WE WISH YOU HAPPINESS, WITH ALL YOUR FRIENDS AROUND

FIRST, A BAD FEELING, but it goes away. Because hey, they’re at the beach.

She hands him her sketchbook, reclines on the rented plastic lounger. “Draw me.”

He flicks the pen against her bare leg. “You know I’m no good at this.”

They weren’t a couple anymore but they’d already booked their flight, so they went to Italy anyway.

When they arrived, the heat was unbearable, but they figured at least they’d have their own private language for covert emotional jabs. Unfortunately, it seemed that almost everyone spoke some English, which meant they couldn’t say mean things to each other without strangers knowing. So in public, they were perfect.

“You go first,” he’d say to her.

“No, you,” she’d say to him.

And they’d stand there until someone else opened the door.

HE SQUINTS AT HER, at the page. “I can’t get your nose right.”

She sighs, tries to peek. “You’re always rushing things.”

“Close your eyes, it’s easier for me that way. I don’t have to see the malice in them. Malice is hard to reproduce.”

She lowers her lids and plucks at her swimsuit, snaps it against her skin. “You have to focus on the lines, I told you.”

Scattered Italian phrases. She concentrates, waiting for something recognizable — a prego or a grazie.

Some things were easier to understand when she wasn’t looking.

On the plane, for instance, she knew even in her sleep when it was mealtime.

She was dreaming that she was wearing a beautiful dress made out of real red roses, and she twirled around in it for him.

He frowned, which wasn’t the reaction she wanted. “A dress made from flowers isn’t very practical. You’ll need to watch out for bees.”

“But it smells so nice,” she said.

“No, it doesn’t.” He plugged his nose. “Take a whiff.”

And right then the ruthless, tangy arrival of chicken cacciatore burned the dream away and blasted them both apart as the scrinching of cellophane came down the aisle like a wave.

“Wow, look how choppy the water is,” he says now. “No, never mind, keep your eyes shut. I’ve almost got it.”

She opens them for a moment, just to annoy him, before she complies.

On the other side of them, a little boy in a purple Speedo digs a hole while his sunburnt parents toast each other with sparkling cans of Peroni.

EVERY NIGHT, HER ARMS fell asleep. She’d wake up with them numb and tingling over her head. She had to lay them at her sides until the blood flowed back and the tingling stopped.

Every morning, the alarm. They were unsure if it was okay to sleep in, because it didn’t feel okay. It didn’t feel okay to sleep together either, but there was only one bed in the apartment they’d rented, and neither of them wanted to sleep on the couch.

There was a nursery school behind them, so the longer they stayed inside, the longer they had to listen to the shrieks of laughter and howls of outrage from children they couldn’t even see.

“Jesus,” he’d said the first time they heard it. “Let’s get out of here.”

They’d left in search of macchiato, their shared need for caffeine briefly uniting them. On their way they’d walk past the school gates, where dozens of naked toddler bums winked at them through the bars. Sliding down slides, swinging on swings, playing in the sandbox.

“What the hell?” He shook his head. “Why would they put them on display like that for perverts to gawk at?”

She said, “They’re much freer with their bodies here. You have to leave the North American mindset behind.” She was proud that she was already fitting in much better than he was. “Didn’t your parents let you run around without clothes on when you were little?”

He shrugged. “I can’t remember that far back.”

HE PUTS HIS DRAWING of her face down on his towel when it’s time for lunch. They’re having a picnic. It’s the end of their trip and they are finally relaxing.

To celebrate, they spent too much on a rental car to get to the beach. Now they’re eating oily cheese cubes and pouring warm wine into plastic cups that already have sand in them. She asks him if he’s enjoying himself, and he says why wouldn’t he be.

Across the beach, whoops and hollers. A whole bunch of people are having a really good time.

He says, “Must be a volleyball net over there.”

She says, “What makes you think they’re playing sports? Maybe they’re excited about something else.”

He says, “Nobody gets that excited about anything other than sports.”

She tears a puff of bread out of the loaf they’d packed. They hadn’t sliced it in advance because they thought it would be more fun to rip pieces off, but now all that’s left is a caved-in crust. And even when she chews carefully, the grit in her teeth makes a horrible scraping noise she wants to run and hide from.

THEY WERE IN A foreign land and the apartment had a weak Internet connection. They started to feel carefree, far away from the crush of sympathetic head-shakes and shoulder pats, all the solidarity “likes” on Facebook.

He didn’t always wash his fruit before biting into it, and she didn’t always apply sunblock more than once a day.

Their windows had no screens, and they left them open and didn’t even worry about birds flying in.

Until one did, and they found it with a broken neck on the floor.

He said, “Should this go in with the organics?”

She said, “You figure it out.”

HIS PEN MOVES ACROSS the paper again, and he asks her, “What would make you happy, right now?”

Shouting.

She shields her eyes against the raging sun with a flattened hand.

Running. A blur of tanned legs kicking up sand. More yelling down the beach, maybe twenty feet away. A commotion.

He puts down the pen. “I think something’s happening over there.”

She wants his arms around her. She says, “Right now, what would make me happy is a big, juicy peach. Did we pack any?”

THEY DID WHAT PEOPLE are supposed to do when they go to Rome. They filled their days with tours of the Forum, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Vatican. They threw coins into the Trevi Fountain. Small denominations only, because they weren’t wishing for anything big.

He said, “Wow, there are so many historic buildings here.”

She said, “You think?”

Then he stole a cloth napkin right off a table from an out-door café and used it to mop up his sweat, and she said, “Can you get me one of those?” So he did.

They explored the local art galleries and found one that offered free olives in a bowl by the door. Was that sanitary? Who cared? They were on vacation.

They each took a handful and wandered around the white room admiring photos of baby pigs and real actual human babies, arranged side by side as if to highlight their similarities.

Later on, they ate way too much pasta.

BEACH UMBRELLAS LIKE SWIRLED gelato: grapefruit pink and lemon yellow, pistachio green and blood orange. A wall of bronzed backs, bathing suits in black, blue, silver.

She says, “It’s like a painting.”

Then a subtle rearranging, and more colours appear.

Purple Speedo. White T-shirt with red lettering. One set of small pink arms and legs fanned out and another set of larger limbs huddled over. Hands pressing down.

Women smoke cigarettes and cradle their infants. Men smoke cigarillos and bend their dark heads close to each other, humming concern.

Then there is a helicopter. It hovers and lands, drowning out all other sound. Even the waves, which were deafening before.

The wind from the rotors kicks up a cloud of sand, and they both press their sunglasses more tightly against their faces to protect their eyes.

THE MORNING BEFORE, THE nursery-school children had put on a play for their parents.

The two of them spooned Nutella out of the jar and watched from their window even though they couldn’t understand the words.

They figured out pretty easily, though, that the plot centred on an evil witch. Every time she cast one of her spells, she banged a drum in a threatening manner. Then she shouted, “Diddle-dee-yeehoo!” and the kids squealed like they were on fire.

After that, they spent the whole day inside, taking naps and drinking wine. They were so tired of the heat.

That night, the tiniest breeze blew into the apartment, and they sat at their wide-open window with their last bottle of plonk so they could feel all of it.

In one of the nearby apartments, a group of women was chant-ing, “Way weesh yoo heppy niss? Wittall. Yoor frenz. Ay-rown?”

There was something familiar about the sing-songy words. They had to close their eyes and listen for a long time before they figured it out.

He leaned closer to her, whispered, “They’re practising.”

She nodded, but leaned away from his breath, which was thick with the salty prosciutto they’d eaten earlier. That had been the only thing in their fridge besides two sad, wrinkled tomatoes, which should have been left to ripen on the counter instead.

Amidst the clinking of glasses and a few self-conscious giggles, the women repeated the sentence until it was only a collection of noises again.

THE TWO OF THEM stick to their plastic chairs beneath the sun, gummy with sweat. They are so hot and the ocean is so cool, but nobody is swimming now.

The crowd shuffles towards a kneeling man and woman. Heads shake, hands reach out to touch sunburnt shoulders. Then they close in, a barricade again. More Italian architecture for the tourists to puzzle over.

She’s eating the peach, and feels guilty for enjoying it. She doesn’t stop, though. She gobbles it up and buries the pit in the sand where nobody will see.

He returns to the notebook, frowning as he smudges the lines with his thumb.

A few minutes later, the helicopter lifts off and flies away, and everyone goes back to what they were doing before.

He says, “Whoa, that was pretty dramatic.”

She starts to pack up.

Then he shows her the drawing, which is finished now. “What do you think?”

She leans in, examines his smiling version of her.

“Huh,” she says, “it’s actually pretty good.”