In a motel along the New Brunswick coast, an establishment that tries valiantly to maintain a decent standard despite an impossibly short tourist season, this one a quick jaunt north of the Maine border on a picturesque cove off the Bay of Fundy, retired Montreal detective Émile Cinq-Mars sleeps soundly beside his wife.
In the midst of the storm’s bluster, she stirs.
Sandra Cinq-Mars listens awhile to the wind, the rain, and her husband’s even breathing, and while she can barely make out his form in the dark, she discerns that he’s sleeping deeply and comfortably tonight. A sleep not agitated by nerves or stress or an onerous to-do list. For a change, there’s no such list. Slammed by the gale, they endured a strenuous drive through the North Maine Woods from their Quebec farm. Normally, they might not have persevered through weather fit for Noah’s Ark, but hotel reservations and a set time for a ferry crossing struck them as being as absolute as a sailor’s embarkation orders. Miss the boat, and their island summer vacation—their first ever summer holiday—might be lost. En route, they did cancel one mainland hotel reservation and booked another, shaving a half hour or so off the first leg of the trip to add it on to the next, but still they arrived frayed, exhausted, hungry, and generally done-in. Through dinner, Émile could barely keep his eyes open. Once back at the motel they had nothing to do. Even watching television was a pain as the electricity intermittently went off. So they tucked in early, and while it’s still only the middle of the night, they’ve been sleeping for a solid seven hours.
Sandra rises and tosses a flimsy robe over her silky sleepwear and finds her way around the bed to the bathroom without banging her knees in the dark. She closes the door and flicks the switch from habit, only to discover that the power is out again. After her tinkle and a quick wash of her hands, she returns to the room but not to bed. Instead, she sits in one of two cushiony armchairs that front the broad window overlooking a small harbor and the sea. Boats moored in the bay, a few with a light on, bob in the waves. She curls her legs up under herself, then just about jumps out of her skin when her husband, invisibly seated in the companion chair, reaches out and touches her hand.
“Oh my God!”
“What?”
“I thought you were in bed! Alert a girl before creeping up on her! Émile!”
He laughs. “I wasn’t creeping. I was just sitting here.”
“No but I—Jesus! Your icy fingers, man. So creepy!”
He tests his fingers against his own skin. If anything, they’re warm.
“I thought that’s why you sat here. What do you mean ‘icy’?”
“Excuse me? What do you mean, why I sat here?”
“Because I was sitting here.”
“I can’t see in the dark. Émile! I thought you were asleep!”
“I was.”
“Good for you. I may never sleep again, however.”
She laughs, too, now.
They’re quiet awhile, mesmerized by the wind and the rain on the big picture window. Outside, waves break below their room. These are not the great waves marauding across the bay tonight, as the harbor is well protected by an isthmus. Yet the lesser waves still chuck stones on a beach, and drum a steady cadence.
“Actually,” Émile states, “I had my best sleep in months. Maybe we should risk our lives driving through a storm more often.”
“Sure thing, for eleven hours straight. Do that too often, it’ll put you to sleep permanently.”
“Worth it, no?”
They share another quiet interlude, then Sandra interrupts. “It’s so dark out. The power’s still off.”
“Romantic. I was sitting here thinking that before tonight, I’ve never slept by the seaside in my entire life.” Given that he’s nineteen years older than she is, they’ve shared less time together than strangers meeting them might assume. A later-in-life marriage not only for him but, in a way, for her as well. “Farm boy. Then big-city cop. No life by the sea. But the sound of the waves is mesmerizing. What about you, time by the ocean–wise?”
Sandra straightens a leg out, holds it in midair, stretching, rotating the foot. “For a farm girl I’m pretty familiar with the coast. From the mountains of New Hampshire to the shore is a short hop. My parents made the trip most summers. Good memories. A kid on the sand. Bodysurfing. Collecting shells. Then, my first summer out of college, I headed straight for Hampton Beach. Freedom! Waited tables by night, showed off my bikini bod all day long.”
“If I knew you were exhibiting, I would’ve made the trip down.”
“Perv.”
They hold hands in the dark awhile, their fingers mildly attentive.
“Where we’re going isn’t beach country,” Émile mentions.
“Thank goodness. My bikini days are ancient history.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Thank you, sir. But the skin cancer scare took away the appeal of spending whole summers on a beach.”
“Maybe, but I’m thinking of you in a bikini. I’d risk skin cancer for that. You could stay under an umbrella, no? With me?”
“Oh shut up. But thanks. This is something though, isn’t it? Émile? Us? On vacation. The winter ones are fine but, I don’t know, a summer one feels decadent.”
“Get used to them.”
“Okay. I will. But do I have it in me? Do you? Those are big questions.”
Émile laughs lightly again, flits a few fingers up the column of her forearm. “We’re workaholics?”
She laughs, too. “Okay, if we both go out of our minds walking around the cliffs of Grand Manan, then, yes, that’s who we are. Workaholics. If we go back home and find out that we’re anxious to get back here again, or anywhere else, then, no, we don’t qualify. But I think I’ll pass the test. I’ve done summer before. But you, sir. You’re the villain of the piece. I think you’re doomed to fail, Émile. If there aren’t any local bank robberies, you might arrange for one just to go investigate.”
“As long as there are no more dead bodies, thank you very much.”
“With you around, Émile, they’ll fall out of the trees.”
“Don’t say that. That’s one part of my retirement I’m happy about. The total absence of cadavers falling out of trees.”
A spasm of laughter bursts from her.
“What?” Émile asks in mock alarm.
“Émile, true or false? You were never a homicide detective.”
“Okay, okay. I know.”
“True or false, Émile?”
“Okay. I was not in Homicide.”
“And—” she needles him.
“And what?”
“And—”
Reluctantly, he owns up to his record. “I spent my career solving murders anyway. But!” he fires back.
“But what?”
“I’m retired, but not only that, I’m taking time off for the first time ever in the summer. I can learn to relax. I’m a quick study, no? I can definitely learn to ignore bodies falling out of trees. Let them drop. I’ll show you.”
They squeeze hands, enjoying this nocturnal tease, and they’re quiet awhile again, as though anticipating the marvel of this experiment, the two of them off on their own in the summertime, responsibilities set aside. All has not been sweetness and light between them. They’ve had their tussles, a few vague issues that have proven difficult to get at or define, so that even in a moment of happy expectation they are both fraught with a dose of worry. Perhaps that’s why Sandra adds a touch of the sultry to her voice when she suggests, “Maybe there’s another part of your retirement you’ll be happy about, Émile. Besides the absence of corpses. Maybe I can teach you a few tricks. To relax.”
“Meaning?”
She unwinds from her chair. The flimsy outer robe falls off. She’s standing in the dark, but his eyes have adjusted. He sees her lower a thin strap on her nightdress and coyly lift a shoulder.
“Ah, sweetie, you know that I’m an old man. I need a pill first. Then a short time for it to take effect.”
“You’re in your prime with me, Mr. Man. But take the pill. I’ve leased the farm, you’re retired, so go slow, Émile. We have all the time in the world.”
Cinq-Mars stands, although it takes a bit of a shove to get him up and out of his chair. Not the most elegant approach. Next to her, he’s impressively tall, even in the dark, and by comparison she is small as she drops her nightie to the floor and steps free of the garment to slip wholly naked into his loving arms. She kisses his chest. His right hand rises up her rib cage to rest under her left breast and he loves its weight over the length of his fingers, time’s delicate, beautiful sag, which might keep her off a beach in her bikini but inspires this intimacy in him every time. As deep as his sleep has been, he’s that calm, that quiet, yet in another way he’s equally as tempestuous as the wind outside. When he touches her chin, she opens her lips and presses the whole of her strong form against him to receive and return their first kiss by the sea.