'On this magic day our character becomes defined, our growth is accelerated, our emotional transitions are made. Sometimes, maybe once in a lifetime, there will be a string of these magic days, one after another, so full of life and change and challenge that we are completely transformed by the experience and our souls become suffused with a boundless joy. During that time we are often overcome by the simple and incredible miracle of just being alive. This is the story of one such magic period.
'It was spring break in Fort Lauderdale. Our swimming season had just finished at Harvard and my uncle, as a present for my twenty-first birthday, offered to let me use his condominium in Florida for a couple of weeks so I could unwind from the twin rigors of studying and swimming practice ...'
Nick had not looked at these pages for almost ten years. As he read the first few paragraphs he remembered, vividly, the ecstasy in which they were written. It was two nights before the party. She was at some social function that night, would be too late, would come by first thing in the morning. I couldn't sleep. It was the first night in a week I had been away from her. He stopped for a moment, old emotions twisting around inside him, making him feel dizzy and slightly nauseous. He read the first paragraph again. It was also before the pain. Before the incredible goddamn pain.
For almost thirty minutes music had been playing on the radio. Nick had heard it, he knew it was there, but he could not have identified any of the songs. It had been background music. Now, just at the moment when his memories of Monique were the most poignant, the Miami 'classic rock and roll station, WMIM, 99.9 on your FM dial,' played Cyndi Lauper's haunting 1984 hit 'Time After Time.' The music seemed to increase markedly in amplitude. Nick had to sit down and grab a breath. Until the song, he had been able to deal with his memories of Monique. But somehow that song, the one he had played on the cassette player in his car almost every night as he had made the drive from Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach to see her, carried with it all the youthful love, joy, fear, and anger that had marked the entire affair. Nick was overwhelmed. As he sat on the couch and listened to the song, hot tears welled up in his eyes and then ran softly down his cheeks.
'... Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick, and think of you ... Caught up in circles, confusion is nothing new ... Flashback, warm nights, almost left behind ... Suitcase of memories ... Time after Time.'
FRIDAY Chapter 2
YOU say, go slow, I fall behind... . The second hand unwinds ...' Brenda leaned over and turned the volume down on the cassette player. 'It's me, Mr. Stubbs, honest. Brenda Goldfine. Don't you recognize me?' She was shouting at an old man in a blue uniform who was sitting on a stool in a small circular tower in the middle of the road. 'And that's Teresa Silver in the back. She's not feeling too well. Come on, open the gate and let us through.'
The security guard climbed down from his stool and slowly walked out in front of Nick's old Pontiac. He wrote the license number down on a note pad and then came around to Brenda's window. 'All right this time, Brenda, but this is not according to the rules. All visitors coming into Windsor Cove after ten o'clock at night must be cleared ahead of time.'
At length the guard raised the gate and Nick moved his car forward again. 'The guy's really a pain in the ass,' Brenda said to Nick, smacking her gum as she talked, 'Christ, you'd think he owned one of the places or something.' Nick had heard about Windsor Cove. Or rather had read about it. Once when he was over at his uncle's home in Potomac, Maryland, there had been a copy of Town and Country magazine on the table and he had read about the 'gracious life of Windsor Cove.' Now, as he drove past the estates in the most prestigious section of Palm Beach, he was awed by the personal wealth displayed.
'Over there. That's Teresa's house.' Brenda pointed at a colonial house set back about a hundred yards from the