Excerpt
LOST AND FOUND
Shaking salt water out of his hair, Danny was on his way to rejoin the woman who’d been watching him from one of the beach chairs they’d set up on the moist sand. How long had it been since he’d last run into Jenny? Fifteen, sixteen years? She’d be early forty-something now, still very attractive, maybe five years his senior. He was a little hazy on the numbers. In the old days he’d never given much thought to the difference in their ages. Jenny was the one who’d bring the subject up, usually accompanied by coy remarks about robbing the cradle – his cradle. To which he would respond by joking that he preferred older women, then make the point that she looked younger than he did anyway. He hadn’t entirely understood the vanity game women played but was always willing to go along with it. Praise and reassurance worked each time.
He’d spotted Jenny today when he was looking for an unoccupied stretch of sand down near the water’s edge. She seemed to be doing the same, and he walked to within a few feet of her, stopped, and waited. That caught her attention, and she looked up quickly, prepared to shoo away whatever masher had deliberately planted himself right in front of her. Recognition was instantaneous. “Danny!” she howled, as she moved toward him, laughing at the coincidence: Obviously they’d both been heading for that special section of beach where years ago, weather permitting, the old crowd would spread their towels, display trim bodies to one another in the afternoon sun, swim, play beach tennis, smoke, joke and compete for the best laid plan for after dark.
“This okay?” she asked. She was leaning over, adjusting a shoulder strap. “Perfect.” She still looked good in a bathing suit. They plopped everything down close to the water, unburdening themselves of the beach chairs and blankets they were carrying. They unfolded their chairs, were working the legs into the moist sand. He raised his head, grinned. “Just like the old days.” She stretched forward, unfolded a blanket, let the breeze help flap it down against the sand. “Good old Cape May,” she said. They looked closely at one another, started laughing again. No question they expected to enjoy this surprise reunion. She settled into her beach chair. “You come down often?” “No, not anymore. How about you?” “I inherited my mother’s house up on Beach Drive. Since Jim died, I’m here a lot during the summer.” He’d heard most of her story through the grapevine. She’d married a charming alcoholic who’d left her a widow three years ago. “I always loved that house, Jenny.” “It’s a lot quieter now.” She pauses, examines the label on her sun screen tube. “How are things with Cathy?” “About the same.”
Danny is checking out the red and white Beach Patrol rowboat perched on its batten rollers – one thing unchanged from those first two happy, carefree summers following the Second World War – that little spit of time that he and Jenny had shared before life turned serious again and shoved them off into the chancy world of adult realities.
In college, Danny had married Cathy, a girl who claimed she was pregnant but wasn’t. Within six months their marriage had collapsed in vituperation, slammed doors and occasional physical violence. When he proposed divorce, Cathy refused. Not even the threat of infidelity worked – not if you fucked every slut in the phone book was the way she put it. So he just moved out and used his married state to protect him from falling into another trap. He was bitter, yes, but he’d gotten used to it.
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