The old man, tense and wild-eyed as always, managed for once to release his mainsheet almost on time. Mitch leaped for the dock, jarring his back, got a turn on an ancient cleat, and let the line take up the shock. When Shawn hit his usual piling, it left hardly a mark on the hull.

No one was watching anyway.

They showered in the paneled locker room. Toweling, Mitch wandered idly along the walls, which were hung with cartoons of the Club’s Tinsley Island festivities from the early ‘30s. All were illustrated in-jokes. Even Mitch, whose father had been on the Board of Governors for years, had never understood some of them.

He began to dress. “I’m resigning my membership,” he suddenly told his father-in-law, who was sitting on a wooden bench straining to pull on his socks. “Next week, before we get hit for next year’s dues.”

The old man sighed: “Are you still bitching about Bertelli?”

Mitch had sponsored his partner a year ago. Bernie had been mysteriously blackballed. Mitch suspected Shawn, who disliked Bernie, and had almost resigned then, but Bernie had talked him out of quitting on the ground that it was a good place for them to take clients for lunch.

“Put him up again,” continued the old man. “Maybe he thinks it’s because he’s Italian. Hell, tell him we got Italians on the Board! We got an Italian Commodore! Christ, the town’s got a wop mayor! Put him up again!”

“Bernie,” Mitch said, “fights his own battles. He says wait until some employee breaks a leg down here, he’ll handle us fuckers. And he will.”

Shawn tugged up his pants, cinched in his gut, and fastened his belt too tightly. He looked like a rooster getting ready to crow. “You wouldn’t let him.”

“I’d write his brief,” promised Mitch, “but I think I might retire.”

“Retire?” Shawn asked sharply. “What would you do?”

“Travel, maybe.” Mitch tossed his towel into a basket and adjusted Shawn’s necktie. “Come on, Pops,” he said. “Lindy’s waiting.”

The bar was closed to women, so she had waited at the old man’s favorite table in the dining room, overlooking the Bay. She dug into her pocketbook and drew out two messages. One was from Peggy Slater, a tough, aggressive Southern California yacht broker whose own boat was emblazoned with pink valentines and who made most of her male counterparts look like kids trading bubblegum wrappers. She was offering an English-built ketch, built to Lloyd’s specifications, for $75,000 firm.

“Fiberglass or wood?”

“Glass.”

Mitch shook his head, and Shawn exploded. “Talk about club snobbery! What’s wrong with glass? You’ve been sailing the ass off my boat for ten years!”