Finally Renard said he was going to marry the girl Mia. Just like the first time, with Elsa, he said he couldn’t not marry her. We didn’t understand, but we went to the wedding, and drove in a parade down to the sea at Cap-Ferrat. Everyone felt a little embarrassed, with the family not approving, and all the fatherless bambini in wedding clothes, and the drunken blonde first wife in the memory. But Renard acted very happy, and flew his new wife and his friends to Miami, to go on a yacht to Martinique. I didn’t go on the yacht, of course, but some did.

They went to La Dominique, with the moving sands. There is a big sign there that says, dangerous beach. The water is very shallow and the sand is loose and deep, like quicksand. It sucks you down into the water, and the currents pull you out into the sea. The laughing girl, home again, swung her legs on the deck of the boat. The beach is not authorized, but Renard went swimming. With his debts and his adopted children and his family and his gambling, he went in at the unauthorized beach. He was a strong swimmer, but a strong swimmer is not what you need at La Dominique. What you need is to stop fighting, let the arms and legs go limp. If you let go, and don’t fight, the sand sucks you down, but then the water takes you back to the surface. Spits you out. If you fight and try to swim, you die. They didn’t find Renard’s body. His friends on the boat looked a long time. I went to the beach myself when I heard, and walked up and down, as close to the water as possible without slipping into the sand. I stayed there two days, looking at the water and thinking about my friend, then I flew back to Paris, where I was getting a divorce and had a job. They found a jawbone a month later—the drowned body all eaten by sharks or whatever was there.

Mia and I did not talk of Renard’s death when I saw her last week at the Polo, old but still the same, but we were both thinking of it. It was why she did not laugh so much, I know. She might have laughed more with another, but I brought the memory of Renard to her. It was not the thing to talk about. When I left the club, Mia said to me, “My life has been a good life, and Renard would be happy with that.”