I shake my head.
He comes in and sits down, then pulls the blanket off his shoulders and places it around mine. He finds a fleece pullover in a pile of clothing and wraps it around my reddened arm.
“How cold is that water, anyway?” he asks.
“About thirty degrees, give or take.” I watch him carefully.
“How long can someone survive in there?”
“A matter of minutes, usually,” I say, remembering an expedition guide who’d drowned. He’d been trapped under his flipped Zodiac for only a few moments but had lost consciousness, with rescuers only a hundred yards away. “Most people go into shock. It’s too cold to swim, even to breathe.”
He unwraps my arm. “Does it feel better?”
“A little.” Pain prickles my skin from the inside, somewhere deep down, and I feel an ache stemming from my bones. “You still haven’t told me what you were doing out there.”
He reaches over and begins massaging my arm. I’m not sure I want him to, but I know the warmth, the circulation, is good. “Like I said, I lost my ring.”
“You were out much farther than where I found your ring.”
“I must have missed it.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks. I watch his fingers on my arm, and I am reminded of the night before, when only Thom and I were here, and Thom had helped me wash my hair. The feel of his hands on my scalp, on my neck, had run through my entire body, tightening into a coil of desire that never fully vanished. But nothing has ever happened between Thom and me, other than unconsummated rituals: As we approach the end of our stays, we begin doing things for each other—he’ll braid my long hair; I’ll rub his feet—because after a while touch becomes necessary.
I pull away. I regard the stranger in my tent: his dark hair, streaked with silver; his sad, heavy eyes; his ringless hands, still outstretched.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“I was just trying to help.” The tent’s small lamp casts deep shadows under his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know you don’t want me here.”
Something in his voice softens the knot in my chest. I sigh. “I’m just not a people person, that’s all.”
For the first time, he smiles, barely. “I can see why you come here. Talk about getting away from it all.”
“At least I leave when I’m supposed to,” I say, offering a tiny smile of my own.
He glances down at Thom’s clothing, pulled tight across his body. “So when do I have to leave?” he asks.
“They’ll be here in the morning.”
Then he says, “How’s he doing? The guy who fell?”
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s talking about. “I don’t know,” I confess. “I forgot to ask.”
He leans forward, then whispers, “I know something about him.”
“What’s that?”
“He was messing around with that blond woman,” he says. “The one who was right there when it happened. I saw you talking to her.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw them. They had a rendezvous every night, on the deck, after his wife went to bed. The blonde was traveling with her sister. They even ate lunch together once, the four of them. The wife had no idea.”
“Do you think they planned it?” I ask. “Or did they just meet on the boat?”
“I don’t know.”
I look away, disappointed. “She seemed too young. For him.”
“You didn’t see her hands,” he says. “My wife taught me that. You always know a woman’s age by her hands. She may have had the face of a thirty-five-year-old, but she had the hands of a sixty-year-old.”
“If you’re married, why are you traveling alone?”
He pauses. “Long story.”
“Well, we’ve got all night,” I say.
“She decided not to come,” he says.
“Why?”
“She left, a month ago. She’s living with someone else.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what more to say. Dennis is quiet, and I make another trip to the supply tent, returning with a six-pack of beer. His tired eyes brighten a bit.
He drinks before speaking again. “She was seeing him for a long time,” he says, “but I think it was this trip that set her off. She didn’t want to spend three weeks on a boat with me. Or without him.”
“I’m sorry.” A moment later, I ask, “Do you have kids?”
He nods. “Twin girls, in college. They don’t call home much. I don’t know if she’s told them or not.”
“Why did you decide to come anyway?”