The Vacationers

“So, you know how to play?” Antoni spoke with a thick accent, his voice low and his tongue heavy.

“I watch everything,” she said, lying. “Even the small tournaments.” Fra

“And the last time you played?” Antoni reached into his pocket and pulled out a te

“Oh,” Fra

“Okay, we start easy,” Antoni said, ignoring her. He walked over to the far side of the net. “Ready?”

Before Fra

“This is not playing. This is practice. Warm-up.” He hit another ball, and Fra

Antoni nodded, his eyes hidden behind the reflective panes of his sunglasses. He arched backward, throwing a ball high into the air. Fra

“Not bad,” Antoni said. Fra

Fra

Bobby and Carmen were out by the pool doing their exercises, and normally that would have made Lawrence do an about-face and sit in the bedroom reading for a couple of hours, but the day was too beautiful to stay indoors. He put on his hat and sunglasses and headed outside, a novel tucked under his arm.

“Hey,” Bobby said from the deep end of the pool. He was treading water in the most athletic way possible, bouncing up and down like a spring, the damp ends of his curls weighty and dark.

“Hey!” Carmen said, mid push-up. She dipped down halfway, stopped, and then went even closer to the ground before straightening her arms and rocketing back up to a plank position. Lawrence was impressed.

“You are really good at that,” he said, and then kicked off his flip-flops and settled into one of the lounge chairs.

“Thanks!” Carmen said without stopping. “I can show you, if you want.”

Lawrence squeezed out a dollop of sunscreen into his palm and began to cover himself—arms, legs, cheeks, nose—with a thin coating. It was the expensive stuff, chalky white and impermeable.

Bobby stared. “What is that? Zinc?”

“What, this?” Lawrence said, turning the tube over. “I don’t know. It’s made of things I can’t pronounce.”

“Don’t you ever want a tan?” Bobby swam over to the side of the pool. “Sometimes I go to the beach with just ta

“That sounds like an excellent way to get skin cancer.”

“Well, yeah, I guess.” Bobby did some flutter kicks, his feet sending little plumes of water into the air. Lawrence tried to imagine having a baby and then watching the baby grow into someone who used ta

Carmen grunted, and Lawrence nodded. For a few minutes, they stayed in silence, Carmen doing her push-ups and Lawrence doing nothing at all, just staring off into space and watching craggy faces emerge from the mountains, which happened as often as they appeared in clouds. There was a man with an enormous beard, a cat curled up into the shape of a doughnut, a Samoan mask, a sleeping baby.

“How long have you guys been together now?” Lawrence heard himself ask. He didn’t want to read the novel he’d brought outside. It was the next movie he was working on, a period- piece adaptation. Nineteenth-century Brits, lots of party scenes with scores of extras, lots of horses. Those were always the worst. Every page turned into nothing but dollar signs—Lawrence read the cost of crinolines, of vintage lace, of imported parasols. Werewolves weren’t great, either, but packages of fake hair were less expensive than real dogs for a hunting scene. His favorite movies of all were the tiny ones where the actors all wore their own clothes, brushed their own hair or didn’t, and everyone rented a country house for a week and slept all piled on top of one another like a litter of newborn kittens. He could do the accounting for those in his sleep.

“Me and Bobby?” Carmen sat with her legs wide open in straddle position and leaned forward. “Seven years, almost.”

“Wow, really?” Lawrence said. “Was he still in college?”

Carmen laughed. “I know, he was a baby. He only had one set of silverware. One fork, one knife, one spoon. And then a drawer full of plastic ones that he got from take-out places. It was like going out with a kid in high school, I swear.” She swung her torso over one leg and then crab-walked her fingers to the toe of her sneaker. “Fucking hamstrings.”