Mr. Hirsch squeezed his lips together. The room was so quiet Anna could hear the ticking of the clock that sat across the room, on the corner of his desk.
“We live in trying times, Miss Epstein.”
“So, you might forgive her?”
“I might.”
Anna returned to the apartment for just long enough to retrieve her copy ofThe Magic Mountainand remove a five-dollar bill from its pages. She tucked the money in her purse and took it to the Block Bathing Suit Co. on the corner of Pacific Avenue and St. James Place, where she placed it on the counter.
One of the saleswomen, a girl who couldn’t have been much older than Anna, asked if she could help her, and Anna tried not to think of how she’d explain such frivolity to her mother, when she said, “I want to buy the most beautiful bathing suit you’ve got.”
It was as if the girl understood Anna’s urgency, could sense that something important was on the line. Immediately, she began plucking suits of every shape and color out of the drawers behind the counter. “Do you know your size?” she asked as she eyed Anna’s bust.
“I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the salesgirl as she led Anna toward a dressing room in the back of the store. “Get undressed.”
For a half an hour, the girl handed Anna one bathing suit after another. “That one you’re wearing was featured in theAtlantic City Presslast weekend. Did you catch the piece Alicia Hart wrote?”
“What was it about?” Anna asked through the curtain as she yanked the legs of a black-and-white suit down around her thighs. It wasn’t flattering.
“Checking up on your weight before you buy a new swimsuit.”
Anna made a face in the mirror. “I guess I don’t have time for that.”
“Try this one,” said the girl as she dangled an emerald-green bathing suit around the edge of the curtain.
Anna seized it at once. “It’s a beautiful color.”
“I think it will look nice with your hair.”
Anna was in it in a flash. “Oh, wow,” she said as she looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a suit so pretty. It was made of nylon, not wool, and tied around her neck, leaving her back exposed. The suit pushed and pulled in all the right places—accentuating her small waistline and breasts—but it was the color that made the biggest impression. In the suit, Anna’s ordinarily pale skin glowed.
The salesgirl peeked her head into the dressing room, and when she saw that Anna was dressed, pushed back the curtain so she could see her properly. “You look lovely.”
Anna stared at her reflection, from all angles, trying to see herself as she imagined Stuart might.
“If you don’t buy that suit right now, I’m going to call my manager.”
“How much is it?”
“Three dollars.”
Anna felt a stab of guilt, thinking about the money. But itwasa beautiful suit, dazzling even. “I’ll take it.”
At the counter, the salesgirl folded the suit carefully, wrapped it in tissue paper, and tucked it away in a brown box, which she tied tight with a piece of twine. Anna took the box and thanked her, then ran back to the apartment, so eager was she to lay eyes on the suit once more.
Back at the Adlers’, Anna went straight to her bedroom. She tossed her purse on Florence’s bed and sank onto her own, where she wasted no time tearing open the box’s neat packaging. The bathing suit was as beautiful as it had been in the store, and most important of all, it had never belonged to Florence.
Anna went to the radiator and retrieved Florence’s suit from its hiding place. She walked with it over to Florence’s dresser, rubbing the nubby material between her fingers. After she had brought it to her lips for a brief moment, she folded it carefully and tucked it away in the same drawer where she’d found it.
When Anna arrived at the beach tent the following evening for her regularly scheduled lesson, Stuart surprised her. “I thought we’d graduate you to the ocean. See how you do in the waves.”
“No pool?”
“No pool,” he said, cuffing her lightly in the arm.
Anna liked The Covington’s pool, liked the quiet seclusion of their little bowl of water. There had to be a hundred or more hotel rooms with views of the pool deck but when she was in the water with Stuart, dusk wrapping itself around their wet shoulders, she felt protected, safe.
