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Victor with a collection of notes and a beer standing at his feet, Diana with a tattered English paperback. She was a year ahead of them, but Vadim had apparently known her as far back as high school, and their relationship seemed . . . complicated. Diana did not have Vadim’s lightness, but was beautiful and earnest and wore T-shirts with peace signs and political slogans like “Corruption Stinks,” “Fight Poverty” and “Health for All.” She had started a health clinic out in the slums in Las Pinas City together with a couple of older students. There was something dogged, and contagious about her rebellious frontal attack on the entire world, but when Vincent saw Vadim and Diana kiss and weave their fingers together on the stone wall in the university’s garden, it was like observing a wordless and chronically undecided power struggle. Diana’s gravity against Vadim’s constant attempts at lightness. Occasionally Vincent thought he could see a deep wonder in Diana’s gaze when she looked at Vadim. As if she had to search for the reason for the obvious attraction between them. But then Vadim would grab her ponytail, pull her head back and kiss her on the neck and collarbone until she, bursting with laughter, had to capitulate. Until next time.
    Vadim handed them each a drink.
    â€œDrink, my young friends,” he said and they all five raised their glasses. Bea drank carefully and with a small wrinkle on her nose. Vincent wasn’t sure if she had ever tasted alcohol before, except of course for the altar wine every Sunday at church, but that didn’t really count. Father Abuel had the reputation for diluting the blood of Jesus Christ quite a bit, out of consideration for the delicate souls of his congregation.
    Vincent bent down and kissed Bea’s delicately curved ear.
    â€œBe careful with that stuff,” he said. “It’s strong.”
    â€œI know,” she said and smiled. “But I’m with you—so what could happen?”
    â€¢ • •
    Afterward Vadim ordered takeaway from the restaurant a bit further down the beach. They had hauled some of the solid mahogany furniture from the living room almost all the way down to the water’s edge: the dining room table, five chairs, and a three-armed candelabra that might or might not be silver. Vadim had just shrugged when Bea asked him. He didn’t know and clearly didn’t care. Happy and indifferent.
    They ate butter-fried carp with sweet potatoes, and Vadim plucked out the small white pearls of the carp’s eyes and gave an enthusiastic lecture on ophthalmology before he plopped them in his white wine and emptied the glass with the triumphant expression of a magician. Diana had lit a cigarette and appeared to be far away in her own thoughts, but Bea was laughing, light-hearted and carefree, and leaned against Vincent with a bright smile.
    Her skin was burning hot against his bare arms, and in a glimpse he caught Vadim giving him a complicit I-told-you-she-would-like-it kind of smile, which he returned. The beach and the dark sea wobbled around him, but it was a pleasant inebriation, the kind that only expanded time and made you want to smile at everything.
    He placed a hand on Bea’s thigh and carefully moved his fingers toward the robin’s-egg blue fabric under the beach shawl, and she let him do it. Even spread her thighs a little. She wasn’t quite sober either.
    â€œThe mosquitoes are coming to devour us,” said Vadim and got up. “I think it’s time to move inside.”
    He was right. In the gathering dusk, they could hear the whining hum of little wings.
    They walked barefooted across the sands to the house, Bea right in front of Vincent, so he couldn’t help staring at the swaying pertness of her ass. He suddenly felt dizzy and very far from home. It was the alcohol, perhaps, but also the sound of the ocean and the black starry sky above