The Condition

Author:Jennifer Haigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061798160
Publisher: HarperCollins

FOR TWO nights in a row she ate dinner alone on her balcony. Balmy air brushed her bare arms and shoulders, lingering like a human touch. The second night the moon was full. Gwen imagined it hanging low, casting silver light over the gentle surf. She would take a walk shortly to verify this. Heidi and Miracle had booked a poolside room rather than a more expensive ocean-view suite. You could see the ocean anywhere, Miracle had explained. She was more interested in the human scenery, the bare pulchritude of the suntanned bodies cavorting in the pool.

It was Miracle’s fourth trip to Pleasures. She and Heidi had met there a few years ago, vacationing with their husbands. Now that they were both single, they met each January for a week of sun and mischief. “It gets me through the winter,” Miracle said. “My mom takes the boys, and I’m like a kid again.” She was an X-ray technician from West Texas. Divorced, with two children, she came to Pleasures to recharge her suntan, drink umbrella drinks, and, she admitted, to meet men: “I’m forty, and I live in a small town. There’s no one left to date.”

To these revelations Gwen had no answer. Her own social life was too bleak to discuss.

Now music floated up from the flagstone patio, steel guitars, the tinkle of a keyboard. The musicians, in dark vests and white shirts, looked bizarrely formal among the near-naked drinkers and bathers. In the golden light of the tiki torches, the guests appeared sunburned or inebriated or both. Their exposed flesh looked sweet and meaty, like baking ham. The scene seemed appropriate to tonight’s dinner, the Lovers’ Luau, served poolside. The pool was kidney shaped, its tiled bottom displaying the Pleasures logo: a nude couple, their bodies curved like the yin and yang characters, swimming in a tight circle together for all eternity.

Gwen stood, looking over the balcony. Dinner was winding down. Aproned black busboys were breaking down the serving stations, loading the leftover pig carcass onto wheeled carts. The air smelled of chlorine, citronella, roasting pork. The smiling drummer tapped gamely at his trap set. The singer warbled a familiar tune. Since landing at Pleasures, Gwen had heard it a dozen times. When I dance they call me Macarena. A woman in a flowered bikini stood at the edge of the pool, keeping time with her hips, going through the motions: palms down, palms up, hands on hips, roll the pelvis. Wait, she squealed, I forgot! The Jacuzzis were bubbling. The swim-up bar was open for business. In an hour Gwen would turn out the lights and blast the central air, as she’d done the night before. Its fan made a gentle white noise to screen out the laughing and shouting below.

She glanced at the bedroom clock. It was early still, a Sunday night. She took the cordless phone from the bedside table and punched in a number. She never called her brother in the evening, but she was desperate to hear a familiar voice.

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