Jack handed me a glass. “Cheers,” he said. “It’s very light, hardly more than Coke.”

I could feel the bubbles under my nose, and I took a sip. It was lovely, and I finished my glass before my hamburger arrived, and Jack poured me another. He tried to get Simone to talk about her book — what was the mystery, what was Nancy Drew up to — but she only answered him in monosyllables. She ate her fries slowly, one by one, licking off the salt. I looked out at the sea, listened to the cries of swimmers, and sank back in my woven straw chair. Jack asked me about school and he seemed to be interested as I babbled on about Sister Helen and how I hated term papers and gym class. I asked him about his books and he told me he was working on his third novel. The first had won a prize, the second had bombed, but this one, the comic adventures of an American vagabond in Europe, was going to be the best seller.

I heard the jukebox blare Sea of Love. It was one of my favorite songs at home, and I always turned up the volume when it came on the radio, and imagined I was slow dancing with somebody.

“This silence is driving me crazy.” Jack jumped up and disappeared. My ears were buzzing after my third or fourth glass of wine so I didn’t know what he was talking about at first until I heard the jukebox blare Sea of Love. It was one of my favorite songs at home, and I always turned up the volume when it came on the radio, and imagined I was slow dancing with somebody. Now I smiled to think that here I was, in Venice, sitting by a real sea.

Jack came back. “Let’s dance,” he said. He pulled me out my chair, and I stood willingly and fell into his arms while Simone sat staring at us over her half-eaten hamburger. I felt like Cinderella. Jack’s hand pressed against the small of my back, just so, just where I’d always imagined a man’s hand, and we swayed around the tables and out onto the sand under some pine trees where two Italian couples were also dancing in their wet suits, clinging to each other. I could feel Jack pressing against me, I could feel something hard against my bare leg, but he started whispering the words of the song into my ear and I was dizzy and full of sweet longing, and pressed back, so that when I felt his hands on my buttocks, squeezing gently, then his finger probing along the edge of my suit, it felt natural, and only when the jukebox abruptly stopped did I feel embarrassed. I pulled away from him, flushed and breathless.

On the way home, Jack gave up teasing me out of what he called my “bad mood” and tried to get Simone to play twenty questions, but she refused and hung over the rail, watching the water. Nothing had happened, I told myself, we were just slow dancing, but I had a hangover and my skin itched from sea salt, and I felt sticky and miserable. Linda had just made a pitcher of martinis for her and Jack when we got back, to celebrate the completion of the first draft of her big article, so Simone and I went upstairs and took baths, and when she called us later Jack was gone. She took us to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, a small place hidden in a narrow street near the Ghetto, and though she offered me a glass of wine, I was happy to drink green tea.

The next day Linda announced that she was going out to the church on Torcello that afternoon to revisit the mosaics of The Last Judgment. She needed to look at them again. “Interpretation is so subjective,” she said. “Jack thinks I’ve missed something important. When the angels blow their trumpets, it’s not just the sea monsters that are depicted eating the dead. Ordinary fish are chewing on hands and feet, too. That’s significant, he says.” She said I could go with her if I wanted, but Simone was to stay home and nap. Two long days in a row would not be good for her.