"Why did you push me into the pool?"

"I wanted to."

"Why?"

She swam on.

"It certainly is a lovely night for a swim," Luc said.

A few minutes later, he said, "You know, I'm not sure I can save you, if we keep going."

"Then go back."

"I'm not going to do that . . ." Luc found it difficult to speak conversationally. He wasn't out of breath, but his heart was pounding from Aegina's actions, and the undoubted attention she'd paid to him, which was gratifying, though he wasn't sure what it meant. "Aegina . . . I can't stop you if you keep going . . . well, I can . . . but then we'll just struggle without going anywhere . . . I'm not strong enough to haul you back to shore . . . if you resist . . . I don't even think I can haul you back now if you don't resist-"

"Fuck off!"

"Yeah, but . . . if I go back . . . and you drown . . . and later I say, 'Well, I was out there, but . . . Aegina told me to leave her alone-'"

"Aie-aie-aie!" she shouted aloft to the gods.

He was a few feet away but he could smell her warm winey breath on the water.

Aegina looked around, not at Luc, getting her bearings. She swam around him and headed slowly shoreward.

When they reached the ladder cemented into the rocks, they both held on to it for a few minutes and caught their breath.

"You first," said Luc.

Aegina climbed the ladder and disappeared above him. Luc followed and found her lying on her side on the rocks. He lay down next to her. When he'd caught his breath he began to feel the breeze from the sea on his wet clothes and he felt cold. He sat up.

"Aegina."

She was asleep, but breathing quickly through her open mouth. Her black hair was plastered across her face.

"Aegina," said Luc. He pulled her upright. "We're going inside. Come on, wake up."

She grunted.

Luc knelt and bowed forward as if in prayer until his head touched rock and he pulled her over his shoulder.

He staggered up the side street to the gate beside the garage, and then up the path to his toolshed. He knelt again and laid Aegina down on his bed. Light from the pool and patio below came through the little square openings the size of portholes at the top of the walls. He was desperately thirsty. He stayed in the shadows as he walked down to the house and found a stoppered liter bottle of water in the kitchen refrigerator. He drank three long icy gulps and took the bottle with him.

When he returned, Aegina lay on the bed wrapped in a sheet, two small twisted bits of cloth on the concrete floor.

"Aegina? Are you awake? Do you want some water?"

"Yes." She rose on an elbow and he handed her the bottle. He sat on the edge of the bed while she drank. When she finished she handed the bottle back to him. "Do you want to see my breasts?"

"No, it's okay, thanks."

"Look." Aegina let the sheet drop. They were the size of plums, white where they had been covered from the sun, small dark knobs at the center. "They've just arrived," she said.

"I see."

"Do you like them?"

"Yes, they're nice."

"Do you want to touch them?"

"No, it's okay."

She snatched his free hand, pulled it to her chest, and held it against her. He felt the cold hard little buttons.

"Aren't they nice? They'll get bigger."

"Very nice. They're fine as they are."

"No, they'll be bigger. I know, because I'm like my mother."

Luc had heard about Paloma from Francesca, who came and cleaned at the Rocks every day. Francesca only knew that Paloma was in the hospital at Manacor and that it was very bad. I'm sorry to hear about your mum, he'd said to Aegina a few days ago, and she hadn't wanted to talk about it. But she'd been drunk or getting drunk ever since.

"I'm going to take you home," said Luc.

Aegina leaned back, still clamping his hand to her breast, pulling him forward. "I want you to do it to me."

"Do what?"

"Jodeme." She pulled his hand down across her stomach, and then he pulled it away.

"No," he said.

"Why not? Are you a virgin?" she taunted him.

Luc had been asked this before, by boys and girls in Paris. He responded variously. But he didn't mind telling Aegina the truth. "Yes. Are you?"

"Of course I am! What do you think? I'm fourteen!"

"Yeah, well, so you're kind of young-"

"No I'm not. I'm ready. It's time. I want to lose my virginity. And you're older, you should want to do it. What's the matter? You don't want me?"

"Aegina, it's not that . . . you're very attractive. And I like you. But maybe we should wait."

"For what? Now's perfect. Come on." She threw the sheet off her and raised one knee and glared at him. "You don't want me?"

Luc kept his eyes on hers, but he was aware of her small lithe, still damp body, the precocious dark triangle at the apex of her thighs and belly.

"Maybe we should lead up to it, differently, sort of. Sometime when you're not drunk."

"I'm not drunk. And anyway, so what?"

"I'm going to take you home."

Aegina snatched the sheet back up to her chin and sat up on the bed. "I've got my moto."

"You can't drive that now."

"How will you stop me?"

"I'll stop you, don't worry."

"Cono!" said Aegina, sounding like an authentic fishwife. She looked down at her scraps of wet clothing on the floor. "I'm not getting back into those."

"You can wear these." Luc put a pair of his shorts and a T-shirt on the bed, and left the shed.

Aegina, stop it!" he hissed at her.

She sat behind him as they rode out of town on his motorcycle, one arm around his chest, repeatedly grabbing at his crotch with the other hand. At one point her fingers closed firmly around his erection and he twisted violently. "Stop it! We're going to have an accident!"

"Just drive," she said.

He stopped struggling, and they drove on quietly as her hand closed around him and she gently explored, and neither of them said anything.

Both Gerald and Billie were on the terrace, alerted by the extended agonized whine of the Rieju as it came up the hill.

"Go," said Aegina to Luc as she hopped off.

He turned and coasted quietly away down the hill, his mind and body filled with the touch of her fingers.

"Aegina, where have you been?" asked Gerald. "Are you all right? Where's your moped? Did you have an accident?"

"No, I'm fine, Papa. I just didn't want to drive home," said Aegina. "Night!" She ran up the short steps immediately below them to her own room beside the cistern on the ground floor.

On the terrace, Billie said, "Do you have any idea where she's been?"

"They've probably been out at the Miravista, dancing. That was Luc-Lulu's son. He's actually a nice boy."

"Those weren't her clothes, Gerald."

"Weren't they?"

"Gerald . . . this has got to stop."

Eight.

Life goes on, however. Gerald needed to sell oil. Early in the morning, he set off to Arta to pick up fifty bottled liters of his olive oil to deliver to Comestibles Calix, the Hotel Castillo, La Fonda, and several other restaurants in Cala Marsopa.

He had joined the Cooperativa d'Arta in November, which enabled him now to market his oil with the stamp Illes Balears Qualitat. The previous autumn had been wet, and his trees had produced more olives than he thought he'd be able to harvest by himself. The cooperativa sent two men to help him, and they'd driven the filled tubs of green and purple olives to the press for him. The fees to join the cooperativa and pay for the work of the men were more than offset by the larger size of his harvest and the few pesetas he was now able to add to the price of each litro bearing the appellation Qualitat. The old abuelo at the press, the grandfather of the olives they called him, whose gnarled index finger held under streams of new oil and raised to his tongue provided the cooperativa's quality control, had advised Gerald to harvest two weeks earlier than usual. The resultant oil was the best he'd ever produced. It smelled of frutas del bosque. Gerald had initially been upset, thinking that this was because his olives had been mixed with superior fruit, but the abuelo had assured him that it was because the olives had been picked earlier and that only his olives had gone into his oil, and that his oil was very fine. There were more bottles than he could find room for at C'an Cabrer, and half of it, several hundred slightly cloudy green liter bottles, remained stored at the cooperativa. He drove to Arta and fetched them as he needed to.

He first drove the fifty minutes to the hospital in Manacor. Paloma appeared unchanged, though with the respirator, her color was good and the bruised-looking shadows around her eyes that had appeared after the brain surgery were fading. In Spanish, Gerald told her that he was off to fetch more bottles from the cooperativa and that he would return later in the afternoon.

From the hospital it was half an hour to Arta. He said bon dia to the old abuelo, who smiled at him with an open mouth missing most of its teeth. He filled the back of his Simca with carefully crated bottles, and drove back to Cala Marsopa.

Mateo Pujols had rented a small apartment for Jackson Rale up the hill from the port. The apartment belonged to a friend who had bought it for his mother-in-law. The mother-in-law had died in June and Mateo's friend was happy to rent it out furnished for the season.

It suited Jackson because it was in the back streets near a television repair shop, a cobbler, a grocery store, and a plumbing supply yard. The noises that came from these businesses were few and brief and did not go on for hours like the drunken singing of tourists in the streets and bars in the part of town where the hotels and pensions were located.

Jackson slept late in the mornings. In the small kitchen he kept a supply of staples he'd bought from the nearby grocery store: bread, coffee, milk, sugar for his breakfast; chunks of cheese, ice cream, bottles of water, beer, and J&B Rare. He went to the same cafe in the plaza every day for lunch. Not too many tourists. He brought his sketchbook and pencils and drew the people and the buildings in the plaza. When he sketched, Jackson's mind became agreeably blank. He had no thoughts-he didn't like to think much. It was like a vacation when he sketched. He was always aware of that afterward, when his thoughts started up again: he'd been away on vacation.

He returned to his room at three. Most days now his new woman would come in the afternoon. He left the door unlocked.

Soon enough, she came in. The curtains were drawn like she liked, and Jackson was already lying on the bed, naked, belly up like a basking dog.

"Exactly the way I like you," she said. She shucked her clothes in seconds and advanced up his legs like a cat.

This one liked to throw her head around and slap her long white hair across his black legs and groin and torso. And through her white hair she'd stare at his black skin and play her spread-out white hands all over him, like she was making some piece of art. She'd crawl up his legs, slapping her hair over him and then she would squat and lower herself onto his dick. She was older, near his age maybe, but small and hard like a cat, and she would sit on him like that and lose her mind for a while. Then when she was ready she'd roll off him and he'd get on top-she'd tell him what she wanted and that was fine by him-and he'd start pile driving like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, pushing her up the bed till she got her hands flat on the wall above her head and she pushed back at him. He knew when she was getting there because her voice went strangled and then she'd really rip loud with the moans, like someone in serious trouble, and Jackson would have to put his hand over her mouth to keep the noise down while she stared at him wild-eyed, screaming into his cupped palm and breathing through her nose like a racehorse until the snot ran down his hand. He did that for as long as she wanted, pounding away at her while she had her crazy conniptions. She said no letting loose inside and that was fine with him because when she had enough she pushed him off and got on top again and grabbed hold of him with her hands like some native woman pounding corn mush with a log, sitting on top of him pouring sweat until he popped, and she watched that like she was a child watching a chick hatch out of an egg.

She looked at him all breathless and said, "You have no idea what you do to me, Jackson," and he said, "I think I got a pretty good idea." Then she said, "How was that for you?" And he said, "Maybe you could try harder next time," and she laughed in a beautiful way. She was some beautiful woman. They were like a black-and-white photograph together.

She didn't hang around. She was up and dressed and gone as quick as she'd come in.

Because of its location, Comestibles Calix did not get the tourist traffic. It carried items for more discerning palates-for the seasonal foreign residents and the local Spaniards of the professional class-who prepared food at home and wanted something better than the usual Spanish and Portuguese muck in tins. At Comestibles Calix, you could find glass jars of foie gras from the Perigord, biscuits from Lefevre-Utile of Nantes, cheddar cheese from Somerset, putrid-smelling hapansilakka from Finland, olive oil from Italy and Greece, and bottles of green local oil. Baskets of lemons, bins of olives and almonds. Calix had purchased Gerald's produce from his earliest days.

He parked the Simca a few doors down. Into his straw basket, Gerald carefully placed twelve bottles. He entered Calix through the dangling bead curtain of the entrance.

"Hola," he said to Jose and Caterina Calix, who stood behind the counter.

"Hola, Jerol," said Caterina, her face shifting into an unstable blend of keenly felt sympathy, sadness, brave cheerfulness, and discomfort. Jose, a red-haired, now graying Catalan, pushing a haunch of jamon serrano through an electric slicer, nodded at Gerald with the grim camaraderie of soldiers in a trench sharing a last cigarette.

"Como esta Paloma?" asked Caterina.

Gerald shrugged and looked away. "Vamos a ver," was all he could bring himself to say at present. He placed his bottles on the counter. Caterina removed some notes from her till, counted them carefully, adding peseta coins, handed them to Gerald, and looked at him. Her attempt at studied calm now gave way with a betrayal of grief.