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breeze riffled the page in the typewriter. Party chat became audible again.
George, one eyebrow raised in murderous disbelief, turned about to see Harry
Robelieu making his way down the hall toward this room, diffident but daring.
Robelieu, a minor director of off-Broadway or out-of-town productions, was
among those tolerated by but not actually welcomed by George; his brazen
approach now, no matter how tremulous, was so unexpected that George said
nothing, didn't even snarl, scarcely showed his teeth as Harry traversed the
hall and entered the office and said, “George, we just came over on the
ferry."
                 Deceptively
quiet, George said, “I'm trying to work here."
                 Harry,
unbelievably, didn't even acknowledge that. Some sort of excitement gleamed
beneath his pale anonymous face. He said, “There's someone I want you to
meet."
                 “I
don't want to meet people," George told him. “I hate people. What have
people ever done for me?"
                “This isn't people,” Harry insisted,
moving toward the sea-view window. “Come take a look.''
                 George
sat where he was. Harry looked out the window, then back at George, gesturing
to him to come see. George turned his head to glower at his typewriter, needing
to struggle through to victory, but at the same time tempted by this
distraction, intrigued despite himself by Harry's unwonted manner. With an
angry slap of the hand on the desktop, he rose and crossed toward the window,
prepared to be coldly bitchy about anything at all Harry might have it in mind
to show. “Yes?" he said.
                 “Look,"
Harry said, gesturing again, stepping back from the window.
                 George
looked, lips already curling.
                 All
alone by himself, at the outer corner of the silver- gray deck, stood a magnificent
boy of twenty-three or -four, in tight black T-shirt and white jeans. He was
half turned away, one hand on hip, gazing out over the illimitable sea.
Sunlight caressed the strong line of his jaw, shadowed the eyes beneath his
brows.
                 “Marc
Antony,'' whispered George.
                 “His
name's Jack Pine,'' Harry Robelieu said, smiling with mingled amusement and
relief. “If you want, I'll—''
                 George
turned, ignoring the soft, stupid man, and crossed the room with suddenly
certain strides. Down the hall he went, and diagonally through the long main
room to the open glass doors. Surprised and happy voices spoke to him,
mistakenly assuming he had finished his work for the day, but he brushed
uncaring by their faces, glasses, smiles, babbling words, gestures of comradeship
and welcome.
                 Outside,
the sun was very bright, almost a physical presence through which he marched,
around the pool and across the deck, as though he and the boy were alone on a
platform on a high mountaintop somewhere, the highest mountain in the world. A
breeze whipped the caftan around his legs as he strode, the giggling and
splashing from the pool faded to vacuity, and George stood before the boy.
                Slowly, Jack Pine's sea-struck eyes
drew in, darkened, refocused down from the far
horizon. George smiled at him. The boy, uncertain, tried an answering smile,
saying, "Hello?"
                 George
took the boy's hands in both his own . "Do you
know?" he said, his voice melting, all his pain
and doubt draining away, leaving him as light as air. "Do you know? I've
just written an entire play all about you, and here we are, meeting for the
very first time."
     

           9
     
     
                 How
beautiful the ocean was that day. I've always been very interested in water.
(Not today, though; today I have no interest in looking at that pool of mine,
just over there somewhere beyond the gray slate patio. I seem to be sitting