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By Root 1154 0

two-story suites, the lagoon itself in two discrete pools that formed a figure eight. Here a pod of dolphins played, tended by trainers—all young women in blue bathing suits—who stood on a floating platform that bisected the main pools. The women were so uniformly beautiful, the creatures so wondrous, it was as if the dolphins were shape-shifting gods attended by nymphs. People were watching from everywhere on the lagoon’s circumference: the wide terrace off the porte cochere; the gated, surrounding walkways; the swimming pool near the beach. Joy seemed to radiate from the water. A large blue mat was set up on the floating platform—four of the women kneeled around it, holding it by the edges—and when one of the trainers held her hand up over the surface, a dolphin appeared, then nosed her palm and chirped: a piercing sound that reverberated through the cove. When the woman quickly flicked her hand, the dolphin slipped from the water in a silky leap that didn’t even ruffle the surface and landed on the middle of the mat, its entire body curled up into a crescent, and much larger than David had imagined. A trainer positioned near its head wrote something down on a clipboard.

“What are they doing?” Alice asked.

“They’re checking her weight,” Murahashi said.

“Why?”

“To make sure she’s progressing well.”

From the corner of his eye, David saw his wife smile.

Their suite—enormous, airy, plant-filled, with honey-colored hardwood and teak and rattan furniture—hovered over the dolphin lagoon and the Pacific. The king-size canopy bed was covered by a goose-down duvet and sheets of Egyptian cotton so soft they made David lust for sleep. Exploring, he opened the sliding plantation shutters and stood on the lanai. The palms below bent in the trade winds, the clatter of their blowing leaves mixing with the dolphins’ whistles and the whoomps—like depth charges—they made when they landed from a flip. Applause followed from the ever-present crowd. He let the hissing breezes fill his ears. He closed his eyes, then opened them. In the water, out in the lagoon, snorkelers floated in pairs, drifting, their bodies motionless, as if they’d been shot out of the sky. The reef they hovered over—mottled blue-green—was visible from this height. Farther out—many hundreds of yards—fishermen stood on a distant sandbar before a line of breakers that roiled but never reached them. Due East was Diamond Head, as majestic and immovable as some ancient craft. And everywhere the contained, humbling feeling of being in the middle of the ocean. The place was so beautiful that for a moment he forgot.

“Alice?” he said when he came inside.

On a small end table, she’d placed the urn next to a stunning bouquet of white roses. Water was running in the bathroom.

He knocked; when she didn’t answer, his heart caught in his throat, and he let himself in. She was lying in the large soaking tub, its jets on full, her mascara running down her cheeks. Was it from her bath or had she been crying? The longer they were together, the harder he found it to say anything to her.

“It was nice of you to send flowers.” She looked up at him and mustered a smile, this seeming to exhaust the little energy she had.

He stood waiting, again, for what he wasn’t sure.

“This is the most beautiful bathroom I’ve ever seen,” she said.

He looked around. The room was all gray marble and teak, with vanities and closets at either end with luxurious robes neatly hung on wooden hangers. There was a large, glass-enclosed shower, its spout the size of a Frisbee. The toilet, inset between shower and bath, had a door for privacy as well as a phone. “It is,” David said.

“If I had a bathroom like this, I’d feel like we’d truly made it.” She looked around as if seeing the place anew.

“Maybe we will one day.”

Alice said nothing.

“You never know,” he said.

“No,” she said, “you don’t.”

There was nothing more to say, so he left her alone and called Harold from the bedroom. “I can’t talk to her,” he said. “We can’t. It’s like a black hole.”

“That’s all right, David. That’s fine for now.”

“No,