“Damned if I know. I found a lady who knew the bob step, and when I went back for another dance, a couple jarheads jumped on my back for a ride. Then Manuel and Jack jumped in.”

“Manuel and Jack?”

“Stay-bolt setters from the boiler shop. We were out for a little fun, you know?” He touched his forehead and winced.

“So you come two thousand miles to export Tiger Island’s favorite pastime?” Her mouth turned down.

Paul looked at the floor and smiled. “Colette, if you want to inflict pain on me, stop the car. I’ll lie in the road and you can roll over my windpipe a few times.”

“But a fistfight? Nothing’s changed.” She tapped the back of a hand on the steering wheel.

“You think back home is the only place in the world where people fight?”

She caught the hopeless note in his voice, as if he were saying, She will never give me a break, and she knew that he was right about the fighting. Wherever there were fists, there would be fistfights. “Where do you live?” When he told her, her mouth fell open because the address was three blocks from her own. Carefully, she stole glances at his face in the passing streetlights to see how bruised he would be. When she stopped in front of his apartment building, a vacuum formed in the car, and to fill it, she asked him if he would like to go somewhere the following Saturday, regretting it the minute she said the words.

He seemed cautious and looked at her. “Where to?”

“A little office get-together. The people I work with.”

“You mean a stand around and drink and talk kind of thing.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. How do I dress?” He winced when he asked.

“I want you to buy a nice tweed coat, a pinpoint oxford white shirt and a navy tie with a subtle print in it. Shine up your best set of loafers.”

“You want me to spend two hundred and fifty dollars for a little office get-together?” She gave him a look and he held up his hands. “Okay, okay. I can wear that stuff next time I go out dancing.”

“Just go to a good men’s store and let the clerk dress you.”

He put his hand on the door handle and paused.

“What?” she asked.

“Uh, you want to pick me up or what?”

“I’m not going to ride in that white whale of yours, that’s for damned sure.”

The next Saturday was cool and windy and they showed up at Colette’s boss’s beach house an hour after the party started, looking storm-tossed and alien. The party had already broken into islands of talkers who were busy ignoring the other groups floating over an expanse of aqua carpet. Colette cut loose from Paul and told him to mingle. She wanted to watch him to see if he would pick a fistfight or throw the piano player through a sliding door. She saw her manager across the room and headed over, hoping for interesting conversation. Soon she was listening to him talk about a recent takeover of a publishing house by a railroad. It was the same drone she had heard three times in the past week, and her spirits came down a notch as she wondered if these parties would net her anything more than tired talk passed around the way children toss beanbags at recess. She listened in to the other islands on her way to the bar, hearing snippets about business or sex, which were the same thing for most of the people she worked with. She drank one whiskey sour with her boss, Dirk, then felt the need for another, lingering at the bar and looking at all the talking going on, all the nothing being said. She also watched Paul hulk around and smile, exchanging single-word greetings, subsiding against an aquarium and staring at the air pump in the tank. Other men at the party were at ease and chatting freely. Chet told a complicated joke. Clint summarized a play. Paul studied the air conditioner’s thermostat as though it were abstract art.