After dinner, when they cleared a dancing floor on the patio, Dominick went directly to their table and asked April to dance. She seemed flattered.

"Go ahead," Luc said to her, smiling as beatifically as his mother.

Dominick, now in pink shirt and white slacks above the white Guccis, still had the moves: the Hully Gully, the Pony, the Watusi and the Mashed Potato. They'd worked at Annabel's a hundred years ago and the girls still seemed to go for it. Anyway, it made them laugh, especially if he really cranked it up, and it was amazing how he could work a kind of snake charmer routine on them: fix them with a smile, laugh at himself, pour good Champagne down them, make it dribble from their lips. He could see them reappraising him as the evening went on: he wasn't that old, they began to think-he was certainly fit. He was jolly good fun. He liked women, they could tell; and they could tell that he knew what they wanted. Most evenings, by a certain point, if they were still there, he was home.

He wasn't trying to seduce Luc's little playmate. Not now anyway, but you never knew when you might meet one of them again-as he had, several times, in London, and by then, introductions and Mallorca behind them, he could find the situation marvelously well along.

Luc was relieved. He knew April wanted to dance-she wanted to show off her shimmy and flick her golden feet between someone's legs. None better than Dominick. They were made for each other. He didn't give a toss if Dominick managed to get her phone number.

Luc got up and wandered into the house, into the kitchen. A number of the caterers were washing the dishes, drying glasses in the scullery in back of the main kitchen. Montserrat was not in sight.

"Like the dinner?" Bronwyn asked. She was sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of Laphroaig and three fingers in a large crystal glass in front of her, smoking a small cigar. She wore a generalissimo-sized chef's jacket, heavily stained with food and wine, a linen napkin tied around her head like a bandanna.

"Great," said Luc. "Loved the blood orange sorbet."

"It was good, wasn't it? Want a drink?"

"Sure." Luc got a glass, sat down, and poured himself a shot from Bronwyn's bottle.

"Down for long?" she asked.

"A week maybe. If I can stick it out."

"Well, you're a good boy, coming down for your mummy's birthday. She's very pleased."

"Hardly. I'm the fly in her Yves Saint Laurent body lotion."

"Don't be silly. She loves you. She means well. She talks about you all the time."

"Yes, in terms of unfailing disappointment. Like a bad bet she can't get over."

"Oh, rubbish. You know she loves you. You can hear it whenever she mentions your name. You may be forty-whatever-it-is but you're still her little boy, you know. She says you're coming down, and you can hear how much it means to her."

Luc drank half his glass. "Where'd you get the caterers?"

"Which one?"

He looked round again. "Not here now. The nose."

"Montserrat."

"That's right. Montserrat."

"She worked in the kitchen at the Fonda when Javier was the cook. She's a Llobet."

"What, as in Juan Llobet?"

The name that loomed over Cala Marsopa like the permanently shuttered Llobet house hulking above the town on the road to the lighthouse, a severe, forbidding, Stalinist-era mansion that might have been designed for Lavrentiy Beria's house parties that included assassinations. Juan Llobet, the reclusive billionaire, Barbary Coast smuggler in his criminal infancy before World War I, later Franco crony, banker to the Nacionalistas of the Spanish Civil War, Mallorca's oligarchic Boo Radley; dead decades ago. Everyone coming into town drove along Carretera Juan Llobet, and most did some business, if just at the ATM, with Banco Llobet. At one point, Luc's mother had known a Llobet, one of the old boy's sons, who came to Cala Marsopa with his family every summer, but that association seemed to have faded years ago. Montserrat Llobet. It didn't surprise him. She was Mediterranean aristocracy, albeit from a dark, bent strain, like having Barbarossa for a grandfather.

"Yes, sweetheart. Some offshoot of the family. She's gorgeous, isn't she? Good luck."

"No, you know, I was just curious. I was talking to her earlier. She seemed interesting. Studying at the University of Barcelona."

"Yeah, she's interesting. Intelligent and ambitious. She sent Javier out of his mind."

"What's she doing waiting tables here, then?"

"Her father makes her work through the summers, even though he's filthy rich. She's good with food. Got a good work ethic. She's into art history. She'll probably end up running Christie's in Madrid."

Luc saw Montserrat Llobet's life unfolding like a spread in Paris Match. The yachts, the villas on Cap Ferrat, the gorgeous children-someone else's Picassos. Why the fuck can't I get a woman like that, and have such a life? But he knew. You were either born into it, a Llobet or a Grimaldi, or were positioned through the immense crimes, laundered in the oblivion of time, of a previous generation. Or you made it really big in the movies-you became Sam Spiegel or Alexander Korda-and you met someone like Montserrat Llobet at a party on a yacht at Cannes. And the world was yours.

Or you were someone who wrote French B movies that went straight to video and you got April Gressens from Tarzana.

Luc emptied his glass. "Great dinner, Bronwyn."

"Thanks, sweetie."

He got up and went outside. "Je T'Aime . . . Moi Non Plus" was coming out of the patio speakers. He'd heard it from inside the kitchen, but the crest of the time warp didn't hit him until he set foot on the patio. Then he remembered everything, or the feeling of everything, of the summer of 1969. The way the world felt then and what he thought would happen to his life.

He walked to the music room. Inside, Charlie was flipping through stacks of records; on a barstool sat his rather ripe-looking petite amie, a girl Luc had seen around, holding a glass of Coke. They looked like a shot from Vanity Fair's party page.

"Oh, hiya!" said Charlie, breaking into a huge grin as he saw Luc. "I saw you out there at dinner. I was going to come out and say hi, but Lulu gave me the job of DJ and I gotta stay on it."

Luc was staring at him oddly, his eyes ranging up and down between Charlie's neck and hips. "Nice shirt," he said after a moment.

"Oh, yeah. Actually, your mum gave it to me. It's Moroccan, apparently. I think it's quite old."

Luc continued looking at the shirt, smiling. "Nice of her. Yeah, it's from Marrakech. It's about twenty-five years old-I remember when she got it."

He looked at Charlie in the shirt. What a sweet kid Charlie is, Luc thought. He seems genuinely pleased to see me. Evidently, he knows nothing, about the shirt's provenance, or anything else. Looks just like his mother.

"Cool! Um, Luc, this is Bianca. Bianca, Luc."

"Hi," said Bianca.

"Hi."

They shook hands.

"How're the films going?" asked Charlie.

"Good. Just wrapped a movie."

"Fantastic. What's it called? Who's in it?"

"Probably no one you've heard of, or will ever hear of. It's called Perdu. Lost. It'll be out in about eight or ten months. I think."

"Oh, I bet it's great. I loved L'Autre! I've told you that. It was really great."

"Thank you, Charlie. I'd forgotten that you'd seen it."

"You down for long?"

"About a week. You?"

"The summer, as usual. Hang on-" "Je T'Aime . . . Moi Non Plus" was ending, and Charlie started looking through the albums in his hand.

"I'll leave you to it, Charlie. It's nice to see you."

"Thanks. It's really good to see you, Luc. Take care."

"You too." And to Bianca, Luc said, "Nice to meet you."

Luc walked to the bar. Charlie had put on "A Taste of Honey" by the Tijuana Brass, blasting away the plangent intravenous melancholy of Serge Gainsbourg. Dominick was frugging vigorously around April, who was laughing as she wove her own sinuous, smoldering thrusts toward him.

His mother, in flowing white shirt and trousers, was dancing affectionately with Cassian, her arms stretched out and resting on his shoulders, while he talked to her about something that clearly meant a lot to both of them, perhaps the Footsie 100.

Luc turned away and went through the gate and crossed the road to the rocks. Here, the music was not so insistent, or pungent with memory, and he heard the sound of the waves slapping and sucking at the rocks somewhere below his feet, and he remembered jumping into the water, long ago, right here, unwillingly, at exactly this time of the night- A tiny red glow indicated someone sitting nearby on the ledge over the sea, smoking a cigarette. A dark slender shape with hair diffusing the lights of the port.

"Hola," she said.

A great electric charge passed through Luc. "Montserrat," he said.

"Yes."

"It's me, Luc. We spoke-"

"Of course. I know it's you."

He walked toward her. He could see her face now, his eyes adjusting to the dark, and she had turned so that her strong features caught the light from across the road. He couldn't understand how he hadn't seen it immediately: it was the most beautiful face he'd ever seen.

He said, "I liked talking with you earlier."

"Yes, me too. It was nice, finally, after all these years."

"What do you mean?"

"Well"-she laughed-"I was in love with you for years."

Luc's Spanish was fluent, so he knew he hadn't misunderstood her. He'd imagined it, then. So clearly too. "What?" he said.

She laughed, her teeth bluish in the dim light like the wavecrests appearing out of the dark running toward the rocks around them. "Yes, for many years I was in love with you."

Tripping over a rock but catching himself, Luc sat down beside her.

"When did we meet?" he said.

She was amused by his utter confusion. "We have never met. But I've known you for many years."

"How? We have friends in common?"

"No. Years ago-fifteen years ago maybe-you had a motorcycle. For many summers. Right? I used to see you everywhere on that motorcycle. You looked incredible. Like Easy Rider, you know? So American-you are American or English?"

"American."

"I thought so. Or I wanted to think so. You were my dream guy. Sometimes you had girls on the back of your bike, and oh, my God, I wanted to be on the back of your motorcycle with you. You have no idea."

"I don't remember seeing you-"

"No, of course not. I was ten years old, twelve, thirteen. And ugly-aie! I was just an ugly little girl, and you were this cool American guy on a motorcycle." Incredibly, she reached up and touched his hair at the side of his head, pulling it gently. "Your hair was long then. Oh, I was so in love with you!" She laughed again, looking at him with such dumbfounding pleasure.

He stopped himself from kissing her-he wanted to feel those teeth with his lips and tongue so badly-but he'd wait, he'd prolong this sublime moment just a little longer. He grinned back at her. "If you were ever ugly, that's not the case now."

"Well, now it's not so bad as it was. And you're older, but still the cool-looking guy. More European I think now, no? It's interesting, after all this time, to talk with you."

"I could talk with you for . . ." He looked at her wide, beautiful mouth, the dark gums, the white teeth, her amused eyes. So beautiful, and now so ready- Headlights from the road lit them both, not directly, but Luc saw her eyes going to the car. She stood up.

A black BMW 318i, stopped. Montserrat smiled at the car, then turned to Luc, leaned forward, and kissed both his cheeks with amused affection. "See you later, Easy Rider," she said. She got into the car. Luc caught a glimpse of a young man, Spanish, masses of black hair, white teeth, lean planes of face. He and Montserrat threw their heads together for a more than perfunctory kiss, and she slammed the door and the car drove off. A cloud of dirt rose and swirled behind it, smearing the lights of the port.

He had no idea how long he sat there. After a while he heard the sea breaking on the rocks below, withdrawing in long heartfelt sighs, breaking again.

He stood up and walked back across the road. The music was quieter. Several couples were still dancing. The whole album of Revolver was playing. Some woman was making John Lennon feel like he'd never been born. Luc knew how he felt.

He went into the garage and stamped on the kick-starter of his old Rieju motorcycle. "Thank you, Vicente, hombre," he said when it started up on the second kick. His mother's gardener always filled the tank and cleaned the carburetor and plugs when Luc was expected for a visit.

He tore out of town. The warm night air blew his shirt open and felt cool on his chest, a sensation he remembered from so many long ago nights in Mallorca, on his way to where he believed some answer might be found-as now.

They would hear the whine getting louder, so he only drove halfway up the long drive. He got off and laid the bike against a carob tree. But the house was dark as he approached. There was no car. He could see from below that the doors to the terrace were closed. He walked up the steps. Still no sound or light. He tried the kitchen door and it was locked. But Charlie was here; she must be too.

He knocked.

Then he called. "Aegina?"

He walked through the scrub around the house looking up at the closed windows.

"Aegina!" he yelled up at the empty house. "Aeginaahhhh! I'm sorry!"

After parking the motorcycle back in the garage, Luc walked around the house and across the patio to the bar. It was deserted, no Sally. While he helped himself to a bottle of Perrier from the fridge, he became aware of a woman grunting, straining, as if pushing a boulder up a hill or having a despairingly difficult bowel movement . . . then a man sounding as if he was urging on a reluctant horse . . . Fucking. It wasn't loud, but it was oddly clear. Luc couldn't make out where it was coming from. Not the barracks, too far away; not the house. Then he remembered that Bronwyn was always saying there was this strange St. Paul's Cathedral effect: from her room she could hear everything that was being said in the bar at a conversational tone. The fucking was coming from Bronwyn's room, along the wall, up by the pool. "Come on! Come on!" the man was exhorting now. Luc recognized Dominick's voice. It made perfect sense. Solace where you find it. Or as Somerset Maugham had written about impromptu sex: you can dine every night if you're willing to eat turnips.

He took the bottle of Perrier and went up to his room. April was lying with her back on the floor, her feet raised against the wall above her, toes aimed at the ceiling.

"Where have you been?" she complained, in perfect counterpoint to her balanced pose. "I looked everywhere for you."

"I went for a ride on my motorcycle. Are you okay?"