Pacific Interlude by Sloan Wilson Page A

to go to the beach after dark, and I remember every one of them vividly, including the ones who said no.”
    â€œAre you angry at them?”
    â€œMostly at myself. I meet few girls who I even want to take to the beach. I guess I’m too choosy.”
    â€œI somehow doubt you’ve spent all that many nights alone, except maybe in Greenland and New Guinea.”
    â€œIt’s true, though. I read a lot. I end up with a book a lot more often than I end up with a girl. Fantasies instead of the real thing.”
    She reached over to touch his knee in a way that sent shock waves up his thigh.
    â€œYou’re real enough,” she said. “My, I have made you moody! Cheer up! Here we are at the beach. At least you’re going to get your chance to lie on the sand and look up at the sky.”
    Leaving the car parked by a row of bathhouses, they walked over a dune to a narrow strip of sand. Here the light from a half-moon overhead seemed bright. White breakers gleamed as they rolled toward their feet.
    They took off their shoes and socks, walked at the lip of the tide with occasional high-reaching waves curling around their ankles. There was the smell of seaweed and of dead fish, all swept clean by the wind from the sea. Up nearer the dunes lovers lay sprawled in moon shadows, almost as motionless as corpses after an invasion, he thought and then drove the thought from his head.
    â€œIt will be less crowded farther on,” she said.
    They walked nearly a mile. The roar of the surf quieted to a whisper.
    â€œThere’s a big sandbar out there,” she said. “At low tide we can walk out to it.”
    â€œAnd let there be no moaning at the bar when I put out to sea” came to his mind, and he devoutly wished he would stop this thinking about death. Here at least no more corpselike lovers were in sight. Turning toward the dunes, they sat down on dry sand and he flopped down full length on his back. There was a faint ring around the moon, a harbinger of disaster, he had read, but in his experience at sea it had very little meaning. The Southern Cross was bright tonight. He missed the North Star and the Big Dipper out of which it seemed to fall.
    â€œYou really did want to look at the stars, didn’t you?” she said, running her fingertips gently over his forehead.
    He caught her hand and kissed her palm, tasting the salt of it, so much like the salt of the sea, it occurred to him. Turning toward her, he kissed her lips. Her mouth tasted salty too and he caught his breath, as though he might drown in the sea of her. As she took away her lips from his to get air her intake of breath was sharp enough to be an exclamation and then they were kissing again and rolling over in the sand.
    â€œThis is silly,” she gasped as he undid the buttons of her dress.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI have a perfectly good room.”
    â€œI like it here.”
    â€œPeople might come—”
    â€œNo one will bother us.”
    â€œPlease, I’ll like it much better at home.”
    He let her go. She sat up, abruptly demure as she buttoned her dress. He lay on his back again, looking at her retroussß nose silhouetted against the Southern Cross.
    â€œYou really are beautiful,” he said.
    â€œI’m glad you think that.”
    â€œIt’s the God’s truth.”
    At that moment he really felt quite pious.
    â€œYou’re so horny you’d think a gorilla was beautiful,” she said with a short laugh. “Come on, beat you to the car!”
    She was off, zigzagging down to the lip of the sea, where her ankles kicked up small wings of spray. She was so fast he had difficulty keeping up with her. His heart pounded so hard that he thought briefly of his father’s heart attack. Well, if he had to die he would rather it happened here with her than in a fire at sea.
    â€œJoanie’s not coming home tonight,” Angel said as she turned the car around.