They took The Mistral out most days, even when it threatened rain. Clara pointed them into the wind, and they pitched and dove through the waves. Alma stood on the deck, holding on to the mast, facing the elements. Slate-gray sea, low, racing clouds. Her tan calves flexed as she kept her balance, her hair whipped behind her.

Now the sails were down, the sun had returned, the boat rocked drowsily. Picnic basket, gin, ice from the marina. Strawberries and grapes and soft cheeses. Henry sat with his back against the bulkhead, and Effie rested her head in his lap. Alma sat on the deck above him, her legs dangling by his side. Softly, when no one was looking, she caressed his arm with her toes.

At the fish market by the marina she joined him at the lobster tank and said, as if commenting on the lobsters, that she was soaking wet.

The others stood safely by the scales. Nearby, an attendant was scrubbing the inside of an empty tank.

“I only thought you should know,” she said. She was up on her tiptoes—her flexed calves—looking down into the churning water. “Every time I look at you, I get wet.”

“You’re giving me a hard-on.”

“Let me see,” she said.

He laughed, looking around. No one was paying attention to them.

“Just a peek,” she said. “Come on.”

And so he pulled the elastic of his trunks out and down, exposing it for an instant, and she smiled at it and left him there, by the tank, to stare at the lobsters and cool off.

Max fried scallops for dinner and they ate outside in the dusk. Alma had showered and changed into her green dress, the one Effie had borrowed. She sat away from him, out of his reach. He felt a hand on his leg—Effie’s—but she was looking at Max and laughing at something he was saying. She was feeling much better. It was all the gin, she’d said. A grape fell to the flagstones and Clara picked it up with her toes and, lifting her foot to Max’s mouth, fed it to him.