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bought the robin’s-egg blue Dolce & Gabbana on the spot. It meant nothing to Vadim that this was an expensive brand and that the bikini cost the equivalent of a month’s spending money for Vincent. It wasn’t arrogance, more a form of blindness developed through a lifetime in his father’s marble palace.
    Now Bea reclined in her chair, looking the very picture of upper-class elegance, just like the girls they had seen by the resort pool—only more beautiful. Her skin glowed golden in the sun, and in unguarded moments Vincent couldn’t help glancing at her slender, smooth thighs and the robin’s-egg bikini, which hid what bikinis were supposed to hide and no more. Bea had small high breasts. Her stomach was flat and smooth with discreetly drawn stomach muscles. Just above the edge of the bikini bottoms there was a delicate dark birthmark, which he desperately longed to touch. He had never seen her like this before. Almost naked.
    Feeling yet another erection coming on, he turned over onto his stomach and raised himself up on his elbows.
    â€œDo you like it?”
    Bea sat up and looked across the water, fingering her narrow gold necklace—a gift he had given her on the one-year anniversary of their engagement.
    â€œIt’s beautiful here, Vincent. And I like your friends, but . . . It’s so different. As if you suddenly moved to a different planet. It seems wrong. How do you hold on to yourself when you live in a place where no one knows who you are? Your family . . . everyone you have always known.”
    She was so serious. He smiled, leaned across the narrow gap between the two lawn chairs and kissed her carefully on the mouth. Her lips were endlessly soft and tasted of salt after the dip in the Pacific.
    â€œWith a bit of luck,” he said, “this will also be our world one day. When I finish my degree and start to make money. You might as well get used to it.”
    â€œYou think so?”
    She looked at the distant ocean-going ships with a serious expression.
    Even though he was only two years older than she was, he sometimes thought of Bea as a child. She was still living with her parents while she studied to become a nurse. Ate with her parents in the evening and played with the dog before going to sleep under the slow-turning ceiling fan. Her childhood room was still completely unchanged, with the little desk against one wall, the bed against the other, and her textbooks piled neatly on the bedside table next to the lamp.
    Vadim called them from the wide porch of the house, as he emerged balancing a couple of neon-colored drinks. Soft pop music drifted through the open patio doors.
    â€œAre you coming?”
    Bea and Vincent got up. He was already a bit groggy from the heat and the sharp light across the sea. Bea, on the other hand, walked with a dancer’s balanced steps, a thin beach shawl wrapped around the blue bikini. He could see her dark, soft silhouette through the light material, and he felt a touch of something that had to be happiness. A sense that he was finally young in the way he ought to be. With a lightness that he had observed in others. Carefree as he had never felt before.
    Perhaps Vadim could see it.
    â€œHow sweet you look together,” he said. “Young love’s dream.”
    He was already halfway through his own drink, and Vincent suspected him of having had a few while he and Bea were at the beach. His narrow dark eyes wore the musing expression that usually showed up in the course of a sodden evening, and he spoke more and more like a character from an American movie. Even under normal circumstances Vadim spiced up his speech with more English expressions than most Filipinos, but it was especially noticeable when he was feeling emotional or drunk, which with him was often the same thing. Vadim was pure love when mixed with alcohol. Soft as a kitten.
    Diana and Victor were already sitting in a pair of broad, upholstered chairs,