look that said, You think I'm amused, but I'm really irritated For
the ninety-trillionth or so time in the marriage, I'm really irritated
You don't know that, though, because you can only see about two
inches into me and then your vision fails.
But she had better vision than he realized; it was one of the secrets
of the marriage. Probably he had a few secrets of his own. And
there were, of course, the ones they kept together.
'I don't know' he said. 'I've never been here.'
'Once you get over the causeway and onto Sanibel Island, there's
only one,' he said. 'It goes across to Captiva, and there it ends. But
before it does we'll come to Palin House. That I promise you.'
The arch in his eyebrow began to flatten. The dimple began to fill
in. He was returning to what she thought of as the Great Level. She
had come to dislike the Great Level, too, but not as much as the
eyebrow and the dimple, or his sarcastic way of saying 'Excuse
me?' when you said something he considered stupid, or his habit
of pooching out his lower lip when he wanted to appear thoughtful
and deliberative.
'Bill?'
'Do you know anyone named Floyd?'
'There was Floyd Denning. He and I ran the downstairs snack bar
at Christ the Redeemer in our senior year. I told you about him,
didn't I? He stole the Coke money one Friday and spent the
weekend in New York with his girlfriend. They suspended him and
expelled her. What made you think of him?'
'I don't know,' she said. Easier than telling him that the Floyd with
whom Bill had gone to high school wasn't the Floyd the voice in
her head was speaking to. At least, she didn't think it was.
Second honeymoon, that's what you call this, she thought, looking
at the palms a that lined Highway 867, a white bird that stalked
along the shoulder like an angry preacher, and a sign that read
'Seminole Wildlife Park, Bring a Carfull for $10.' Florida the
Sunshine State. Florida the Hospitality State. Not to mention
Florida the Second-Honeymoon State. Florida, where Bill Shelton
and Carol Shelton, the former Carol O'Neill, of Lynn,
Massachusetts, came on their first honeymoon twenty-five years
before. Only that was on the other side, the Atlantic side, at a little
cabin colony, and there were cockroaches in the bureau drawers.
He couldn't stop touching me. That was all right, though, in those
days I wanted to be touched Hell I wanted to he torched like
Atlanta in 'Gone with the wind,' and he torched me, rebuilt me,
torched me again. Now it's silver. Twenty-five is silver. And
sometimes I get that feeling.
They were approaching a curve, and she thought, Three crosses on
the right side of the road. Two small ones flanking a bigger one.
The small ones are clapped-together wood. The one in the middle
is white birch with a picture on it, a tiny photograph of the
seventeen-year-old boy who lost control of his car on this curve,
one drunk nght that was his last drunk night, and this is where his
