My watch said 2 A.M. A mosquito came up and bit my eyelid, but I didn’t feel like going inside yet. I was sweating. Right next door, if I needed them, were my new friend Rick and his piece-of-ass wife. And in my bungalow I had my own no-fuck, don’t-touch wife sleeping off her pizza pies. I had a view of the ocean, the seaborne air, mountains in back of me, jungles full of tree-climbing pot freaks. In the moonlight, there were swans or storks, maybe pelicans, gliding above the calm sea, looking for a fish to spear.

THE NEXT DAY’S weather was like all the others. Diane and I swam and read our books and lay on the beach. Joanie appeared at lunch and joined us; she looked tired, and the three of us said almost nothing as we ate. I asked about Rick, and she shrugged, and from then on we baked in the sun, watching the water. Joanie told us she’d talked to her kids that morning; their grandpa had made them spaghetti sandwiches, and they loved it. We swam, and later Joanie said Rick was probably playing tennis, and at dinner, when we still didn’t see him, she said he was exhausted and had never woken up from his nap.

We said good night and went to bed. This time it was Diane who started up. She kissed me and I kissed her back. I held her tits. She opened my shorts and massaged me with a feathery touch of her fingertips, kind of teasing.

It went on for, I don’t know, a while. There was all this circling, circling—had she forgotten how to do everything? She was doing a terrible job. I couldn’t stand it anymore, I shoved her out of the way and started rubbing myself. It was not a scene I’d recommend—not loving, if you know what I mean, not the expression of the subtle union between two people. And then Diane started to cry. She said she felt like a failure in every way—I was ready to agree—and then she went the other way and said I didn’t know her anymore, that I’d forgotten how it used to be when we were crazy about each other, that now I didn’t give a fuck about anything but making money. She cried and I held her. I regretted whacking off like that, I admitted it made everything worse. But I didn’t really care. Without any more fighting, we both fell asleep.

FIRST THING FRIDAY morning, Diane went off to that windsurfing lesson in the bay. Joanie and I sat on the beach and talked. There was still no sign of Rick.