The One

The One

Two topless Japanese women wearing red bikini bottoms passed in front of where Cook and I were leaning back on the beach with our elbows in the sand. They both looked down at us and smiled. When I returned their smiles, the two women burst out giggling for no reason at all before they moved on without looking back.

I turned and looked at Cook. Sipping from his can of lemonade, he shook his head and let out a whispery sigh that seemed to rise from the depths of his diaphragm.

“Not them?” I asked, looking at Cook’s toes.

He shook his head again. Then he eyes grew big. He gestured in the direction of the water with his chin. Turning my head, I watched the blonde step out of the frothy shallows. Also topless, the blonde was thumbing at the hems of her drenched, lime-colored bikini bottom. She pushed her soaked hair out of her face and glistening beads of seawater rolled over her body and caught the sunlight just so.

“Her?”

Again, I glanced at Cook’s toes then watched him shake his head.

For a time we continued to study an endless stream of topless women, sculptured and natural, who mostly paraded the shoreline in pairs. We sat back in the sand and drank our lemonades while woman after woman strode, wagged, or raced across the gritty ground before us. But glimpsing Cook’s toes, I knew he hadn‘t yet discovered the right woman.

I sat up, crossed my legs, scooped a handful of sand and spent a few minutes transferring it from one palm to the other. Cook remained with his elbows resting in the sand and his knees pointed skyward. Every now and then a woman would pass with her lotion-slicked backside and Cook would trail her with his gaze. But not once did he give any indication of having found the right woman

Then, just when the sun hung in the sky at its highest point, I raised a hand to my eyes to shield the glare and saw her approaching. I looked over at Cook. He was already staring. Above the woman’s gray jogging pants she had on a thick copper-colored wool sweater, the ends of the sleeves clutched in her fists. She trudged past through the sand with her eyes kept on the pointed toes of her western boots. Wrapped around the woman’s waist and knotted at her hip was a green army blanket. The blanket hung to her ankles.

She walked ahead of us and not a curve was visible beneath the heavy fabric that covered her. She sat down facing the ocean. The breeze whipped the back ends of her black hair from one wool-covered shoulder to the other. Feeling my insides lighten, I turned to Cook and said, “It‘s her, isn‘t it?”

Cook didn’t reply. His eyes were moist, his mouth was open and his toes were curled. I knew that this was the one, and it suddenly troubled me that Cook too, was struck by the woman. But my heart bottomed out when I turned back to the woman and realized I was too late. In the moment I had glanced at Cook, the woman was being approached by most every man on the beach.