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By Root 517 0

be gone soon. She finished her sandwich and stood up to get an apple. It was before one o’clock. More stuff—the towel Kevin had used on his hair, Nancy’s sandals, Nancy’s other hairbrush—was distributed around the living room. Lily had spent an especially solitary summer, with no summer school to teach and many of her friends away, particularly since the first of August. Some days the only people she spoke to were checkers at the grocery store or librarians. Her fixation on the Humboldts’ possessions was a symptom that her solitary life certainly was unhealthy, that she was, after all, turning back into a virgin, as she feared. It was true that her apartment never looked “lived in” and that she preferred it that way. Suddenly she was envious of them; in spite of their suspicions and resentments, their life together had a kind of attractive complexity. Their minds were full of each other. Just then Kevin said, with annoyance, “Damn!” and Nancy shrugged, perfectly taking his meaning.

“There’s a great swimming pool here,” Lily said. “I’ve spent practically the whole summer there. You must have brought your suits?”

Kevin had been diving off the high board steadily for at least forty-five minutes. At first, when Nancy and Lily had been talking about Kenneth Diamond, and Lily’s efforts to end that long relationship, Nancy had only glanced at Kevin from time to time. Lily remarked that she had slept with Ken fewer than twenty times in nine years. Nancy stared at her—not in disbelief but in astonishment. Then, for four dives, Nancy did not take her eyes off Kevin. He did a backward double somersault, tucked; a forward one-and-a-half layout; a forward one-and-a-half in pike position; and a double somersault with a half-gainer, which was astonishingly graceful. “I knew he dove in high school,” she said, “but I’ve never seen this.” A plump adolescent girl did a swan dive and Kevin stepped onto the board again. Other people looked up, including two of the lifeguards. Perhaps he was unaware that people were looking at him. He was straightforward and undramatic about stepping into his dive. The board seemed to bend in two under his muscular weight and then to fling him toward the blue sky. He attempted a forward two-and-a-half, tuck position, but failed to untuck completely before entering the water. In a moment he was hoisting himself out and heading for the board to try again. Nancy said, “It’s amazing how sexy he looks from a distance. All the pieces seem to fit together better. And he really is a good diver. I can’t believe he hasn’t practiced in all these years.”

“Maybe he has.”

“Maybe. I mean he looks perfect, and no older than twenty-one. That’s how old he was when we first met—twenty-one. I was dating Sandy Ritter. And you were dating Murray Freed.”

“I could have done worse than stick with Murray Freed. But he was so evasive that when Ken approached me in a grown-up, forthright way, I just gave up on Murray. He’s got a little graphics company in Santa Barbara, and I hear he spends two or three months of the year living on the beach in Big Sur.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. I’ve always thought leisure and beauty were rather overrated, myself.” She grinned. “But look at him! He did it! That one was nearly perfect, toes pointed and everything.”

“I guess I’m sort of surprised that you think he’s funny-looking. Everybody always thought he was good-looking in college.”

“Did they? It’s hard to remember what he looks like, even when I’m looking at him. I mean, I know what he looks like, but I don’t know what I think about it. This diving sort of turns me on, if you can believe that.”

“Really?” But Lily realized that she was vulnerable, too, and when Kevin came over, dripping and fit, toweling his hair and shoulders with Lily’s own lavender towel, his smile seemed very white, his skin very rosy, and his presence rather welcome.

Actually, it was apparent that they all felt better. Lily had swum nearly half a mile, and Nancy had cooled off without getting her hair wet. Kevin was pleased with the dives he had accomplished and with