The sea appeared suddenly at the end of the road. We started to drive alongside it as it appeared and disappeared between the beachside resorts. To our left, the out-of-season boardinghouses and hotels exposed their faded signs to a cool, tense wind that made the palms in their gardens sway.

Everything was very silent, even Arianna now. Once past the developed area, we parked on the side of the road. The sky was turning pink, but the sea was still gray and hostile.

“It always seems to be asking something,” Arianna said after a while. “But all water’s like that. The rain’s the same, it always seems to be asking something.”

When we walked down to the beach, the wind got in under our clothes and dispelled what little heat we’d accumulated in the car. She shivered. “It’s cold, dammit,” she said, and started running across the moist sand with her hands in the pockets of her red raincoat. In an instant she was far away, while I kept to the part of the beach that had hardened again, walking over a sad carpet of dried-out seaweed and empty shells. The waves lapped at my shoes, and gradually, as the undertow beat on the shore, a final barrier came down and my eyes moved to where her raincoat stood out like a red puppet. The noise it made, carried to me on the wind, was like the crinkling of a paper cone. I followed her tracks, placing my feet where she’d set hers. The wind played a strange trick when I reached her, making it look, as she turned her beautiful face toward me, wounded by the morning, as if she’d stopped breathing, then started again. The red raincoat emitted a few more squeals as her arms rose to my neck. I felt the cold of the sleeves on me and suddenly started to shiver again.

“Are you cold?” she said, pressing her body, small and hard and warm, against mine. She blew into the collar of my shirt, laughing softly, then I started to feel her lips running lightly over my cheeks. “Poor boy … poor boy … poor boy,” she said softly, taunting me, “what have I done to you … you poor boy…” until I felt her lips gradually turning more tender as her smile faded. Her lips were on mine, and then I felt her tongue searching, tenderly, stubbornly, over my teeth, prying them apart. Then, with inexpressible slowness, she broke away and, still very slowly and thoughtfully, rubbed her lips on the cuff of my raincoat. “Well!” she laughed. “You won’t even want to make love. I don’t really like that idea of yours.”