A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams Page B

foam.
    “Well, well.” She handed me the towel. “You’ve kept your figure well, all things considered. Of course, the cold water helps.”
    I averted my eyes, but there was no missing the pucker of her nipples, or the shocking absence of anything but Budgie between her legs.
    She must have caught my horrified expression. She looked down and laughed. “Oh, that. I picked it up in South America, the winter before last. Everybody sugars there, all over. You do know about sugaring, haven’t you? All that nasty hair?”
    “I’ve heard of it.”
    “You can’t imagine the pain. But the men just love it to death, the little dears.” She laughed again, her bright brittle laugh. “You should have seen Nick’s face.”
    The towel was wet and sandy, but I covered myself anyway, dried myself as best I could, shaking with cold. When I could no longer disguise the distress on my face, I turned away from Budgie, found my robe, and belted it around my waist.
    “You’re such an hourglass, Lily, with your itsy waist and your hips and chest. Just like our mothers in their corsets, before the war. Do you remember?” Behind me, Budgie was putting on her own clothes. I heard the slide of fabric against her skin, the little grunts and sighs she made as she pushed her arms and legs into their slots.
    “I remember.”
    “I can’t think why it’s gone out of fashion. But there it is. There’s no accounting for men’s tastes. Let’s lie in the sand together, like we used to.” She jumped down from the rocks in a thump of displaced sand.
    She looked so curiously alone, lying blue-lipped and shivering on the beach, with the sand sticking to her dark hair and her bones sticking up from her pale skin, that for reasons unknown I lay down next to her, a few feet away, and stared up at the lightening sky without speaking. A few lacy clouds streaked across, tinged with gold, the same way they had when we were children, lying on this precise patch of sand.
    Budgie broke the silence first. “You don’t mind me talking about Nick, do you? After all these years?”
    “No, of course not. That was ages ago. He’s your husband.”
    She giggled softly. “I still can’t believe it. Mrs. Nicholson Greenwald. I never thought.”
    “Neither did I.”
    “Oh, you’re remembering what I said before, aren’t you? What a child I was, thinking that was important. Of course it’s a nuisance, the way those old cats treated us last night at the club. I’d forgotten people still thought that way.”
    I pressed my numb fingers against my neck to warm them. “You do read the newspapers, don’t you, Budgie?”
    She flicked away newspapers with her hand. “Oh, that’s just crazy old Hitler. Who takes him seriously, with that mustache? I mean here, at Seaview. People refusing to dine with us.” She turned on her side and faced me. “But you wouldn’t do that, would you, Lily?”
    “No, of course not. You know I never cared about it.”
    She laughed. “Of course you didn’t. Sweet, noble-minded Lily. I still remember you in the football stadium, with that stubborn look on your face. I can count on you, right, Lily? You’ll visit us at the house and join our table at the club, won’t you? Show them all up?”
    “It shouldn’t matter, should it? You shouldn’t care.” If you really loved him .
    “Says the noble-minded Lily. You don’t know what it’s like, though, do you? Having doors slammed in your face.” Her voice thinned out, and she turned onto her back again.
    I rolled my head to look at her. She was staring straight up at the clouds, without blinking. “Have they really?”
    “Nick’s used to it, of course, so he doesn’t say anything. But I used to be invited everywhere, and now . . .” She turned back to me and grasped my hand in the sand. “Come have lunch with me today. Please. Or tennis, or something. I’m so lonely when Nick’s gone.”
    “When is he back?”
    “The weekend. He only came up to settle me in.