In mid-September there were a few crisp days and then a spell of heavy heat, but he could feel in the air that blew in through his open window every morning, a curious mixture of sea ozone and city stink, that even Indian summer soon would be dying. On his next day off, a Sunday, he stripped the blanket from the bed and took his bathing suit and drove the old Volks bus to Revere Beach, a nicer beach than Coney, of course, but not nearly as nice as Jones. It was almost deserted when he got there at ten-thirty, but after lunch, which for him was a hot dog and a bottle of Miller’s, people came.

He picked up his blanket and decided to explore, trudging along the water’s edge until he had left the municipal beach. The facilities here were still public, but they were not maintained. The sand was ash-gray and sparse instead of trucked-in white and deep, and there were large stretches of bruising rocks. But there were fewer people. In the immediate vicinity four jocks with Charles Atlas bodies were striking poses full of ego and muscle; a fat man with a pale belly lay in the sand like a mushroom, his face covered with a towel; two children ran leaping like dancers along the creaming lip of the breakers, yelping little animals; and a Negro girl lay spread out for the sun.

He walked on past the girl in order to have more time to look at her, then he turned around and came back to a spot within twelve feet of where she lay on her back, eyes closed. There were fine patches of sand elsewhere and there were rocks where he spread his blanket; they dug into his flesh when he sat down.

She was lighter than he, a kind of chocolate to his purple-black. She wore a one-piece knit bathing suit, very white, designed for modesty but doomed to failure by the girl’s structure. Her hair was black-frizzly and cut so close it adorned her fine head like a rich skullcap. She was something no white girl could ever hope to be.

After a while three of the jocks got tired of making specific muscles jump and flung themselves into the Atlantic. The fourth, who appeared to have been sired by Johnny Weismuller out of Isadora Duncan, trotted disdainfully over the discouraging terrain and squatted by the lady’s blanket. Ah, he was all muscle, clear through to the top of his head: he spoke of the weather, the tides, offered largely to buy her a Coca-Cola. Finally, conceding defeat, he retired in gloom to make a bicep like a post-natal breast.

Spurgeon hung back, content simply to watch, forewarned that this was not a woman for a casual approach.