As she looked about her, Tina felt the trap of her senses fold her in. Another beautiful place, she thought; another postponement of reality. She thought of her mother; that poor lady had always had to live in a perfect setting, there had to be beautiful views, things had to be just so. And yet when she stepped out of her setting, there was the real world all around her, ready to jar, like a too-swift change of scene in a movie. Did it make any sense to shelter oneself in aesthetics? Tina thought of the squalor of New York. Yet the streets there were charged with a vitality that was nowhere evident in the perfect, pastel square. It was going to be a question of compromise, she thought, of accommodating oneself to less than perfect solutions.

“I just want to stay here and not move anywhere,” she said.

“We can stay,” he said.

“No. I’ve got to get to Castagna. That’s a magic name for me . . . you can’t understand.”

“Oh, but I can. I haven’t told you yet, but there’s a Castagna in my life, too. It just shows how we were meant for each other.”

“Now don’t tell me a quintessential Wasp like you has Calabrian ancestors. That’s too much! Although I always did wonder about your dark looks. Do you suppose some of those Englishmen who were always walking through Calabria in the nineteenth century stopped off in Castagna and begot a love child who is your ancestor?”

“No, nothing improper, please. It’s just that I always grew up hearing of the wreck of the Italian bark Castagna off Nauset Reef. My grandfather’s place is not far away, and he was part of the rescue team when he was only fifteen. It was in 1914.”

“That’s incredible—an Italian boat named Castagna! What happened to her?” Tina was entranced; she believed in the synchronization of names and places and time in two different lives. Such signs were the magic that came out of the blue and brought two persons together, she was sure, more than any amount of tripping, sex, or good fellowship on the road. Now she and Jason had this powerful word between them.

“It was the most exciting story of my childhood because Grandpa took such a part in it. You remember where Nauset Light is, don’t you, from that time you came to the Cape? Didn’t Tim take you to see it?”

Tina nodded silently, absorbed in his talk.

“Well, all the Jowers men have always been part of the volunteer crew at the lifesaving station. Grandpa, since he was a boy, used to tag along when his father went to the scenes of wrecks. But the wreck of the Castagna was just about the worst in the station’s history because it took place in a February storm and the stranded men were frozen in the rigging.”