“Did you see that?” his wife asked, fascinated, as the girl walked toward the pool.

The man asked what she was talking about, yet after they had left the terrace and were returning to their room, he claimed to have forgotten his sunglasses and ran back to the deck, where he seized the bar of soap the girl had left on the ground near the nozzle.

The girl undoubtedly went to the beach during the afternoon, but as the man’s wife worried about her own delicate skin during the pregnancy, the couple spent the entire afternoon in the confines of their room, sharing a nap and a few hours of daytime television. His wife pleaded for him to leave her and enjoy himself, but the man insisted he felt guilty abandoning her.

The following night, after his wife had fallen asleep and the man was watching television with the volume turned down, the sound of water splashed from the pool. He went to the window and saw the silhouette of a swimmer slipping beneath the rippled water. The form hesitated in the middle of the pool, turned, then returned to the edge. When the figure rose from the water, he discerned the silhouette was a woman’s. As she approached the terrace, the light fell over her face and the man recognized the girl; she smiled and the water matted her thick hair which she had pulled back into a pony tail. Squinting in his direction, she saw the man and she waved to him. He took a step back into the shadow of his room but did not retreat completely. The girl advanced another step and the light slid down her neck, exposing her chest as if the shadow were a light summer dress she was stepping out of. The man reached down to the zipper of his jeans and pulled his stiffening erection out over the elastic of his underwear. The girl continued to advance towards the terrace as the light descended below her navel. The man increased his rhythm when he saw the spray of hair between her thighs, lighter in color than he had expected, trimmed enough that he perceived the outline of her sex.

“What’s happening out there?” his wife called from the bed, her voice clear and unclouded by sleep. Panic and fear exploded in the man’s head as he tried to force his erection back through the small opening of his zipper. Speaking as naturally as possible, he answered that someone was taking a late night dip.

“Come to bed,” his wife told him, and he said he would in a minute as he turned from the window and waited for his stiffness to subside.

The remainder of the week passed in much the same manner. One afternoon the girl fidgeted in her chair inside a swimming suit which was a few sizes too small. She lay on her back with her breasts mashed against the cups of the suit, the sun in her hair making it difficult to determine where her tresses ended and her tan began. The fabric was incapable of covering the rounded hills of her ass so the bottom halves were exposed. In stretching the elastic of her briefs the girl offered the man the rise of her behind, and in lifting one knee and tugging at the inseam, the man saw a flash of her down glinting in the sun.

One morning, the girl spilled an entire pitcher of juice over the front of her white blouse and the fabric clung to her skin with a sugary orange sheen. On the way back to the room after this fiasco the man, without attracting his wife’s attention, grabbed the napkin the girl had used to wipe up the spill.

Another evening, when the man was having a drink at the bar, he went to the sole restroom and, as the door was unlocked, entered only to be confronted by the girl sitting on the toilet facing him, her shirt buttoned to her neck with the tails hanging on each side of her thighs, her pants and lace underwear in a clump around her ankles, her legs spread so widely her knees touched the walls of the narrow bathroom. The man backed out without apologizing, though after seeing her leave, he returned and kissed the seat that still contained the young woman’s warmth.

Yet through all of her games, the girl maintained a courteous relationship with the man’s wife. They developed a tacit friendship between their rolled eyes and the winking corners of their indulgent grins in a pact of acknowledgment over the man’s inept obsession and the boyishness of men in general.

On her last night, the girl sat with her family, continuing to make a spectacle of her allure. She wore a half shirt and accentuated her breasts by resting them on her arms, folded at table’s edge. While playing with each bite of food on the tip of her tongue, she spoke loudly about her studio in Paris and how she felt alone having no one else at home. Soon after, her parents retired to their room leaving the girl alone with her older sister. The man’s wife also took her leave, to accommodate the damage her pregnancy inflicted on her digestive tract.

The girl spoke of being so hot that she had come to dinner without wearing any underwear. As her sister laughed and talked about the follies of her own youth, the younger woman reached beneath the table and lifted the hem of her skirt, aware without verifying that the man was turning toward her as slowly as possible. She reached for the near-empty bottle of wine but dropped it while moving it to her glass. The bottle, falling heavily to the carpet, briefly attracted the notice of the few remaining patrons, although their attention stopped short of accompanying the bottle back to the table or, more precisely, to the chair, for the young woman giggled and, slouching back in her seat, pushed the top of the bottle beneath the folds of her skirt and inserted the entire neck into herself as her older sister, ignorant of what was taking place beneath the table, teased her about being too drunk.

The porn performance lasted as long as it took for him to find his breath, and for the briefest of instants the man had a sight of the girl with the wine bottle protruding from her. When the bottle was finally replaced on the table, the women paid the bill and rose. Passing his table, the girl stopped and bowed at the waist beside him, reminding him that tonight was her last night at the hotel. She repeated her room number and, before leaving, let her eyes do the asking. The man saw her reflection wrap around the bulb of his wine glass and he sipped quickly, while she was still trapped inside.

He waited until she had gone, then walked over to her table and pretended to drop his keys. After going down on his knees to search for them, he pressed his face against her seat. Rising, he lifted the wine bottle and put the tip between his lips and licked the opening while swallowing the dregs.

Later that night, while his wife slept, the man sat on the toilet in their bathroom fumbling through a pornography book, the fingers of his right hand frothing with the lather of his own semen mixed with that of the soap he’d stolen from her poolside shower. He thought about the girl who could not sleep, alone, while he laid the thick strings of his obsession over the napkin with which she had wiped her chest.