C4 antho - Chamber Four

~244~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
hand up to hold onto it. She turned to Munro. “Do you want
to go indoors?” she asked.
Munro didn’t answer. He looked out over the water to
the surf breaking on the bar a hundred yards offshore. He
hadn’t heard her. He hadn’t heard her on the helicopter, and
now here. Sharon wondered if Munro might not be a little
hard of hearing. She hadn’t noticed it before, but it was possible.
He wasn’t a kid. She reached across and touched his
arm where it lay on the arm of his chair. Munro turned to
her.
“Do you want to go in now? The wind?”
“I like it,” said Munro. He turned his arm over and she
took his hand.
“Let’s stay a minute more, all right?” Munro asked.
“Sure,” said Sharon.
They held hands. Sharon hung onto her hat with her
other hand. They were silent together. She thought of Neil.
The year before, Neil had taken her to Barbados for a long
weekend. Somebody he knew from the bank had a place
there. The heat, the beach, the air, the sea had worked on
Neil, all right. Normally he wasn’t what you’d call a lot of fun,
but down there he came over Sharon like a buck rabbit on his
honeymoon. They barely left the cabana, they barely ate.
Munro was the opposite. He’d been more of a lover in
New York, in his peculiar hotel. Since their coming to the island,
he’d hardly touched her. That suited Sharon. She didn’t
have to be screwing all the time. And Munro was by no
means cold, he was by no means inattentive. He wanted her
with him. He was easy with her, but in a new way, a way new
to her. He was as though they’d known each other for years;
he was familiar, he was bantering, he was more like an older
brother than a lover. And Sharon began to feel the same way,
which was odd, because, of himself, of his affairs, his life, of