PHYLIDA LAY ON her side on the bedspread in her underwear, the table lamp on beside her. I saw her lips moving as her eyebrows jumped under her eye mask. I saw that damned chin hair still, some soft lines on her throat; her long neck, her strong round shoulder knob, the line down to her hollow waist, the bump up over her hip that’s so unbelievably beautiful it proves God’s a perverted ass freak. I kissed her bare white inner forearm again and again, I heard the click of my lips against her skin. Loving anybody is different from impaling anybody or getting something to own and have. It’s like trying to hug your favorite painting, or talk to or waltz with the perfect time of day, the memory of the most beautiful tree you ever saw.

I SLEPT HARD and woke up in such blackness. I didn’t know where I was; a hotel room is like the bottom of a well. The air conditioner had come on during the night and the air felt parched and dead. I tripped on the suitcase, pissed dizzily, stood on the carpet behind the drape looking out the window at a silver ocean and a steel-colored beach, coal-colored sky. I lay back down, wide awake. For the next hour or two I had the sudden profound feeling of remembering Bob, out of nowhere, completely. This random onslaught of memories: Bob in his bathrobe, imitating Queen Elizabeth; moving through the supermarket, spent, in slow motion, his enormous hard-soled shoes slapping the shiny floor; a lame nothing good-bye when I volunteered to drive him to the airport for a six-month trip down south; the sight of his retarded handwriting on a scrap in the kitchen we shared. Ironing his pants in the morning, trying to get the crotch flat. He went through an entire can of spray starch just to make me laugh. I started laughing to myself there again, years after the fact, amazed at how Phylida could sleep and at the same time sigh so loudly there beside me.

IT WAS LIGHT out. Phylida was shoving the bed, talking.

“Did you know Ally Sheedy has a house on this island?” The doors had been thrown open and the room was filling with ocean air, the lace canopy thing above me blowing, lit with sunshine. All the humidity that had been in the air yesterday was gone. You could feel the lightness of the air. I looked out the window and saw clear to the horizon. Phylida kept talking. She’d walked around the town. She bought this hat. She just ate breakfast, and charged it to the room. She had square sunglasses under the hat on her small square nose, soft fat morning lips. Her thighs were firm, smooth vanilla hanging out of the untied white bathrobe. Underneath the robe she had her blue-flowered stretchy bikini. I saw her belly button, the giant freckle on her hip.