Sea Glass by Anita Shreve Read Free Book Online Page A

though it makes her head hurt.
    “Viv?”
    She sits up and shades her eyes with her hand. “Dickie,” she says, pretending to be surprised.
    “Didn’t expect to see you up so early,” he says. A small dog the color of the sand puts its paws on Vivian’s skirt. Dickie lifts the dog away from her.
    “Lovely morning,” she says, ignoring Dickie’s comment. “What kind of a dog is that?”
    “A mutt, I think.”
    “It looks like a sheep. What’s its name?”
    “Don’t know. Think I’ll call him Sandy.”
    “How original,” she says.
    “It’s not mine,” he says.
    “I didn’t think so.”
    “Found it whimpering in the stairwell this morning.”
    Dickie looks remarkably fit, Vivian thinks, considering he kept pace with her, maybe even outdid her, last night. She remembers him lying naked, in a fetal position, on his bathroom floor. “I’m not terribly good company at the moment,” she says.
    “Nor am I, so I think we’ll suit each other just fine.”
    Dickie sits on the sand, favoring the injured knee. He has on dark glasses too, and she can’t see his eyes.
    “I’m not sure I can carry on a conversation,” Vivian says.
    “Won’t say a word,” he says. Beside him, the dog is panting.
    “I think he might need some water,” Vivian says.
    “He’s fine,” Dickie says. “I’ll take him inside in a moment. You all right?”
    “As well as can be expected,” she says. She pauses and then she sighs. “God-awful, if you want to know the truth.”
    “Me too, if that’s any consolation.”
    “Not much, but thank you.” Vivian rubs a small circle in her forehead. The surf looks even more inviting now. Perhaps she should excuse herself and get her suit.
    “We did tie one on,” Dickie says.
    “So we did,” she says. “I don’t want to think about it.”
    “Found your shoe,” he says. “In the corridor outside my room.”
    She puts a hand to her temple. “Mail it to me,” she says.
    “I gather they had to carry Sylvia to her room.”
    “Really? What was all that crying about at dinner, anyway?” The ocean smells like “beach” today, she reflects. It’s a certain smell of sea and sand and suntan oil.
    “John’s got a girlfriend,” Dickie says. “He’s deliberately ignoring Sylvia. Finally had to tell him to cut it out. Man’s sadistic, if you want my opinion.”
    “Funny, I don’t remember that part,” Vivian says. The surf, though it pounds, provides a comforting sound. Gulls, encouraged by a hapless child who is feeding them, swoop low over the sand.
    “Daresay there are whole conversations you don’t remember,” Dickie says.
    “You insolent shit,” Vivian says lightly.
    “I am rather.”
    Vivian smooths the skirt of her white linen dress. She puts her hands to her eyes. “What are we doing, Dickie?”
    “Don’t know, Viv. What are we doing?”
    “We’re behaving terribly. And we’ve only been here a day.”
    “Isn’t that the point? To behave terribly? In the summer, I mean?”
    “There has to be something better,” she says.
    “Like what?”
    “You have no imagination.”
    “Possibly not.”
    “Something that’s not such a waste. Not so self-indulgent.”
    “We’re who everyone wants to be, Viv.”

    “How sad,” she says, glancing out at the haze at the horizon. She loves diffuse light — light in which objects have no edges.
    “Unbearably sad, really,” Dickie says. “You fancy a martini? Hair of the dog and all that?”
    She digs her toes into the sand. “Go away.”
    “Tea with ice?”
    She shrugs. Dickie looks around for the waiter, catches his attention, and orders two iced teas. “About last night,” he begins.
    Vivian puts a hand up. This is a conversation she doesn’t want to have. “Sorry to disappoint you, Dickie, but you’re not the first.”
    He fingers a shell and begins to use it to scoop the sand between his legs. “Didn’t think so,” he says quietly.
    “Nor the eighth either, if you want to know.”
    He seems