whistle, triumphant.
After walking through a short tunnel cut into the side of the mountain, Sylvia and Joan finally found what they were looking for. The beach was magnificent—a tiny horseshoe of sand, completely empty. Sylvia could see the bottom of the water for fifty feet, bright blue and clear. Joan set down his bag and the cooler, and quickly got them set up. He unrolled a thick blanket, and stacked heavy things in the corner to keep it down, though the beach seemed totally protected from the wind. There were no waves, not even small ripples. Sylvia kicked off her shoes and waded in.
“This is literally the most beautiful place I have ever been in my entire life,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure that will always be true.”
Joan nodded. “It’s the best. No one knows about it. Even local people don’t know. My grandparents live right up there,” he said pointing up the mountain behind them. “They would bring me here when I was little. Very good for toy boats.” He had packed enough food for four: ham and cheese sandwiches, wine, thin butter cookies his mother had made. “Do you want to swim first, or eat?”
Sylvia walked over to the blanket, her wet feet and calves now caked with sand. “Hmm,” she said, turning back to face the water. “Normally I would pick the food, but right now, I don’t know.”
“I have an idea,” Joan said. He pulled the corkscrew out of the bag and opened the bottle of wine. He took a slug and then handed the bottle to Sylvia, who followed suit. When she’d passed it back, he recorked the bottle, set it in the cooler, and peeled off his shirt.
Everyone on earth had a body, of course. Young people had bodies and old people had bodies and all bodies were different. Sylvia would never have described herself as someone who cared about muscles; pecs and abs did nothing for her, theoretically. That stuff was for idiots who didn’t have better things to think about. That was for girls like Carmen, who didn’t know enough to see that their boyfriends treated them like garbage. Working out was a punishment, a gym-class nightmare. Sylvia tried to remember if she could even touch her toes, but couldn’t, because she was hypnotized by the sight in front of her. All of her speculation about Joan made the actual physical reality of him without his shirt on seem like a joke. She didn’t even know which muscle groups to imagine! They were all there, the little ones and the big ones and the ones like arrows pointing toward his crotch. She truly had had no idea that bodies were actually made like that, with no Photoshop in sight. Joan folded his shirt and laid it on the blanket, and then reached for his fly. Sylvia had to turn around.
“I’ll race you,” she said, mostly because she wasn’t sure her legs could take seeing any more, like they might just give out from under her and then she’d die on the spot. She quickly pulled off her dress, revealing the tank suit underneath. She threw her dress in a ball behind her, not caring where it landed, and then ran into the water. She ran until the water was as high as her hips, and then closed her eyes and dove.