It was late and everyone had already had a considerable amount to drink when someone—I can’t remember who—suggested we all take a hot tub. We—that is my wife, Ruthie, and I and our neighbors and best friends Maurice (or Mo, for short) and Eva—had all pooled our money together to rent a beach house for the weekend, a nice two-bedroom clapboard inhabited during the off-season by a middle-aged couple and their teenage son. None of us had met them. Mo had rented the house through a real estate friend of his, which seemed to him reason enough to award himself the master bedroom. Ruthie and I got the son’s room, and we spent the first night surrounded by posters of baseball players and rock bands and women in their underwear splashing in the surf.

The next morning I woke up late and went out to the kitchen to find everyone sitting down for breakfast—bagels and fruit and good, strong coffee we had brought from the city. Ruthie smiled and gave me a kiss and then directed me to go brush my teeth immediately.

After breakfast Mo had us all follow him into the master bedroom, where, in snooping, he had discovered several glimpses into the marital life of our absent hosts. The bed was huge, with a solid oak headboard and enough pillows to cushion the Sultan and all the ladies of his harem. “Take a look at this!” exclaimed Mo, directing us to the bookshelf. We all cocked our heads to read the spines; there was the usual fare of beach house literature, a bent towards international espionage—Patricia Highsmith and John le Carré among others—but nothing especially out of the ordinary.

“Up here,” said Mo, pointing to the top shelf and a row of self-help books partially set back from the edge of the shelf. “Constructing the Sexual Crucible,” he read aloud. “Beyond the Myth of Marital Happiness. Secrets of A Passionate Marriage; it appears our hosts are having some difficulties in the sack!” Ruthie shot me a look. That last one we had at home.

Next he led us to the bathroom, the medicine cabinet, and held up for our inspection a pill bottle of anti-depressants. “And what do you make of these?” he exclaimed.

“Mo!” cried Eva. “We shouldn’t!”

“Oh, I don’t think they mind, do you? I mean they left them out, didn’t they? You’d think they’d know we’d go looking around. It’s only natural.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t imagine they’d expect we’d be analyzing their sex life and everything.”

“Oh you’re all a bunch of milquetoasts,” he said. “That’s right. You heard me. I said milquetoasts.” Then we all burst out laughing, just because who says milquetoast anymore?

Before I go any further, there are a few things you should know about Mo and Eva. The first is that about a year ago Mo confided to me that he’d had an affair. He wouldn’t tell me who it was, but I had my suspicions—namely the real estate friend who procured us this very beach house. I admit that I reacted harshly to this confession, but the truth is, it struck me to the very core. The truth is, I am and have been for the last two years in love with his wife Eva, and the knowledge of his infidelity was a power I doubted I could remain faithful to.

Just once I told Eva how I felt about her, at a party at their house after I’d had a sufficient amount of alcohol to chalk my declaration up to drunken foolishness. I don’t know if she remembers. I study her face sometimes for signs of mutual feeling and I think I see flashes of it now and then but I can never be sure. If she’d only give me a sign, I think I’d have courage to do what needs to be done.

In the afternoon we split up. Mo and Eva went off to the beach while Ruthie wanted to go to town and walk around. I would have been just as happy staying where I was, taking one of those spy novels outside on the porch and reading the afternoon away, but in the end I followed my wife. It’s a quaint little place; the kind of town with things to sell if you’re not looking for anything in particular—sand dollar wind chimes and driftwood wall clocks; the debris of what’s been washed ashore. I guess what they sell is the ease of recollecting a memory. They sell the memories too, but those cost extra. Ruthie delighted in it all, and I struggled to maintain an interest in the kitsch she found so charming. After about an hour I told her I was going to walk back to the house and take a nap.

I walked along the boardwalk and kept an eye out for Mo and Eva. The weather was delightful and everyone was out, flying kites and throwing Frisbees and splashing in the ocean. Little children laughed and played along the northern end of the bay where the waves weren’t so large. Suddenly a light breeze came up and the music of the children and the crashing of the surf struck a note that I can only describe as exposing the subtle flaw in the afternoon. A scene so idyllic, so naturally perfect, can only serve to condemn the deficiencies in everything else.

And then I saw her.

She was walking parallel to the water’s edge, tracing the white residue of the ocean with her footsteps, and then, not a step or two after, the water would return to wash away her footprints, as if no evidence of her presence there should ever remain, as if her spouse wasn’t Mo (there, twenty feet inland, sitting in the shade of a beach umbrella, doing the crossword) but Poseidon himself, and if he couldn’t have her back he’d take at least whatever impression of her he could.

She had her pants rolled up to reveal her ankles, and her boat shoes tied together and swinging from her fingers. She didn’t see me. All the while I stood there watching her, she had her face down, watching her footsteps. Then I heard the wind pick up her name. “Eva!” it called. “Eva!” I saw her look around and I ducked behind the little stone wall separating the boardwalk from the beach, but she hadn’t seen me because it hadn’t been me calling her name; it’d been her husband.

I wasn’t really tired anymore when I got to the house but I thought I’d lie down on the bed for a little while anyway. I was unsettled. I’m a man who trusts my instincts, and that my instincts had told me to hide—that I had anything to hide—shook me. The bed I lay on—the teenage son’s bed, the bed of an adolescent—was lumpy and uncomfortable, and I got up to check under the mattress where I found a stack of Playboy magazines. I felt as if the boy’s pubescent, carnal urges were contagious, and just before I drifted off to sleep, I wondered how anyone could possibly get a full night’s rest in that room.

I awoke to hear loud voices coming from the other side of the wall. The Playboys were still lying on my chest and I quickly stashed them away before going out to see what all the commotion was for. In the living room I found Eva and Mo, who both became suddenly, conspicuously silent as soon as they saw me come in. Eva’s eyes were red and it appeared as if she’d been crying.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Mo forced a smile and said, “Nothing, pal. We’re just having a little chat. Didn’t know you were back already.”

I yawned. “I came back early to take a nap,” I said. “I just woke up.”

“Where’s Ruthie?” asked Eva. She tried to smile. Everyone seemed to be trying to smile, as if they’d been caught doing something terribly adult, and this was their attempt to introduce some innocence back into the scene; it all hung by a delicate thread.

“I don’t know,” I frowned. “If she’s not back yet, I guess she’s still in town.”

“Well,” grinned Mo, “When she gets back, what do you say we go find out what kind of night life we can find around here?”

Ruthie returned before long with news of a steakhouse that looked promising, and promising it was, if only for the fact that when we arrived we were seated in a crescent-shaped booth, with Ruthie on one side of me and Eva on the other. She was wearing a short green dress, and as I slid in alongside her, I could feel her bare skin against my slacks, against my leg. I pretended there wasn’t room. I pretended I was as close to Ruthie as I was to her, though in truth I could have fit a small child between Ruthie and me.

While we ate, we drank, and after we had eaten we continued drinking. Mo and I had Old Fashioneds and the ladies were drinking wine, but after dinner we moved to the adjacent lounge and switched to beers and shots, while the ladies began a run of spritzers and mixed drinks. By my last count, I was up four drinks on Ruthie, two drinks on Eva and one drink on Mo, though by my last count I’d come to the conclusion that counting could not be successfully carried out with a reasonable margin of accuracy. I could sense that another confession was imminent.

Around ten o’clock the bar was overrun by a party of locals with a karaoke machine, and after several numbers we agreed to return to the house, where (not to count the evening out) there were still two bottles of wine and a half-full fifth of scotch. In the living room, or maybe in Mo and Eva’s bedroom, or in the kitchen searching for ice, someone suggested we all take a hot tub.

“This is nice, isn’t it? The four of us together like this, soaking like we’re a bunch of rock stars? We should do this more often.” We had brought what was left of the last bottle of wine out to the hot tub and Mo raised it high to make this toast and drink deeply before passing it around. He had suggested we all take off our bathing suits to get in the hot tub, but thankfully, mercifully, the majority had declined. I can’t imagine what I would have done.

“At the price that friend of yours gave us,” Eva said, “we could do this every week.”

“Yeah,” smiled Mo. I wondered if his self-satisfaction wasn’t a little premature. Ruthie had her eyes closed and seemed to have fallen asleep. I remembered reading somewhere that you’re only supposed to sit in a hot tub no more than fifteen minutes (with a temperature no higher than 104 degrees), or else you become overheated. Permanent things are said. The heat lulls you into a coma.

I don’t know how long we’d been sitting there but I was pretty sure it was longer than fifteen minutes, and when I looked up again it was Eva talking. “What are you saying? Why are you talking to me like you don’t even know me?”

“Sweetheart—” Mo wasn’t smiling anymore. “Sweetheart—she’s just a friend of mine! She gave us a deal is all. I really don’t understand why you’re so upset.”

“Just answer me one question,” said Eva. “If she’s just a friend, why does she keep calling you in the middle of the night? Why does she keep hanging up when I answer the phone?”

“But it could be anyone!” Mo exclaimed. “It could just be kids fooling around! If she hangs up how do you know it’s even her?”

“Because the stupid bitch calls our home from her own office!” she cried. “And when I call back I get her goddamn answering service!”

As we’d been sitting there, we’d each taken turns popping up, resting against the edge of the tub to cool off, to feel the breeze against our wet skin, but now no one moved. We were boiling. All eyes were fixed on Eva, poor thing. I stole a glance at Ruthie (who in my mind was taking notes). She didn’t seem to know quite how to respond, but I had made up my mind. I was going to speak up, to tell what I knew about Mo and his little tart and set the record straight. Just then Eva jumped up and ran into the house.

“Eva—” Mo called after her, but she didn’t stop. He turned back to us. “Sorry about this, guys,” he said before following her inside.

I wanted to go after them, but they seemed to have taken with them all the energy of the night, the air, the oxygen; I looked at Ruthie and wondered how she could even breathe. Their privacy was my enemy and I had to go after them. I felt panicked, and I couldn’t help but hold responsible everyone around me, everyone I’ve done right for, and think that if I just had the opportunity to do what I really want, there’d be peace. I’d feel guilty, sure, but at least it’d be something, something to ask forgiveness for, and right then it seemed like that would make all the difference.

Ruthie scooted over next to me, put her hand on the inside of my thigh and said, “Where do you suppose that came from?”

I jerked away. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. My heart was beating hard and fast and my feet were cold. In the living room I found them in the dark, holding each other, dripping water onto the carpet. It was going to stain. The chlorine from the hot tub was going to bleach the carpet and leave two sets of footprints, facing each other forever.

They didn’t pay me any attention. “I just have to go to the bathroom,” I said, but I don’t think they even heard me. Eva had her face buried in the crook of his shoulder and he was stroking the small of her back. I felt sick. I rushed into the bathroom and knelt down in front of the porcelain and gave it everything left in me, from the night’s worth of drinks to the dinner to the bagels and fruit and good, strong coffee that morning, and when that was all gone I gave it a little more.

I must have passed out then. I don’t remember anything else. They said when they found me I was mumbling a lot of incoherent nonsense, but they wouldn’t tell me what I said—for my own good, they said. “What does it matter? You were drunk.” They carried me into our room and laid me down on the bed, and then I suppose Ruthie got me out of my wet shorts and put a pair of pajama bottoms on me. I don’t remember any of that of course, but when I woke up and found myself in bed I assumed that’s what must have happened.

I woke up in the pre-dawn light. Ruthie was asleep next to me, she had her back to me, and for just a moment I thought I’d actually done it. “Eva?” I whispered. I touched the small of her back. “Eva,” I repeated, this time a little louder. I knew if I woke her up she’d probably still be drunk enough that all would be forgotten or forgiven. Only I wasn’t drunk anymore. “Eva!” I shouted, and this time I shook her shoulders.

“Mmm,” Ruthie groaned and turned over on her other side. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Go back to sleep.” I stared at her for a while, her face puffy from the alcohol, and then I had to look away. In the dark I could just make out the poster of the supermodel splashing in the surf. From somewhere else in the house I could just make out what sounded to me in my feverish state like two mice playing patty-cake. It had the same kind of maddening rhythm, the same timbre of absurdity, and then all of a sudden it’d stop, as if they were trying to learn the words again, and then just when I’d started to think maybe they were done, up they’d go again: “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man! Bake me a cake as fast as you can. Pat it, and prick it, and mark it with B, and put it in the oven for Baby and me.”

It might have gone on for hours like that—patty-cake and the girl in the surf in a house that wasn’t my own—if I had not been mercifully granted what I then desired above all else, which was finally to be welcomed into the arms of deep and dreamless sleep.