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mid-thirties, married, Baptist, and a born-again
    redneck transplanted from Massachusetts to southern Mississippi-Anna was
    less tolerant of.  He condemned while he leered and it was hard to tell
    which activity gave him the greater thrill.
    'This morning Anna was driving, Rick riding shotgun.  For the I)ast
    twenty minutes he'd been working himself into a lather over abortion
    rights.  Rusli LimbaLlgh and G.  Gordon Liddy were his much quoted
    experts on the subject.  Anna was attempting a Zenlike state and failing
    miserably.  The heat, the boredom, and Rick were a combination that
    would have gotten Gandhi's loincloth in bundle.
    She kept her equilibrium by a base but satisfying amusement .
    Each time Rick raised his binoculars to inventory an unsuspecting
    sunbather's assets, Anna steered the truck toward the nearest hillock or
    water-cut in the beach.  So far she'd scored two "Fucks" and one "Dnmit,
    Anna."
    If I)people did harbor the inner child psychologists had brought into
    vogue, hers needed a good spanking, Anna thought, as she turned the
    wheel to take better advantage of a trench the retreating tide had left
    behind.
    ,'shit," Rick growled as the binoculars banged against the soft tissue
    around his eyes ." You drive like a girl." He too was bored and hot, but
    if he'd hoped to get a rise out of Anna he was disappointed.
    "Don't I though," she said as she adjusted her mental scoreboard: Anna
    4, Rick 0.
    "i'll (I rive , he said.
    That suited her.  Flocks of pelicans were skimming the ocean, flying
    between the chocolate-colored waves like bombers down narrow canyons.
    What seabirds lacked in color, they more than made up for in grace and
    complexity.  Anna never tired of watching the many ways they interacted
    with the sea.  Besides, torturing Rick was beginning to pall.  He'd
    never caught on to the game: fish in a barrel, no challenge.
    She let the truck roll to a stop and switched off the ignition.
    Rick was a big man, thick through the chest, shoulders, and head.  His
    face was a perfect oval.  Clustered in the center were a dark mustache,
    two close-set eyes, and a nondescript nose.  The eyes had the puffy look
    of a perennial hangover, though as near as Anna could tell, he suffered
    more from allergies than alcoholism.  His hair was almost black and
    clipped so short that the crown of his head, where he was baking, had a
    peculiar look of having been sanded.
    Like every man Anna had ever known, Rick had to spend a minute or two
    performing some inscrutable ritual before he could get out of a parked
    vehicle.  She slid from the seat and crouched in a scrap of shade
    afforded by the truck to watch the silt-laden waves break into buttery
    foam.  She'd never spent much time by the sea .
    Even the waters of Lake Superior had scared her.  The Atlantic both
    scared and fascinated.  In its own way the shore was as harsh an
    environment as the high deserts of Colorado and Texas.  The constancy of
    the August heat, the sand and salt and wind-by day's end human strength
    was abraded away.
    The crunch of boots let her know Rick had uprooted.  Over the protest of
    creaking joints she pushed herself up.  It was still early and the sun
    was at her back as she walked around the truck's tailgate.  To the west
    the green foliage showed dark behind shimmering white dunes.  Clouds
    were just beginning to build, as they did every day, making a promise of
    rain they never kept.  One of the clouds drooped, an uncharacteristic
    gray.  Anna cupped her hands around the brim of her ball cap to cut the
    glare.
    "Hey, Rick." He walked up beside her and she pointed.
    " Smoke?"
    " Looks like it."
    "Hallelujah!  Hazard pay!" With a cowboy's "Yee-hah!" he leaped two
    yards and threw himself behind the wheel.
    Anna was galvanized as well.  Lethargy, heat, the myriad aches and pains
    of hours spent patrolling over rough ground in a truck with wasted
    shocks were banished.
    Rick laughed as he cinched down his seat