e cried, snapping fingers of inspiration, "let's go in
bathing!"

"I'll say we will!"

No sooner said than done. In rented bathing suits, unfastidious, if you
will, but, pshaw! with the ocean for wash day, who minded! Hers a little
blue wrinkly one that hit her far too far, below the knees, but her head
flowered up in a polka-dotted turban, that well enough she knew bound
her up prettily, and her arms were so round with that indescribable
softiness of youth! Getaway, whose eyes could focus a bit when he looked
at them, set up a leggy dance at sight of her. He shocked her a bit in
his cheap cotton trunks--woman's very old shock to the knobby knees and
hairy arms of the beach. But they immediately ran, hand in hand, down
the sand and fizz! into the grin of a breaker.

Marylin with her face wet and a fringe of hair, like a streak of
seaweed, down her cheek! Getaway, shivery and knobbier than ever,
pushing great palms of water at her and she back at him, only less
skillfully her five fingers spread and inefficient. Once in the water,
he caught and held her close, and yet, for the wonder of it, almost
reverentially close, as if what he would claim for himself he must keep
intact.

"Marry me, Marylin," he said, with all the hubbub of the ocean about
them.

She reached for some foam that hissed out before she could touch it.

"That's you," he said. "Now you are there, and now you aren't."

"I wish," she said--"oh, Getaway, there's so much I wish!"

"What do you wish?"

She looked off toward the immensity of sea and sky. "I--Oh, I don't
know! Being here makes me wish--Something as beautiful as out there is
what I wish."

"Out where?"

"There."

"I don't see--"

"You--wouldn't."

And then, because neither of them could swim, he began chasing her
through shallow water, and in the kicked-up spray of their own merriment
they emerged finally, dripping and slinky, the hairs of his forearms
lashed flat, and a little drip of salt water running off the tip of her
chin.

Until long after the sun went down they lay drying on the sand, her
hair spread in a lovely amber flare, and, stretched full length on his
stomach beside her, he built a little grave of sand for her feet. And
the crowd thinned, and even before the sun dipped a faint young moon,
almost as if wearing a veil, came up against the blue. They were quiet
now with pleasant fatigue, and, propped up on his elbows, he spilled
little rills of sand from one fist