Jim hadn’t been hit since he was a teenager. He’d had that kind of face then, a soft chin and puppy-dog eyes that turned down at the corners. He’d been thrown into lockers and teased for his willingness to do extra-credit homework. It wasn’t until he had his final growth spurt in the eleventh grade that the girls ever noticed him, other than wanting him to come to their study sessions in the school library. His eye stung, and though there hadn’t been any blood, he knew he would have a shiner. Did people still use the word shiner? He felt like an old man—the transition was swift. Just that morning, he’d woken up feeling young again, like he and Fran could make it work, that everything would be all right and he would have his life back.

Two burly men in leather jackets walked toward him on the beach, their heavy black boots trudging awkwardly through the fine sand.

“Saw ya get punched there,” one said.

“Didn’t take it too bad,” said the other.

Jim looked at them with his left eye, keeping the right one shut tight under his cupped palm. Bobby and Carmen took a step closer, wondering if they were going to have to intervene, to keep Jim from being a human heavy bag. Bobby felt his pulse quicken—he’d taken some kickboxing classes at Total Body Power and thought he could defend himself, if given the opportunity.

“You were on our plane,” Jim said, recognizing the patches sewn onto their leather jackets—young Elvis, fat Elvis, a vintage motorcycle. “‘The Sticky Spokes,’” he said, reading off the larger man’s biceps.

“Were we? That’s a riot,” the man on the right said. He was shorter, with closely cropped red hair. “Just a blokes’ vacation, we do it every few years. Get on some bikes and ride around. Don’t get to do it as much as I’d like at home anymore. I’m Terry. Want me to have a look at the eye? I’m a pediatrician.”

Bobby unclenched his fist.

Jim nodded, and Terry stepped in closer. It hurt to open his eye, and Jim blinked away some involuntary tears. Terry pressed two fingers very gently around the socket, and felt along Jim’s cheekbone.

“You’ll be fine, nothing’s broken,” Terry said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled a handsome calling card out of an elegant leather wallet, attached to his belt with a thick chain. “Call me if you need something, though. We’re here until August.”

“Will do, thanks,” Jim said. “What kind of bike do you ride?”

Terry’s whole face perked up, widening into a near-perfect circle. “You know bikes? At home I’ve got a Triumph Scrambler. Nineteen sixties body with a twenty-first-century heart. This week I’m on a Bonneville, gold and gleaming and quick as lightning.” He patted Jim on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Keep it cold.”

Bobby, Carmen, and Jim all thanked Terry and his silent friend and watched them stalk back through the sand. They were set up at the very edge of the beach, nearest the parking lot. Jim could just make out the outline of a motorcycle through the pine trees.

The umbrellas were difficult to close properly, and there were so many towels and tote bags that they had to make two trips to the car to pack everything up. Jim sat in front with Bobby behind the wheel, a still slightly cool water bottle pressed to his eye. Carmen reluctantly shared the backseat with the rest of Franny’s myriad snacks, some of which had spilled out of their containers and onto the beach towels. The car smelled like cut strawberries and suntan lotion. Jim and Bobby made no indication that they would speak, which was good. A half-hour of silence seemed like the very least they could all give each other. Carmen rolled down the window, despite the air-conditioning, and let the fresh air in. Moving felt like a step in the right direction.

Day Eleven

THE HOUSE WAS BIG ENOUGH FOR ALL OF THEM, BARELY. Jim’s black eye allowed him to take up more space, and after a bad night’s sleep clinging to his edge of the bed, as far from Fran as he could get without sleeping on the floor, he planned to spend the morning in Gemma’s handsomely cluttered office. She was an interior designer, or an amateur milliner, or a certified Reiki practitioner in addition to owning a gallery in London. Jim couldn’t keep it straight. Her books were varied to the point of insanity—one shelf devoted to Eastern religions, one to fashion, one to World War Two. He’d known women like Gemma before, rich girls with brains but no focus, good-looking and well-meaning dilettantes. He took a book on Buddhism off the shelf and opened it at random.

Out the window, Franny and the boys were having their breakfast by the pool. The day was misty but getting warmer, and Fran, her back to Jim, was wearing one of her gauzy dresses that he loved. Fran had all the usual feelings about her body’s changes, about menopause, but to Jim, she still looked just as beautiful as she ever had. Her bottom was still round and shaped like a generously large fruit. Her face was still full and soft. He felt himself getting older, but Franny would always be younger than he was. There was no good way to tell her that, not without the name Madison Vance coming out of her mouth soon afterward.

At first it was just friendly office banter, the kind Jim had always enjoyed. There had been numerous other women he’d flirted with at Gallant, and it had always been innocent. There was the one whose large glasses took up half her face, and the one who had a fiancé in Minneapolis, and the lesbian who flirted with Jim anyway, because she flirted with everyone, a wonderful quality in a person of any orientation. He hadn’t for a second considered sleeping with any of them, even when he and Franny were having problems. Sure, had he pictured their bodies once or twice when he and Franny were having sex? He had. But he had never so much as picked an errant hair off their sweaters or stood too close to them in a crowded elevator. Jim was loyal to his wife.

She was telling a story—Franny picked up her fork and twirled it in the air like a baton. Charles and Lawrence, both facing Jim’s window, threw back their heads and laughed. Jim wished he could join them outside, just open the door and walk out and sit next to her.

Madison Vance had appeared like a lump of kryptonite, as suddenly as if she’d fallen out of the sky. She was forward, and brave, and when she told Jim she wasn’t wearing any underwear, he shouldn’t have raised his eyebrows in amusement. He should have called human resources and then tucked himself in a ball under his desk like an air-raid drill. Instead, he had smiled and involuntarily run his tongue across his lower lip. True youth was something magnificent to behold—not the youth of thirty-five or forty-five or fifty, all still young and vital when viewed from the other side, but the unimpeachable youth of the early twenties, when one’s skin hugged the bones and glowed from the inside out. Madison let her long blond hair hang loose over her shoulders, and it swung side to side, each tiny strand both delicate and wild. She had made it clear that she wanted him, in that way, in that ancient way, she wanted him. And Jim wanted her, too.

The moment he walked into the hotel bar to meet her, Jim knew he was making a mistake. Up until then, he had convinced himself that it was all in good fun—he was taking this young woman under his wing. She was a pip, a go-getter! And they would sit at the bar and have drinks and talk about journalism and novels, and then she would go on her merry way, taking the subway back to Brooklyn Heights, where she was sharing a sublet with a roommate. Once he walked into the bar, though, and saw what Madison was wearing, her pale thighs extending out from under her impossibly short dress, Jim knew that the situation wasn’t even close to the one he’d let himself believe.