“Specialité de la région. Noodles and vegetables, mostly cabbage and tomatoes, cooked with pork. There’s a good place in Province-town. Served with hot crusty white bread. Followed, if you like, by good cold tap beer.”

“That’s it, Charlie.”

“I’m not a Charlie.” They shot sparks at each other again and he grinned.

“I am aware.”

They wandered about the room picking flung clothing from the floor and dressing with only a little self-consciousness and then they went out to the car and drove slowly through the perfect day five miles down Route 6 past the dunes to Provincetown. They had the soup, hot and smoky-tasting, full of delicious chunks, and then they got to the fish pier just as a boat was coming in and Gaby bargained shamelessly until for thirty-five cents she bought a beautiful large fluke, still flipping, insurance against the possibility that the following morning would be rainy or that they would oversleep and not go fishing.

When they got back to the cabin she put the fish in the refrigerator and came to him and took his face in her palms and held it hard. “Your hands smell of fluke,” he complained and then kissed her for a long time and looked at her and they both knew he was going to make love to her again without giving her a chance to wash the fish off her hands.

“Adam,” she said shakily, “I want to give you six children. At least six. And to stay married to you for seventy-five years.”

Married, he thought.

Children?

This crazy broad.

“Gaby, listen . . .” he said anxiously.

She drew back and he reached for her again so he could be holding her as he talked but she wasn’t having any, she was looking straight at him.

“Oh, lord,” she said.

“Look—”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to look. I’m not very smart. That’s no surprise to me, I’ve always known it. But you. God,” she said. “Poor Adam. You’re nothing.”

She ran into the bathroom and locked the door. He heard no weeping but in a little while there was the sound of something terrible, the broken noise of retching, the flushing of the john.

He knocked at the door, feeling terribly guilty. “Gaby, are you all right?”

“Go to hell,” she gasped, crying now.

After a long while he heard the sound of running water as she washed and finally the door opened and she emerged.

“I want to leave,” she said.

He carried the bags to the car and she turned off the gas and locked the door from the inside and climbed through the window, on which he replaced the boards. When he attempted to get behind the wheel she snarled at him. Her driving on the return trip was suicidal, resulting finally in a citation for speeding on Route 128 in Hingham, the state trooper bitingly sarcastic as he protected the public good and welfare.