Deaths Excellent Vacation

portion of breakfast potatoes and half a dozen slices of fresh melon. Sliding the table over in front of him, he tucked into his breakfast. The omelet was delicious, but halfway through, his appetite failed him and he wondered why he hadn’t just ordered juice and toast. He ate the melon because it was sweet and good for him, and drank the small glass of OJ that had come alongside the coffeepot, and then he settled back to digest.
    Already the day had grown warmer. The weatherman had said it would reach the mideighties by noon, and Tim had no trouble believing that. He planned to go to Universal Studios in the afternoon, just for a few hours—it was what he and Jenny had done the last time they were here together—but this morning he intended to take it easy. He got up and went into his room, fetching the James Lee Burke novel he’d bought to read on the plane. Then he shifted the chair to keep the sun out of his eyes, poured himself another cup of java, and sat reading and enjoying his coffee with the sound of the ocean enveloping him.
    Twenty or so pages later, he was pulled from the book by the sound of a slider rattling open. He looked up to see a woman stepping out onto the balcony of the room next door. Instantly his mind went back to the night before and the sounds that had come from that room, and he felt both embarrassed and aroused at the same time. This had to be the same woman whose voice he had heard so clearly. It was too early for her to have checked out and a new guest to have arrived.
    “Good morning,” she said, raising a coffee mug in a toast to him.
    Her smile was brilliant. His throat went dry just looking at her—five feet nine or ten, lean and limber like those Olympic volleyball girls, long blond hair back in a ponytail, bright blue eyes—and the pictures he had painted in his mind of last night’s acrobatics became that much more vivid. She wore a black and gold bikini that nearly gave him a heart attack.
    “Morning,” he said, wondering if she would notice the flush in his cheeks—was he actually blushing? God, he felt awkward.
    He forced himself back to his book, desperate to look at anything but her. The words blurred on the page. The balconies were open- post style, and he had gotten a fantastic look at her stunning legs.
    Just read, he thought, trying to focus. Should he get up and go into his room, or would that be even more awkward?
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “Am I disturbing you?”
    God, he thought, you have no idea .
    “Not at all. Just enjoying the morning.”
    “I know what you mean,” she replied, sinking into a chair and stretching her legs out, propping her feet up on the railing of her balcony. “I don’t have to be anywhere until after lunch and wanted to get a little sun while I have some downtime. It’s quiet out here this morning.”
    She stretched out to maximize her body’s exposure to the sun and, consequently, to Tim as well. He held his place in the book with one finger and turned to smile politely at her.
    “It’s a weekday. People are off at business meetings, I guess.”
    She shielded her eyes from the sun to look at him. Her lips were full and red and perfect. “No meetings for you?”
    “Fortunately not.”
    He shifted uneasily, not sure he wanted to have this conversation but also not wanting to be rude. And God, she was beautiful. The sounds from the previous night returned as he stared at her, and he could not help imagining those lips saying those things, pleading, moaning, and then . . . You can put it anywhere you want. Shit, he’d almost forgotten about that, and now that he’d remembered he could barely even pay attention to what she was saying.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “What was that?”
    She smiled, a sparkle of mischief in her eyes, as if she knew exactly what had distracted him.
    “I asked what brought you to Santa Monica, if not business.”
    Tim ran though possible answers in his mind, but they all came down to a choice between lying and telling the truth, and he had given up lying years before. He and Jenny had been going through a rough patch, distance growing between them because he had been traveling for work so often, and he had been unfaithful. It had nearly ruined his life, nearly destroyed their life together when he confessed to her, but they had gotten through it. He had vowed that he would never stray again, but it had taken years before she actually seemed to believe him. Forgiving him, though, was