“Well, I’ll be back with those boots,” the salesman says, breathing heavily as he stands up.

Isabelle watches him go into the back. She breathes deeply, trying to control the waves of anger that cause her heart to beat so hard and fast that she is almost frightened. She blinks slowly, staring straight ahead.

The salesman returns with two shoe boxes tucked beneath one arm and a coneful of popcorn in the other hand. He holds the popcorn out toward her. He smiles almost shyly as he waits for her to take the cone from him. “I thought maybe you’d like some popcorn,” he says. “It’s good popcorn.” Sweat beads on his brow, and his chest heaves, up and down, up and down. Isabelle feels sorry for this man. She is sorry for what she is doing to him. She is sorry for what her mother is doing to him. She wonders if he has children at home, and imagines her own father in this man’s position. She would hate whatever child made her father feel this way.

“Here,” the salesman is saying. “I mean, if you’d like it.” He sits on the stool in front of her, peering at her over the boxes on his lap, his arms reaching over them with the popcorn still held out.

She swallows and reaches for the cone.

This sound, this vibration—it is the low rumble of an outboard motor. Yes, that’s what it is. It spreads loudly through all of Wilson’s body; he can feel the noise tingling even in his fingertips, and he knows that when it stops, when the engine is turned off, he will feel it for a while even still. The air is neither hot nor cold; it is the temperature of nothing, so comfortable that he’s not sure where his body ends and the air begins. The sea is flat, today, glassy still and empty, though he knows that later, sometime in the afternoon, a sea breeze will kick in and the bay will then be triangled with sails they’ll watch from the terrace as they drink iced tea brewed with fresh-picked mint. But right now, it is only the three of them cutting fast through the water, Wilson standing at the helm steering only slightly to avoid the lobster pots that float boldly on the water’s surface, twisting gently on their tethers.

Ruth sits on the seat in front of him. Her hair is fastened up with bobby pins, and she holds a straw hat—one of her mother’s—to her head. She wears a bathing suit and a loose translucent beach shirt, which flaps in the boat’s wind. Her legs are propped up on the rail; they are brown with sun, and her toenails are painted red. Wilson watches as she reaches down into the cooler beside her and pulls out a Beck’s for each of them. She holds her own between her legs as she lifts his up to him over her head. He reaches over the console and squeezes her shoulder, takes the beer.