He had been running through the conversation in his head all morning, really ever since Saturday when he’d seen Anna at the pageant swim. Throughout the race, she had been careful to avoid looking in his direction—even when she and Gussie had walked out onto the pier. But back on the beach, during the awards presentation, she had had no choice but to see him, and he her.
Stuart tried to put his finger on what had bothered him about all Anna’s marriage talk. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see himself as her husband, or she his wife. In fact, he could see their life together quite clearly. And it seemed nice. Better than nice. Damned near perfect. No, what bothered Stuart was that all Anna’s figuring had made him question what was real. Had she been as oblivious to his family’s wealth and position as she’d initially let on? Had she really wanted to learn to swim? Had she truly felt the weight of Florence’s loss? Until that night on the beach, it would never have occurred to him to ask these questions, though if he had, he would have answered each one with a resounding yes. Now, he couldn’t be sure.
Stuart was embarrassed to admit to himself that there was at least some small part of him that didn’t give two shakes about Anna’s motivations. If she married him for his citizenship but he got the thrill of kissing her warm lips and the pale skin that was left exposed when the strap of her bathing suit fell off her shoulder, weren’t they both winning?
In the end he decided that she was right to have been straightforward with him. Would he have rather she said nothing and simply allowed him to fall further and further in love with her, never recognizing what she needed? The way he figured it, everyone needed something.
It had occurred to Stuart, as he walked back to his boardinghouse after the pageant swim, that Anna might both need something from him and also want him for her own unselfish reasons. The trick was figuring out how to separate the two.
It wasn’t a trick that was wholly unfamiliar to Stuart. These last several years, the Atlantic City Beach Patrol, the dingy Northside room, and even cantankerous Mrs. Tate had allowed him to keep his father at arm’s length. As long as Stuart remained financially self-sufficient, he had assumed he could make any life he chose for himself.
When Stuart realized what he had to do, his impulse had been to hurry to The Covington and get the whole idea out to his father in one giant breath. But he had decided to wait. It was too important a request to rush, so he had spent two long days watching the surf and practicing his pitch. Now here he stood in the elevator, still completely unsure of what to say.
The elevator arrived on the second floor, and Stuart nodded to Cy before making his way to the administrative suite, where his father’s secretary, Louise, sat at her desk, guarding the door to his office with nothing more menacing than a stare.
“Is my father available?” he asked.
“He will be soon,” said Louise, glancing at the telephone on her desk. “He’s wrapping up a call.”
Stuart took a seat in one of the chairs that lined the far wall. He was tempted to take a peppermint from the glass dish on Louise’s desk but didn’t want to risk walking into his father’s office with his mouth full. After several minutes of jiggling his knee, the light on Louise’s phone switched off and she said, “You can go in now.”
Stuart stood, smoothed his pants, and made his way into his father’s office.
“Morning,” he said, closing the door quietly behind him.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” his father asked, looking up from a stack of papers.
The lead-in was the part Stuart was least sure of. Should he make polite conversation about the Phillies’ double header or get right to the point? He considered walking over to the bar in the corner of the office and pouring his father a scotch. Anything to ease his way into the conversation. But all of it—the baseball stats and the booze—seemed disingenuous. Stuart wanted to be the type of man who said what he meant.
“I want to talk to you about something,” he finally said, then thought to add, “It’s important.”
Stuart watched his father shift in his chair.
“I was thinking I might hang up my whistle at the end of this summer. Start learning the business.”
Stuart’s father put down his pen and blinked at him, hard, as if he were trying to process what he’d just heard. “This business?”
“Yes, the hotel business. The Covington.” Stuart couldn’t believe he was saying it. Long ago, he had convinced himself that going to work for his father would feel a little like dying. “I realize I have a lot to learn.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“None,” said Stuart.
His father leaned back in his chair, appraising his son. “Then why?”
“Well, the business has been in our family for—”
“No, I mean, ‘Why now?’ ”
This was a question Stuart had counted on. Did he dare admit that he loved Anna? That if his father brought him on, there was some chance he’d be bringing Anna on, too? Stuart cleared his throat, working hard to get the next part out. “There are things I want, that I need.”
His father remained quiet, patted the desk once and then twice, then stood and walked over to one of the office’s floor-to-ceiling windows, which overlooked the Boardwalk and the ocean beyond. A pair of heavy drapes obscured the view, and he pushed them out of the way to get a better look at something. “This isn’t a bad life,” he said.
“It’s not that I thought it was,” said Stuart. “It’s just—” He hesitated.
“Just what?”
“That it didn’t feel like mine.”
“Do you think it ever will?”
“I hope
