Jez’s face fell. “But . . . why didn’t you say?”
“Because you’d booked a honeymoon at a spa resort . . .”
Jez put his hands to his face and groaned. “Shit. Sorry babe. I can’t believe . . .”
They both looked at each other and burst into laughter. Stevie wondered whether the massage hadn’t done some good after all.
A few minutes later in the pool, the water cold against her hot flesh, the sky and sea azure, her head a little pickled by champagne, Stevie’s spirits soared as she dove beneath the surface. Gosh, it was beautiful here. And Katy and Seb were tolerable enough, generous to share this extraordinary villa. Her body was alert, alive, and tin- gled every time somebody inadvertently brushed against her un- derwater. In fact, the massage seemed to have broken down the physical barriers between all of them, lubricating previous awk- wardness. Katy dunked Jez. Seb grabbed Stevie’s ankles. They laughed and splashed and screamed. And when her bikini top con- tinued to ride up her torso in the water, Stevie felt it preposterous to persevere. She whipped off her green Topshop bikini top, allow- ing her white breasts to flop out to the glare of sunshine as the oth- ers cheered her on. Free and streamlined, she dove again, enjoying the tug of water against her nipples, its unimpeded rush across her body. This is more like it, she thought, blowing out a cloud of bub- bles that jumped above her head like boiling peas. She stood up, shook the water from her hair, and rubbed it from her eyes. She looked up. Oh no.
Katy was standing at the side of the pool, kicking off her handkerchief-sized bikini bottoms. Then, she was nude—hardened nipples and a narrow pubic landing strip. Stevie looked away. Seb clapped. Jez stared.
“Come on, guys!” Katy giggled, tossing her hair back. “Who’s for a skinny dip?”
Seb, needing no further encouragement, squirmed out of his shorts underwater. (He couldn’t wait to see Stevie’s body, so differ- ent from his girlfriend’s; more robust, more honest somehow. He could imagine giving a girl like that a good . . . ) “Come on, guys.” Stevie looked at Seb. Her field of vision couldn’t help but narrow
and become entirely filled with the specter of his penis, which tubed long, thin, and scallop-white out of a frizz of wispy brown hair. She looked away quickly.
“Stevie?” Jez looked at Stevie for a smile of permission.
There was a loud slap as Jez’s trunks hit the poolside by Katy’s feet, spraying her calves with water.
“Jez!”
“Come on, pumpkin.” Jez laughed, kicking up the water. “It’s a private villa.”
“Yeah, take it off, Stevie!” yelled Seb insistently. “C’mon, girl!” Stevie resented being made to feel like the repressed party-
pooper. She’d spent years witnessing her mother’s skinny-dips, hid- ing in the dunes while her parents paraded like characters from a seventies book about nudist beaches. She hated all the skinny- dipping then. She hated it now. Her body was private. She’d like other people’s bodies to remain private, too, unless she was sleeping with them. And if she was really honest, she didn’t want her body compared to Katy’s—not right now, not without a proper tan.
“Didn’t think you were the prudish type,” Seb roared insistently. Stevie resisted the urge to shout back, “Didn’t think you were the small-dicked type, either.” Instead, she hauled herself out of the water and sat on the poolside, legs clamped closely together, feet
trailing in the water.
“Leave the girl alone,” said Katy as she stood up on the poolside and prepared to dive in, arms arrowed above her wet head, stretched tummy concave. “Not all women feel comfortable nude.”
What? Stevie’s defenses prickled. Oh, damn it, she wasn’t going to be patronized by Katy Norris. She stood up and drew one foot up out of her green bikini bottoms. The manner of her strip was less elegant than she’d have liked, as the lining of the panties
flopped inside out. But after a little damp tussle, there she was, all startlingly white bottom (which hadn’t seen the sun since Paxos in 1991), hips, and pubic triangle. She resisted the urge to fold her arms across her freckled chest and covered up by belly-flopping straight into the pool, where she avoided eye contact with every- one, except for Jez, to whom she delivered her sharpest you’re- a-dead-man stare.
“i’d suggest we all
play strip poker, but it would be a bit pointless,” purred Katy, fully aware that she was in danger of doing a Sharon Stone as she recrossed her legs beneath her blue batik sarong. “Another beer, Jez?”
Jez sunk further into his chaise, his eyes trailing Katy as she sashayed across the terrace in the dipping afternoon sun, palm trees dappling the golden flesh of her smooth back, before she disap- peared into the villa’s cool, dark interior.
“Gosh, is that the time? We better make a move. It’s been lovely. Thanks Seb,” said Stevie, glancing at Jez for backup. She got none. “Hey, you two aren’t going anywhere,” muttered Seb sleepily.
He was enjoying the company, dreading the intensity of being alone again with Katy. “Hang out here. Please stay, guys.”
“No, really . . . we must be getting on,” said Stevie, putting her sunscreen back in her raffia bag.
Jez shrugged, defeated. “I’ll just finish my beer, then.”
“I hope you realize you’ve totally incapacitated my husband, Seb.” Stevie smiled, zipped up her iPod, and whispered, “Bad day- time drunk.”
“Ignore the missus, mate,” muttered Jez, swigging from his beer bottle.
“Hey, let’s order supper in,” said Seb. “Lobster, anyone?”
“Man . . .” Jez rubbed his stomach. “Now you’re talking. That sounds damn good.”
Stevie bristled. She wanted her own space now. She would hap- pily just have a bowl of plain noodles by the beach—anything for a bit of privacy.
“Come on, pumpkin. We’re on our honeymoon,” Jez pointed out unnecessarily. “It’s been such a tough few weeks . . .”
“I know that . . . it’s just . . .” Stevie gave him a look that had the riot act written across its retinas. “Listen . . .” She lowered her voice to a hiss. “Don’t put me in this position. Do I really have to spell it out?”
“Guys . . .” Katy was back, three beer bottles held between her fingers. Oh, God, thought Stevie. She’s done it again. Katy had shed the encumbrance of her batik sarong and was wearing nothing but a large red bloom behind her ear, like a beautiful Hawaiian dancer.
“You got your sunscreen on, Katy?” asked Seb, sounding a little bored. His girlfriend’s nakedness irritated him. Oldest trick in the book, he thought. She’s trying to make me possessive.
“Yes, baby.” Katy didn’t look at Seb, but handed a beer to Jez, flirtatiously, back arched, bum tilted skyward, a burlesque silhou- ette. If romantic meals under tropical sunset skies wouldn’t make Seb propose, maybe a bit of jealousy would jolt him into action. “I suggest we all move to this table, no?” Katy arranged some chunky teak chairs around the table so that they were looking out at the pool and sea. “It’s in the shade, Stevie,” she added, as if Stevie were particularly oversensitive.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m off.” Stevie folded her towel a little pedantically, because she was trying to control her anger, and placed it in her bag.
Jez, sensing immediate departure, put one hand firmly on her reddening freckled arm. “A little bit of lobster isn’t going to hurt anyone, now, is it, babe?”
it is 9:00 p.m.
I cannot believe it is
9:00
p.m
. Stevie thought, an afternoon of beers and food slurring her thoughts as it did her speech. Within a few hours, it will be dark. The day will just close down, suddenly, as it always does here, within seconds of the last flare of sunset, like a light switched off. And I will still be here, in the starlit dark, sitting in a Jacuzzi, drunk, sunburned, and not having a good time—a naked Katy Norris on one side, my Katy- enraptured new husband on the other.
“Don’t you think all those other couples . . .” Katy’s nudged her beneath the hot foam. “You know, the ones you see at the beach, not talking to each other at breakfast. Don’t you think they must
hate
each other? It’s like they’ve given up, on communication . . .” she raised an eyebrow. “. . . and on sex.”
“Er, yes.” Stevie wondered if Katy was insinuating something about her and Jez.
Katy sighed and looked at her boyfriend with puppy-dog eyes. “I’m so pleased we’re not like that, Seb.”
Seb looked away. “Hmmm.”
Katy bent one leg up, hugged her arms around it, her two fore- arms squished tight to the skin of her knee, cocooning herself from Seb’s evasion.
Jez stared at Katy’s knee, as if mesmerized. Framed by the white- green Jacuzzi foam, it looked shinier and browner than any knee he’d ever seen. He felt an urge to cup it with his palm.
“You know what?” Katy said in a squeakier kind of voice, as if
she had to force the words out. “I feel hornier than I’ve ever felt,” she said, leaning her head back, her wet hair whipped like rope by the Jacuzzi jets. “A woman’s thirties is her sexual peak, you know. Wouldn’t you agree, Stevie?”
Stevie had heard that factoid, of course. But her marriage cer- tainly wasn’t testament to it. She brushed Katy off. “Oh, old hat, Katy. Sixties is the sex decade now.”
Katy laughed. “Well, thank goodness for that. Another twenty- fi . . .” She stopped and did the math. “Thirty years to go, then.”
“The problem with peaks is that they come with troughs,” added Stevie, thoughtfully. “It’s like, you know good sex by our age. You know bad sex, too.”
Jez shuffled on his seat, remembering that Stevie hadn’t come the other night. He pushed his bottom against a particularly powerful jet then jumped back sharply as it spurted a prickly fume of water against his buttocks. He forced a laugh. “Easy, easy, pumpkin.. .”
Seb grinned at Stevie. He liked this girl, so dry, so damn un- showy next to Katy. He liked her pale freckly fleshiness. Those soft but stern yellow-brown eyes, like Nanny Nairn’s. She looked like the kind of girl who would take as good as she gave in bed. No pre- tense. No over-the-top Katy-mewing. That put him right off. He liked Stevie’s ankles, in particular, neatly turned like fine antique table legs. Seb leaned back into his seat. Beneath the foam, his toes touched Stevie’s. She flicked hers away sharply. Pretending to ig- nore him, was she? Seb shot a knowing smile. He found the rejec- tion sexy. It was like the playful ritual of a geisha, or, perhaps, a Manhattan thirtysomething.
“Well, for guys, it’s like, how to put this delicately in the com- pany of ladies? We need to sow our oats
before
we get hitched,” declared Jez, unaware of the psycho-toe drama acting out beneath
the frothing water. “You’ve got to be ready to settle. Can’t do it if you’re restless. . . . I mean, man, I knew, didn’t I, Stevie? Stevie? Hey, back me up here.
“Well, I knew I’d done all that other shit. The time was right to bed down with one good woman. Listen here, men get the settle- down urge, too, you know. It’s just that we get it later. Don’t you reckon, mate?”
Katy fumbled with the Jacuzzi controls, turning the jets up, super-power, the wilder and noisier the better to distract Seb. She didn’t want him getting any ideas.
But Seb had heard. He held his beer bottle above the furious bub- bles, tilted it up in salute. “Hell, yes.
A lot
later.” Alcohol gave him the confidence to try on a more swaggering vernacular. “You’ve got to get it out of your system first, mate. Hey, one-night stands.. .” He thought about the waitress in New York and smiled. “Older women.. .”
Katy glared at Seb.
Stevie sensed a scene brewing.
“Threesomes.” Seb took a sip of beer, looking pleased with him- self for going so far.
Katy glared harder, then changed her strategy. Could she?
Would she? “Or, like, swinging.”
“Swinging?” asked Stevie, a hand over her mouth, repressing giggles. It was the kind of thing her mother might have done in the mid-seventies. Jez would be terrified.
“Have you ever . . .” Katy fellated her beer bottle and looked up at Jez coquettishly, head on one side. “. . . swung?”
Stevie spoke for him. “Oh, all the time. We used to pop down to Primrose Hill, didn’t we, darling? Took off the Myla lingerie with the best of them.”
Seb stared intently at Stevie. Was she joking? Goddamn, this broad
was
sexy.
Stevie kicked his leg gently. “Yes,
joking
.”
“Are you, now?” purred Katy. “How do we know you’re not double-bluffing? Just pretending to be prudes.”
Jez’s mouth opened and closed as he fought to contain the riot of images—Katy’s pink nipple in Stevie’s mouth—that invaded his head space. It was his turn to feel like the repressed one. “And you two make a habit of it, right?”
Seb, amused to see Jez rise so easily, thought he’d spare him Katy’s goading. “Katy’s teasing, I think, old chap.”
“Am I? Who’s teasing?” A smile played at the corners of Katy’s pout. “Besides, there’s always a first, no?”
Something changed then. The air hung stiller, the sun pumped heat harder on their heads. In seconds, the sea shaded from blue- green to aubergine purple, as if a colored green lens had been pulled from beneath its surface. Everyone wondered if anyone else was thinking what they were thinking. No one dared speak.
“Hey, did I say something?” Katy put her arms above her head and flipped her wet curtain of hair up from her back, lifting her breasts two inches out of the water as she did so, exposing cones of nipples, hard and pink as shells.
Jez squatted farther down on his seat, with a wolfish grin, and laughed too loudly.
“What’s so funny?” Katy asked earnestly. “Let’s not be bour- geois. I think there’s probably a consensus in here somewhere, if anyone just dared . . .”
Stevie fought the urge to run from the tub screaming. Calm, she told herself. Calm. It was just Katy, drunk. It was such a ridiculous situation, sitting in a Jacuzzi next to a naked woman, Katy Norris
of all people. It probably should have been more ridiculous and more strange, but foreign places normalized things. She turned to look at Seb, a silent plea for him to rail in Katy.