harbour.
We aren't stopping/ Nicholas observed, Are you kidding? she laughed at
him, I don't need a controlled scientific environment for the experiment
I am about to conduct. And with no diminution of speed, the Chevy flew
across the long bridge between Virginia Key and Key Biscayne, and three
miles on she turned off sharply left on a narrow dirt track that twisted
through a lush tropical maritime forest of banyan and palmetta and palm,
and ended at a clapboard shack just above the water.
I live close to the shop/ Samantha explained, as she clattered up on to
the screened porch, her arms full of groceries.
This is yours? Nicholas asked. He could just make out the tops of big
blocks of condominiums on each side; they were incompletely screened by
the palms.
Pa left it to me. He bought it the year I was born/ Samantha explained
proudly. My ground stretches from there to there. A few hundred yards,
but Nicholas realized the value of it. Everybody in the world wants to
live on the water, and those condominiums were pressing in closely.
It must be worth a million. There is no price on it, she said firmly.
That's what I tell those awful sweaty little men with their big cigars.
Pa left it to me and it's not for sale. She had the door open now,
bumping it with her denim-clad backside.
Don't just stand there, Nicholas/ she implored him.
We've only got ten days. He followed her into the kitchen as she dumped
her load into the sink, and whirled back to him.
Welcome by my house, Nicholas/ and then as she slid her arms around his
waist, jerked his shirt tails out of his belt and slid her hands up his
bare back, You'll never know just how welcome. Come, let me show you
around this is the living-room. It had spartan furniture, with Indian
rugs and pottery, and Samantha's chopped-off denims were discarded in
the centre of the floor along with Nicholas shirt.
,And this - surprise! surprise - is the bed-room. She dragged him by
one hand, and under the short tee-shirt her bottom reminded him of a
chipmunk with its cheeks stuffed with nuts, chewing vigorously.
The tiny bedroom overlooked the beach. The sea breeze fluffed out the
curtains and the sound of the low surf breathed like a sleeping giant, a
deep regular hiss and sigh that filled the air around them.
The bed was too big for the room, all ornate antique brass, with a
cloudy soft mattress and an old-fashioned patchwork quilt in a hundred
coloured and patterned squares.
I don't think I could have lived another day without you/ she said, and
unwound the thick plaits of her hair.
You came like the cavalry, in the very nick of time. He reached up and
took the golden tresses of hair, winding them thickly around his wrist,
twining them in his fingers, and he pulled her gently down beside him.
Suddenly Nick's life was uncluttered and simple again.
Suddenly he was young and utterly carefree again. The petty strivings,
the subterfuge, the lies and the cheating did not exist in this little
universe that encompassed a tiny wooden shack on the edge of the ocean,
and a huge brass bed that clanged and rattled and banged and squeaked
