The failure of his own art career was a grief too deep and raw for Warlock to recognize. At his mother’s instigation he had won a boy scout’s merit badge in art. That got him started at thirteen and by the time he reached college he was a more than passable portraitist. In fact this talent put him through college: there were countless renderings of rich wives, businessmen, politicians, children. His Phi Delt fraternity brothers frequently put him to work doing nudes. They were a happy spermatic group, always in need of new material for their jerkoff marathons. He had even, out of kindness, painted a small male nude for the one bad apple in the house, a diminutive homo from Kalamazoo. Lucky for the homo that he was rich, as that excuses all behavior for those who envy the condition.

His heart swelled at the beach. If only Gauguin had been his brother. If only Gauguin had been Warlock, or vice versa. What pride and strength and grace and energy. But his mother had died of complications of muscular dystrophy when he was a senior in high school and she had been the backbone of his art aspirations. His father, who was currently near retirement and the top detective in Minneapolis, had urged him vehemently toward more practical pursuits. The ever-changing soul of the water drew him back to Gauguin. The great Gauguin would have had the girls back in his studio in a trice. In the summer of his twenty-second year, in 1960 to be exact, he had taken a portfolio of his original paintings to New York, along with a few portraits. He went by Greyhound and during a rest stop in Pittsburgh, had rather shyly drawn a beret from his valise. The life of Art! Blue water! His other great yearning had been to be in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II with his father and uncles. His father had shaken hands with General Douglas MacArthur and had had the photo to prove it.

One of the girls in green approached, the loose sand forcing a wonderful flex in her legs, with just a tad of furze at the edge of her crotch as if there just might be a half a peach in there struggling with itself. His throat swelled just short of closing.

“Got a ciggy, please?”

“Sure thing. Only Ultra Lights. Watching my health.”

“My ciggies got wet. We had a joint and it got wet, too.”

“Sorry, but I don’t have a joint. Used to smoke pot in the old days.”

“Why’d you stop?” She inhaled deeply and squatted down a few feet from his face.

“Not sure. It seemed to steal my incentive.” He was in an utter dither. She smelled like the sun.

“Fuck the incentive. I like to get stoned.”

“You’re very pretty.”

“So?”

“So nothing. It was just a compliment.”