granite rock that were meant to hold back the ocean. It had been a futile gesture. The houses were
deserted. Several had already broken apart and lay lopsided and forlorn, awash with the debris of
tides.
One of them, a small two-bedroom house of cypress and oak, was still perched tentatively over the
rocks, its porch supported by six-by-sixes poised on the granite boulders. A faded sign, hanging
crookedly from the porch rail, told me the place was for sale, and under that someone had added, with
paint, the words “or rent.” There was a phone number.
I went up over the big gray rocks, climbed the deck railing, and looked through the place, a forlorn
and lonely house. The floor creaked and sagged uncertainly under each step and the wind, sighing
through its broken windows, sounded like the ghost of a child?s summer laughter.
I stripped down to my undershorts, went down to the deserted beach, and ran into the water,
swimming hard and fast against the tide until arms and legs told me to turn back. I had to breaststroke
the last few yards and when I got out I was breathing heavily and my lungs hurt, but I felt clean and
my skin tingled from the saltwater. I went back up to the house and stretched out on the deck in the
sun.
I was dozing when the woman came around the corner of the house. She startled us both and as I so
rambled for my pants she laughed and said, “Don?t bother. Most of the gigolos hanging around the
hotel pools wear far less than that.”
She was an islander, I could tell; a lovely woman, delicate in structure, with sculptured features
textured by wind and sun, tiny white squint-lines around her eyes, and amber hair coiffured by the
wind. I couldn?t guess how old she was; it didn?t matter. She was carrying a seine net—two five-foot
wooden poles with the net attached to each and topped by cork floats. The net was folded neatly
around the poles.
“I was halfway expecting my friend. He sometimes waits up here for me,” she said, peering inside
without making a show of it. Then she added, “Are you flopping here?”
I laughed.
“No, but it?s a thought.”
She looked around the place.
“This was a very dear house once,” she said. She said it openly and without disguising her sadness.
“Do you know the owners?” I asked
“It once belonged to the Jackowitz family, but the bank has it now.”
Her sad commentary told rue all I needed to know of its history.
“What a shame. There?s still some life left to it.”
