“It’s a very nice hotel,” she says, closing the door behind her. “I’ll recommend it to my friends.”

“Please do.”

She walks past him, down the hall, through the lobby and the grand front doors. The air outside is so hot and damp, it’s almost liquid. Two hours to Savannah, if the traffic isn’t heavy. She’ll get home just as he’s finishing a dinner of leftovers. She’ll kiss his cheek, squeeze his hand, and tell him the sky was beautiful today. And there’ll be no arguing with that, because it’s true.

There’s Nothing Wrong with Gus

2000

On Sunday afternoon, I eat lunch at the Red Lobster because there’s no food in the house, and I have one of those ridiculously tall, narrow beers that looks like it’s going to tip over just sitting there. The beer loosens my brain a little, and for the third time in as many days I catch myself thinking about calling Teresa.

I do other things instead. I coast by my old house. I get an ice cream cone at the Dairy Queen where we used to take the kids. And for the first time in twenty-five years I drive out to Jetty Park—one of the places I surrendered after the divorce—and mosey around the pavilion in a sugary, beer-fuzzed haze.

The little girl in front of me at the snack bar is maybe eight years old. She’s barefoot and wearing a lime green bathing suit, her hair knotted in a thick braid that hangs down her back. Clutching a dollar and drumming both hands against the counter, she says, “Skittles, please, Skittles, please, Skittles, please,” until the man hands over the candy and takes her money. She skips away.

I buy a ginger ale and carry it up to the roof of the pavilion.

People are standing around in the sun, most of them on the east side, looking out at the ocean. I take a spot along the railing and just stand there along with them. On one side of me, a young couple is having an argument next to a baby stroller. On the other side is a pair of ancients—so old, they’re probably past all arguments. The husband has on a Doc Holliday–style straw hat and a pair of sunglasses as wide as welder’s goggles. His hands are resting on the sun-bleached wood of the railing, and he appears mesmerized by the sight of the Atlantic—though my guess is he’s just old and no longer holds his mouth closed. His wife watches the ocean as if she’s waiting for it to impress her.

Suddenly, the young woman raises her voice over the breeze and the surf. “You know, if you’re going to contradict every single thing I say, then maybe we should just drop the subject.”

“You’re doing it again,” the young man says.

“Doing what?”