“But first,” said Stuart, “can I drag you out for a drink with a bunch of the guys from my old beach tent? Everyone’s meeting at Bert’s.”
“Is tonight a bad night?” Anna asked, thinking of the emerald-green bathing suit she wore under her dress. “We don’t have to—”
“No, I want you to come.”
It had been more than a month since Stuart had given Anna her first swimming lesson, and in that time, they’d never gone anywhere but The Covington’s pool. He walked her home each night, all the way to the sidewalk in front of the apartment. There had been several nights when they had walked past a crowded diner and she had been tempted to ask if he wanted to stop. But asking had always felt too forward, as if she were extending the relationship beyond its natural bounds and possibly even trying to usurp Florence’s role in his life. Florence was the one, she imagined, who squeezed into diner booths with Stuart, sipping coffee and sharing slices of pie.
Bert’s was located on the Boardwalk, close to the Maryland Avenue beach tent, and by the time Stuart and Anna arrived, a bunch of guys and a handful of girls had already pushed several small cocktail tables together and ordered a round of drinks. Stuart procured two chairs from an empty table nearby, and Anna watched as everyone at one end of the seating arrangement moved their own chairs to make room for him.Anna felt sure people had been happily making room for Stuart his whole life.
Stuart pulled out Anna’s chair, and she sat down in it. “Anna, this is Charles Kelly,” Stuart said, introducing the man to his left. Charles was accompanied by a pretty girl Stuart didn’t know.
“I’m Lillian,” said the girl, reaching her hand across the table.
Anna extended hers. “Pleased to meet you.”
Stuart continued around the table, introducing her to a half-dozen members of the ACBP. When he got all the way around the table, he clapped the shoulders of the man who sat on Anna’s other side and said, “And this is Irish Dan, the craziest son of a gun you’ll ever meet.” Irish Dan removed an imaginary hat from the top of his head and tipped it toward her.
Anna bent her head low, pretending to curtsy. “No surname for you?”
“Doyle,” he said and stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“What makes you so crazy?” she asked, idly, as Stuart took a seat and ordered two beers.
“I have a habit of reacting first, and thinking things through later.”
“That doesn’t sound so crazy.”
“Stuart,” Irish Dan said, raising his voice so as to be heard over the other conversations, “I like this girl.”
Stuart smiled, winked at Anna, and said, “Me too.”
The chairs were pushed close, and Anna was acutely aware of the number of inches that separated Stuart from her. If she moved her knee, even slightly, it might knock against his. Did he think about these sorts of things, too?
Their beers arrived and Stuart handed Anna hers, icy cold in the bottle. “Cheers,” he said as they clinked the bottlenecks. She took a short sip.
“You two going to the Lifeguard Ball?” Lillian asked. Anna was fairly certain Charles kicked his date under the table because a moment later, Lillian looked at him apologetically and said, “I was justasking.”
Anna didn’t know what the Lifeguard Ball was and certainly didn’t know how to answer the question, so she was relieved when Stuart didn’t miss a beat. “I haven’t asked her yet but I’m hoping so.” Annaturned in her chair to look at him. “It’s at the end of the summer. Will you come?” he asked quietly.
She didn’t know what to say, especially in front of so many people she didn’t know, so she just said, “Yes.”
Stuart’s face broke into a broad smile then, and he reached into Anna’s lap to give the hand closest to him a celebratory squeeze. The touch of Stuart’s skin against hers sent a jolt through her body, and Anna wondered immediately if he’d felt it, too.
When, instead of removing his hand, Stuart weaved his fingers through hers, Anna stopped listening to a word that was being said around her. All she could concentrate on was the way Stuart traced her knuckles with his thumb.
They might have sat like that all night, blindly learning the contours of each other’s hands, had Lillian not declared her seat no good. “It’s dull as doornails over here. Stuart, switch seats with me,” Lillian said, already standing. “I’d much rather talk to Anna than Charles.”
Was Stuart obligated to play Lillian’s game of musical chairs? Anna didn’t think so but she also knew he was too polite to say no.
“Charles, I thought you said this one liked you,” Stuart teased. He let go of Anna’s hand, and she watched, crestfallen, as he stood, grabbed his beer, and moved across the table from her. When he looked at her, from the seat Lillian had so recently abandoned, she thought he turned up the corners of his mouth, apologetically, but it was hard to tell because Anna was too embarrassed to study his face for long. Her hand burned in her lap.
Anna had always thought Stuart handsome and had always known him to be kind but she wondered if she was giving those feelings more credence than they deserved, now that Eli Hirsch had so plainly spelled out her options. She looked around the table. Every one of Stuart’s friends on the Atlantic City Beach Patrol was a gentile. She knew for a fact that his father’s hotel didn’t rent rooms to Jews. Surely, he didn’t want a Jewish wife? Except, Anna reminded herself, he had confessed to loving Florence.
Lillian plunked herself down in Stuart’s empty chair. “I like the view from here much better,” she said, winking at Charles. Anna was inclined to hate her, not just for banishing Stuart to the far side of the table butfor the easy way she captured the group’s attention. She was so casual, so frank, so painfully American.
“You’re German?”
Anna nodded and took a sip of beer. It wasn’t worth explaining that she had been born in Hungary.
