The next day they rented a moschone to row out into the bay and over to the beach in the next cove. Marguerite was thinking of the photos in their album at home that showed Alberto as a beautifully tanned muscular young man in a sailboat off the Lido. She had never known his youth and she felt overwhelming nostalgia for it as she watched the pale, paunchy person he’d become guide them over the gorgeous water to a strand of beach. Once there, Alberto sat in the shade of a straw-matted shelter while she swam.

“Alberto,” she called to him from the water, “the boat—it’s drifting away.”

Annoyed, he floundered around grabbing the line on the boat and called, “Get yourself a porter next time—or an athlete! I’m not supposed to exert myself.”

“The doctors have told you the opposite. They’ve told you to exercise and not just sit still, writing. My cousin Louis Longobardi went back to playing tennis after his heart attack.”

“I’m not Louis Longobardi. I can’t take so much sun, so much exercise. I don’t need this escapism; I’m fine in my own home.”

The delight she took in the sea and sun on her body, in the sights before her, was undone. Sun and light. She remembered Gillo Gatti yearning for sun and light; she thought of love and wondered if, before it was too late, she’d have it. She thought of how such a place could be with a man she loved—a man to swim with, walk with, drink with, talk with, laugh with, make love to.

At dinner she said, “It’s all a mistake between us. All we have together now is a common address. Tina is going to college in a month, Weezy is old enough so that staying together serves no purpose. I want a divorce; I want to get out.” The tears came to her eyes, not his, this time.

“You’re tired from all that sun,” he said. “Let’s go up and rest. When we get back to Rome you can see that psychiatrist we heard about. You’re still upset over the loss of Berto.”

There was no further use in asking Alberto to walk to town, to find the Ecclis, to join the dancers, to look at the night, to do anything. They went to bed. Lovemaking in the dim room, and all the time Marguerite thinking, I have no companion in joy. I can’t live like this . . . the waste . . . the waste . . . I could die, honestly die of what I feel.