He doesn’t know she is there, he doesn’t know who she is, and what would he think if he knew?
She watches as he squirts white lotion from a tube, filling his hand with it, rubbing the hand over his chest, his belly, up and down his arms, over his neck and face, coating himself. He lubricates himself with lotion and then shimmies up the ladder and settles into the chair—on guard.
If he knew, would he think she was a crook, stealing him without his knowledge, or would he think it was nice to be desired, had from this strange distance?
Another boy, older, walks barefoot down the warm boards of the bathhouse, his feet moving fast and high, as if dancing on hot coals. She stays through the morning. He is not the only one, there are others. It is a constant low-key sex play, an ever-changing tableau.
This year they have new suits, their standard Speedos replaced with baggy red trunks. Beneath their trunks, they are naked, cocksure, tempting, threatening. It is always right there, the bulge, enjoying the rub of the fabric, the shrinking chill of the sea.
She watches how they work, how they sweep the deck of the bathhouse, set up umbrellas, how they respond to authority—taking direction from the man with the clipboard. Before settling on two or three of the strongest, most dominant, she watches how they play with each other. She chooses the one with the smoothest chest, and another with white hair, like feathers fanning out, crawling up his stomach, a fern bleached blond.
They are becoming themselves as she is losing herself.
It’s not like she’s been alone for the whole year—she’s dated. I have a friend. We have a friend. He has a friend. The friend of a friend. He has four children from two marriages, they visit every other Saturday. He’s a devoted father. I know someone else, a little afraid of commitment, good-looking, successful, never married. And then there’s the widower—at least he understands grief.
The man from two marriages wants her to wear a strap-on dildo and whack him with a riding crop. The one afraid of commitment is impotent. Even that she doesn’t mind until he tells her that it is because of her. The widower is sympathetic. He becomes determined to get her pregnant, “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll put a bun in the oven.” He comes before they even begin. “It’s not for lack of trying,” he says.
And then there’s the one who never wants children. “I would never want to subject someone so innocent to the failings of my personality,” he says. And she agrees.
The idea of them causes her gut to tighten.
The heat is gaining, the beach swelling with the ranks of the weekenders. It is Friday afternoon, they hit the sand acting as if they own it.
A whistle blows downwind, the boys grab the float and are into the water. “It’s no game,” the head honcho says as they pull someone out, sputtering.
Two cops in dark blue uniforms walk onto the beach and arrest a man lying on the sand. They take him away in handcuffs and flip-flops, his towel tossed over his shoulder. She overhears an explanation. “Violated an order of protection, stalking his ex-girlfriend. She saw him from the snack bar and dialed 911.”
The temperature goes up.
She is sticky, salt-sticky, sex-sticky, too-much-sun-sticky. Walking back to the parking lot, she steps in something hot and brown. She walks on, hoping it’s tar, knowing it’s shit, walks rubbing her foot in the sand, wanting it off before she gets to the car.
The day is turning sour. In the drugstore, by the pharmacy counter, where a long line of people wait to pick up prescriptions for swimmer’s ear, athlete’s foot, Lyme disease, someone pinches her elbow.
She turns. Still sun-blind, she has the sensation of everything being down a dark tunnel, her eyes struggle to adjust.
“All better?” the woman asks.
She nods, still not sure whom she’s talking to—someone from before.
“You don’t come to the club anymore?”
She catches the woman looking into her basket: sunblock, bottled water, condoms, ovulation kits, plastic gloves, pregnancy tests, aspirin.
“Seeing somebody special?”
“Not really,” she says.
“What’s the saying—‘Don’t marry the ones you fuck? Don’t fuck the ones you marry?’ I can never remember how it goes.”
She says nothing. She used to think she was on a par with the others, that for the most part she was ahead of the pack, and now it’s as if she’s fallen behind, out of the running. She feels the woman inspecting her, judging, looking through her basket, evaluating, as if about to issue her a summons, a reprimand for unconventional behavior.
At home, she showers, pours herself a glass of wine. If the accident threw her life off course, her grandmother’s death made it clear that if this was something she wanted to do, she needed to do it soon, before it was too late. She pees on an ovulation stick, the stripe is positive—sometime within the next twenty-four hours the egg will be released. She pictures the egg in launch position, getting ready to burst out, she pictures it floating down her tubes, floating like slow-motion flying.