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small amount of beer left in the can, then got his cane from where it was propped against the cushions and stood up. On the way to the bathroom he tossed the empty can into the kitchen wastebasket. It made a satisfying clatter in the bottom of the metal basket, as if signaling the end of a miserable day.
    As he was rinsing out his mouth after brushing his teeth, he noticed the reflected Carver in the mirror looked exhausted, older than his forty-odd years. Certainly older than he’d looked this morning, and than he hoped he’d look tomorrow. The scar at the right corner of his mouth was dragging on his lips, giving him an especially sardonic expression. He was bald except for a fringe of thick gray curly hair that grew well down the back of his neck. His catlike blue eyes, tilted up at the corners in his tan face, were bloodshot and eerie-looking from fatigue; no wonder Thomas had been afraid of him despite the knife. When he twisted the faucet handle to stop the flow of water, muscles danced in his corded arms and across his bare, tan chest. His upper body was hard and powerful from his therapeutic morning swims in the sea and from dragging himself around with the cane. One of the few advantages of having a locked and ruined knee.
    When he returned to the cottage’s main room, he saw that Beth had gone to bed. He turned off the light and joined her in the screened-off sleeping area.
    She was awake, waiting for him in the humid darkness. Nude, as she always slept. He felt the warm length of her lean body, then the wetness of tears as she moved her head onto his pillow and her cheek brushed his. One of her firm breasts, surprisingly large for such an otherwise slender woman, pressed against his ribs. The sound of the surf playing itself out on the beach drifted in through the open window like urgent, incomprehensible whispering, as if the sea knew something profound it would share if only its ancient language could be understood. Had human beings ever understood it? Beth flung a long leg across Carver and sighed.
    He remembered what she’d once told him in her blunt and incisive manner: Sometimes women needed to be fucked, sometimes they needed to be held, sometimes they needed both. Though it sounded a bit like something from The Playboy Philosophy , he figured she was probably right.
    Without having to be told, he knew this was a night for holding, then for sleep and whatever absolution it might bring.

5
    C ARVER SWAM OUT to sea to the point where he could watch other early morning risers walking the curved shoreline, some of them with their heads lowered, combing the beach for shells. The sun was still low and the ocean was cool. He stroked parallel to the shore for a while, feeling that the strength of his arms, his endurance, could power him forever, even though he knew better. In the water, kicking from the hips, his powerful upper body working in rhythm with his legs, he was as physically capable as any man and more capable than most. He loved his morning swims, so much so that at times he wondered if evolution might be working on him in reverse, luring him back to the sea.
    He turned over and floated on his back for a while, gazing up at a cloudless sky going from gray to blue. The sun felt warm and heavy on his upper chest and face. The only sounds were the massive slide of the ocean and the occasional cry of a gull, like that of a woeful, desperate woman. He rode gentle swells that would become higher then flatten out before crashing onto the beach. As he rose on one of the swells to its peak, he glanced in at his cottage, a small, flat-roofed structure nestled where the beach curved to form a thin crescent of sand. The Olds sat by itself near a grouping of date palms beside the cottage; Beth had risen earlier and left to pursue her story for Burrow. He raised a wrist and glanced at his waterproof watch. Almost eight o’clock. Desoto would be at his desk in police headquarters on Hughey in Orlando.
    Carver