“Oh, yes, tell Dor the story.” G abandoned her phone and now looked rapturously upon Joey.

Joey smiled. She did love her love story. For a moment, a cloud drifted over, and she was somewhere else—telling Grant about Leo, and he was mad she hadn’t told him sooner, and worse, he was sad. And then, the cloud didn’t lift so much as assimilate, so Joey could recount things, but with an element of wistfulness.

She began with Grant’s gorgeous tan, omitting his man bun (the over-fifty set thought it was a variety of hamburger encasement), and she skated heavily over the surfing into him part (“But how dangerous!”). She was practiced at the climax—when Grant approached her on the beach.

“So there I was, every bone in my body hurt. Lolak, my instructor, had gone. He’d told me he could get anyone to surf, but after I rammed into Grant, I think he gave up on me. There’s something about the sea though. I was spent and content. I found this stick, and I drew my name into the sand. I was admiring it, when this guy came over.”

“Grant,” said G triumphantly.

“Grant.” Joey smiled. “His calf was wrapped in a T-shirt, and I recognized him immediately. I said, Did I do that?, and he nodded, and I felt so terrible. It was really embarrassing. And so I said, It’s my first time. And he said, No? I wouldn’t have guessed. But he was laughing, and he held out a beer for me and had one for himself, and then I understood. He’d sought me out.

“I said, Are you going to be okay?, and he said, I think I’ll live. And then he looked at what I’d written, and he said, So Joey?, and I said, And you are?, and he gave me this gorgeous grin, you know Grant—”

“Very handsome,” said Doris, with a knowing look.

“Very,” agreed Joey. “So Grant didn’t answer when I asked him his name. He just wrote with his finger in the sand next to my name one of those ampersands and then followed it with his name. So it read—”

“Joey and Grant,” said G and Doris in one united swoon.

Joey felt the cloud lift entirely now so she could pretend to herself a little longer that this sweet Bali love was all in the world there was. “So we had a romance, but only for a couple of days, until his flight out. And I knew he lived in Florida, of course, but I didn’t know I’d be coming back here.”

“But then not too long after I had my surgery,” cut in G, as her starring part arose. “You remember, Dor, on my aorta?”

“Of course.”

G nodded importantly. “Well, Joey came back from Bali for my surgery and was visiting me in the hospital. And she walked right into Grant!”