“Last night? That was nothing. Makes a change from the everyday.” I ran my hand over his hair, which was short and bristling, God knew why. The smell of his soap, how I’d missed it. This humid little intimacy of tangling in bed together at dawn.

“Everyday, eh?” he said.

“Everyday. It’s how most people live, you know, one day the same as the other. Sleeping in the same bed with the same woman, night after night. Some find it a little dull, I guess.”

How that wide, red mouth grinned at me. I still remember that smile, the shape and size of it. He rolled me on my back, kissed me on the lips and throat and breasts. “I believe we can do better than that, my love,” he said. And you know how it is. The sunshine, the smell of the sea through your window, your lover returned to you after an absence. A lover’s body you know as your own, each bone, each sinew, each twitch of muscle, each hair, each flavor, each word before he says it, each thought. When the end approached, I threw back my head and came like the Southern Pacific, and he arched his back and collided head on, an awful crash. Together we shuddered and steamed. The quiet, pale room. The damp sheets, the fan that whirred above us.

Eventually the shuddering slowed to a tremble, a stillness. We lay stomach to stomach while the light gathered above our heads. Still I trusted him. He lifted himself on his elbows and pulled out slowly. Shimmied off the rubber and said he’d be right back, don’t go anywhere. When he returned, I stood at the French door to the patio, staring out to sea, smoking a cigarette. He put his arms around me and rested his chin on the top of my head.

“Why, what’s the matter?” I said.

He took some time, while the surf tumbled in under the sunrise.

“I’ve been recalled back to London,” he said.