He slipped the strap of her black bathing suit off her shoulder and put his hand on her breast.
“You’re taking advantage,” she said.
“I’ll do other things when we’re in bed again.”
“We’ll do them together. But not now.”
“You have nice breasts.”
“Oh, Avery.”
“They are.”
“You’re terrible.”
“Do you like me terrible?” he said.
“Yes. I love it.”
He unrolled the canvas flap over the door opening, and as they dressed he looked at the smooth curve of her waist and the indentation of her stomach when she bent over to get her sandals, and he felt that same feeling of something dropping inside him. They rolled their bathing suits in a towel and walked up the beach along the white sand by the edge of the surf towards the lighted walkway and the amusement park where her car was. A few hundred yards behind the beach they could hear the music from the carousel and see the brightly lit Ferris wheel revolving against the sky. They stopped at one of the open-air stands in the park and drank a beer with the sea breeze blowing in from the Gulf. Her car was in the darkened gravel parking lot, and he drove them back to town. It was the same low-slung, wide-based, Italian sports convertible that she had gotten for her graduation from high school. It had four forward gears, and when he stepped on the accelerator he could feel the guttural roar of the exhaust through the steering wheel and the power of the take-off pressed him back comfortably in the thick leather of the seat. She sat close to him with both her hands on his arm and her cheek on his shoulder and her wet hair whipping behind her in the wind. They drove along those wide curving cement drives outside New Orleans that wind through groves of oak and cypress trees with the moss hanging in the branches, and the night air smelled of lilacs and jasmine and freshly cut grass.
They were alone at the apartment and they made love in her bed. She got up to make sandwiches in the kitchen and she brought them back on a silver tray with two iced drinks of cognac and orange juice. They ate the cold chicken sandwiches and drank the brandy and then did it again.
“Am I making you too tired?” he said.
“Don’t be silly. It gets better every time.”
“The cognac makes it better.”
“Darling?”
“What is it?” he said.
“Can those parole board people do anything to you?”
“Why do you ask that now?”
“I was worried about it. I know you don’t like to talk about it, but I worry.”
“I just have to go see them once a month.”
“You looked angry when you came out today,” she said.
“I get sick at my stomach every time I go in there.”
“Don’t do anything that would make them send you back. I couldn’t stand it.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m sorry for talking about it. I know you hate it,” she said.
“It’s all right.”
“Does it bother you much?”
“No,” he said, thinking of the nightmares he had been having in which he was back in the work camp, expecting to wake to the morning whistle for breakfast and roll call and then the ride in the trucks out to the line.
“I know it bothers you. I can tell,” she said.