The Whore's Child

the sunbathers until he was almost on top of them, and one startled young woman quickly rolled onto her stomach and glared at him angrily over her shoulder. When she nudged the sleeping boy next to her, Snow mumbled an apology and hurried on, staggering in the sand. How could he have been so foolish as to assume the existence of a second path? He plunged forward, blindly now, on the verge of panic. His sunburn—he suddenly was aware of it—was making him lightheaded. He was inhabiting a nightmare where everything was inverted: instead of discovering himself naked in a crowd of friendly, well-dressed strangers—wasn’t this how such dreams usually worked?—here he was, an old man in baggy swimming trunks, adrift in a sea of angry, naked strangers. And what phantasm, dear God, was this, coming languidly but directly toward him down the beach?
    He stopped, transfixed, certain he had lost his mind. Was it a young woman or a hag? Incredibly, she was both. Her skin, from head to toe, was a dry, cracking, lifeless gray. The figure resembled, frighteningly, a photographic negative. Its naked breasts were large and full, the dry seaweed between her legs the color of pale ash. Only her eyes were white until her smile—lewd, he thought— revealed rows of sharp, perfect white teeth.
    â€œDear God,” he said, dropping heavily to his knees, far too exhausted even to try to flee.
    Perhaps because the dry hand on his shoulder was both warm and gentle, he found the courage to look up at the gray skull, which was fearful still, though no longer grinning. Its expression seemed almost apprehensive, the last thing he would have expected, now that he’d recognized the figure.
    Not now,
he thought, pleading. He could feel his heart thudding dangerously in his chest.
Please, dear God, not
now.
    The trip back down-island took almost an hour—an eternity, it seemed. If the world had finally righted itself, it was at his expense. Snow felt like a man with very little time left.
    June, at the wheel, looked less old than shattered. She’d been able to explain her part in what had transpired in a few terrible, clipped sentences. When he’d awakened, she’d been swimming. The current had borne her down the beach, from where she’d seen him stand to look around for her. She’d waved, unsure whether he’d seen her or not when he pulled on his bathing trunks and set off walking, she’d assumed, to look at all the pretty naked girls. She’d felt self-conscious about her own nakedness at first, but the sensation had quickly vanished, replaced by an odd, pleasant sense of liberation. Before going into the water, she’d stuffed the beach bag under the chair he was sleeping in. He’d have seen it there if he’d looked.
    Their arrival back at the Captain Clement had been the final humiliation. June had to lead him like a blind man under the trellised arch, and halfway to the French doors he’d slumped onto a wrought-iron bench, the garden path swimming before him. It was several minutes before he was able to stand. June had remained there with him, though she refused to sit or speak, the two of them in a dense cloud of bees, in full view of the library where Mrs. Childress had gathered the Newport people for tea.
    Shortly afterward, June went out in search of first aid cream, leaving him in their room at the top of the inn. For the second time, they would be cutting short their stay on the island, and Snow was certain his wife would call David Loudener and cancel their visit to the city. What excuse she would offer, he neither knew nor cared. June had been gone only a few minutes when there was a knock at the door, and Snow, who at the moment couldn’t think of a single person he wanted to see, was rewarded for his misanthropy by the sight of the one person who in all the world he wanted to see least.
    â€œWe’ll be checkin’ out early,” Major Robbins explained. “I don’t think we could take another night in this place,” he said, glancing around the room contemptuously. When it became clear that the professor hadn’t gotten this, he said, “You didn’t hear that caterwauling last night?”
    Snow, even more confused, wondered how this half-deaf major could possibly have heard June’s grief.
    â€œYou’re lucky you’re up here on the third floor,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “I don’t know