Rich let out the kind of gas that can only be produced by a queasy overnight ocean crossing, squeezed into a coach seat, drinking free suds and wine, igniting that first bellyful of French smorgasbord.

Gynnie sat up and shouted, “What are you doing?”

Rich sat there stunned. He said, “I’m in here! Where did you come from?” He looked at the door he’d locked from inside. On top of his confusion, he could see she’d been sobbing so hard her eyelids looked like walnuts. And when had she ditched her silk kimono for her mom’s ratty bathrobe? Her makeup was gone, her eyelids were not the color of the purple robe, but there was a familial resemblance in the two colors.

She said, “Why do you have to do that in here!”

“Where else am I gonna go?” he yelled, and tried to pull his pants up.

“I don’t care.” She stood in front of him. “Get out of here!” They were the only people in the house and every window was propped wide open; everybody out on the patio heard them screaming. Is this marriage? he thought, running out. Is this typical of what goes on from this point? He held his pants up with one hand, grabbed a magazine in the foyer, and finished his crap down the hall.

•      •      •

RICH SLEPT THE rest of the afternoon, and sat across from Gynnie at dinner. She’d just come out of the shower and her makeup was off, her face was ashen, her hair hung like fishing line, wrung with flat yellow woodstain, and he took a good look at what he was marrying. A few years earlier she’d had both of her front teeth knocked out in a waterskiing accident; they’d been glued back in but they were “dead,” that’s how she referred to them. They were the wrong color. Rich wondered then about other dead parts she was transporting, and how he’d find out. Later, after the little kids had gone to bed, he sat there eating cake, the only light from a few candles still burning. He listened to the French street, looked up at the moon, down at the old cement patio stones between his knees. He had a feeling he’d returned to the Old World, to a history that was his, that he’d never lived, a history that overshadowed his life. All day, he’d felt caught in some ancient, familiar rhythm, overwhelmed by women, wondering where his father was.