He worked his way along the aisle back to his seat, leaning his weight on the headrests as he passed.  Gwen was asleep, leaning against the window, her mouth gaping open stupidly.  He thought of pinching her nose to wake her up but decided not to – they’d have to talk, he’d rather watch the movie.

Twelve hours later, Steve strolled through their suite as the bellhop unloaded their bags.  The bedroom was spacious: king-sized four-poster bed, thick snow-white sheets, white curtains draped around the poles.  The bathtub was a Jacuzzi.  Sliding doors opened from the bedroom out to a small deck that ran alongside the living room as well.  Steve stepped outside and felt the water in the private hot tub.  Hot.  He could sense the expanse of the ocean in the darkness beyond the wooden railing, the waves lapping at the shore.

He went back inside through the living room doors.  A bottle of champagne sat in a silver ice bucket on the coffee table, moisture beaded up on the outside, a bowl of chocolate-dipped strawberries resting on a silver platter nearby.  He looked around quickly for the bellhop, though he was too late, the door had just shut.  Gwen was standing in the entryway, putting her wallet back in her purse.  She looked up at Steve and smiled.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

“It’s nice.  There’s no TV though.”

“I know, it took me forever to find a suite without one, isn’t it great?”  She came across the room to him, smiling still, her sauntering hips swinging his eyes back and forth.  His wife.  Her husband.  He remembered something from the ceremony then – her face, looking up at him, her snow-white veil a halo.

“What about the finals?”

“I’m sure there’s a TV at the bar or something.”  Gwen picked up one of the glasses.

“Shall we have a drink?”

Ice cubes clinked as Steve pulled the bottle out of the bucket.  Ice water ran down onto the platter as he untwisted the wire.  Gwen slid the strawberries off to the side and then picked one up and bit it, a fleck of chocolate resting on her lips as she chewed.  Steve eased out the cork and filled Gwen’s glass.   

“I’m sure we can find other ways to entertain ourselves,” she said.

The next morning, Steve woke up around noon.  In the living room, their clothes lay scattered where they had been jettisoned the night before: her white lace bra on the couch, his jeans by the threshold between the rooms.  Gwen was lying on a lounge chair on the deck and Steve slid the screen door open and stepped out into the Polynesian sunlight, squinting and blind.

“Morning,” Gwen said.  Steve slid a white plastic chair over next to her.  She wore a white bikini and her already tan skin shimmered with oil.  She had a dark pair of sunglasses on and Steve couldn’t see her eyes but he sensed she was looking at him.  He traced the curves of her body with his eyes, took her in.  His wife, future MILF.

“Did my husband sleep well?”

“Yeah, what time is it?”

“Around noon I think.”

“Guess I was tired.”

“Guess you were.”

Bits of conversations from the beach below drifted up to them.  Where’s the sunblock?  What’s our room number again?  Don’t swim where I can’t see you!

“What do you want to do today?” Steve asked

“You.” Gwen smiled and arched her eyebrows and Steve laughed and leaned back in his chair.   Marriage might not be so bad after all.

“Have you had breakfast yet?”

“No, I was waiting for you.”

Steve went back inside to shower and they ate under a thatched umbrella at a small café on the beach while other guests passed by on their way to and from the hotel.  Steve watched them from behind his aviators while Gwen commented on their clothing.  Afterwards they lay out on beach chairs in the sand sipping Coronas and tanning.  Steve went swimming briefly in the afternoon to cool off and then once he was dry again they went back to the room and had sex.

“What do you want to do for dinner?”  Gwen asked later as she went from the bedroom to the living room.  The doors to the deck were closed and the air conditioning was running full blast, humming gently in the background.

“They’ll have food at the bar, right?”  Steve was lying on his back on the bed staring at the white curtains.

“At the bar?”

“Where they’re playing the game.  I mean, it starts at six, so I guess we could eat something quick beforehand if you wanted, we just have to be careful because I don’t want to miss anything.”

Gwen came back into the room.

“It’s our honeymoon.”

“But the Knicks have been on fire the past two months.  They’re unbeatable.  This is a once in a lifetime chance.”  Steve propped himself up on his elbows.  Gwen was standing in the doorway in the thick hotel bathrobe, a strawberry in her fingers, poised next to her mouth, ready to be eaten but stopped in its progression.  So hot.  She had the same half-serious expression on her face then as when they had met, but now she was his, now she was his wife, standing there in her bare feet, red-painted toenails, one leg bent, her tan knee jutting out between the slit of the white robe, parted on top too showing just the hint of the curve of her breasts.  His breasts now.  “Want to go sit naked in the hot tub?”

That night they went to the bar together, eating silently at a table not far from the biggest screen.  It was dark and almost empty and the voices of the announcers had to compete with the clanking of dishes in the kitchen.  Gwen was one of two girls (besides the waitress) in the whole place, and when she went back to the room at halftime Steve moved to the bar.  The Knicks wound up winning in double overtime.  The other girl, a Texas fan, with short brown hair, stayed for the whole game.

The next day they went snorkeling.  The resort gave them the equipment and a map of the best places and they took their rental car and went to one of the recommended spots.  It was almost deserted except for another couple already out in the waves and Steve and Gwen put on their flippers and then waddled out into the mild surf.  Steve splashed her when they were waist deep.  Gwen yelled to stop but the water wasn’t even cold.  She was wearing a silver bikini this time, and the triangles of fabric cast a glare back into Steve’s eyes.  She fell backwards and was swallowed up by the water and a second later he caught sight of the suit’s bottom grazing along the surface, curving awkwardly to follow the path of some unseen fish.  Steve put his mask on and swam over to her.

Gwen didn’t bother to come down to the bar for game two, which was probably better since it was a total pooch screw.  The Knicks lost in regulation.  Marbury and Crawford fouled out.  The Dallas fans were jumping up and down in their corner of the bar from the second quarter on.  The girl with the short brown hair was there again, and after going to the bathroom during halftime Steve wound up standing next to her.  They talked a little; she bought him a beer when it was all over, “Help ease the pain some.”  She had a Texas accent. 

When Steve finally left it was after eleven.  The lights back at the suite were on but Gwen wasn’t in the living room or bedroom.  He found her outside in the hot tub, a red bikini draped along the deck railing, another bottle of champagne sitting open, moisture beaded up on its sides, one glass next to it.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, gesturing clumsily at the sky when Steve stepped through the screen door out into the cool night air.

“Yeah.”  He didn’t look up.  The gurgling of the hot tub was so loud he couldn’t hear the waves and the light from the room cast the rest of the world into obscurity: the deck was a bubble unto itself.

“Why don’t you get in with me?”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“What, did the Bulls lose or something?”  Gwen giggled.

Steve glanced at the bottle to see how much she’d drank.

“Your parents sent us more champagne,” she said.  “I like your parents.”

Steve stepped over to the railing.

“So what happened, did Magic Jordan not play?”  Gwen started laughing, “Or Larry Turd?”  She put her hand over her mouth she was laughing so hard.  “Was there a Shaq attack or something?”  She could barely get the words out she was laughing so hard and then she snorted suddenly, like a pig, something Steve had never heard her do before, and then she slipped off the bench and almost fell into the center of the hot tub, getting water up her nose.  It was Steve’s turn to laugh now as she stood and spat off to the side.  But the laughter wasn’t satisfying; where had that snort come from?  That hacking, phlegmy, choking sound she was making now as she tried to catch her breath?  It was all such an odd juxtaposition to her body, wet, dripping, tan but for three pale triangles, glowing in the light cast from the room, enshrouded in steam as her heat seeped out into the air. 

She sat back down and picked up her champagne glass and Steve looked out over the dark horizon.

“Come on, get in with me.”

“I’m kind of tired, I think I’m going to go to sleep.”

“Oh, are you sad they lost?”

Steve looked at her from the corner of his eye and Gwen started laughing again, though this time clearly taking care not to fall off the seat. 

“Maybe you should go to bed too.”

“I’m fine,” Gwen said, sipping again from her glass.

“Suit yourself.” 

Steve went back in through the screen door then turned off the lights and undressed and got into his side of the bed and fell asleep only to be woken up by the sound of Gwen in the bathroom.  The glass door to the deck was closed and the curtains were pulled tight.  She would be in bed in a second, he figured, and he rolled over to face the wall and closed his eyes.  He couldn’t fall back asleep though, Gwen was making too much noise. 

Eventually the light turned off and she climbed into bed next to him, her weight barely rocking the mattress.  They passed several silent minutes in the darkness then, next to each other but not touching, before Steve realized she’d been crying.  It was always something with her.

“Is that East?” Gwen asked the next morning, gesturing at the blue expanse before them as they finished breakfast on the deck.  They had ordered room service and were sitting next to the hot tub where she had snorted the night before, facing out to the ocean.  Gwen was wrapped in a hotel bathrobe again and was wearing a pair of dark black sunglasses. 

“I don’t know.”

“Where did the sun set?”

“Over there, I think.”  He gestured down the beach to his right.

“Then that must be south.  What’s to the south of us?”

“Nothing, I think.  Australia maybe.”  Steve leaned across the table and picked a piece of bacon off Gwen’s plate.  She had barely eaten anything, just the fruit that came with her order.  Like a bird almost.  “Are you going to finish that?” he asked.

“No, go ahead.”

Steve stacked her plate on top of his and started in on her omelet.

“There can’t be nothing, right?  I mean, at least there’s Antarctica or something, right?”

“I don’t know, you were the one looking at the map on the plane.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t looking at that.”

Steve kept eating.

“There’s a Luau tomorrow night,” Gwen said.

“There’s always a Luau.”

“But this is a special one, it’s the biggest on the island and it’s organized by our resort so we can get good seats.”

“There’s a game tomorrow night.”

“Well maybe you should miss it.”

He stopped eating and looked up at her.  It was do or die, the biggest game of the year, the series was tied.  He took another bite of omelet and then put down his fork and turned back towards the view, taking his coffee mug from the table.  They sat in silence and Steve eventually started wondering just what there was out there before them on the other side of that blue expanse.  Could it really be nothing?  At least there was Antarctica, right?  Though even if there was eventually Antarctica, think how far away it must be, and just ocean the whole way.  It was dizzying almost, how big it all was, how empty it all was. 

Gwen got up to go take a shower and Steve wheeled the cart back out to the hallway.

They didn’t talk about the Luau again or even what they would do for dinner.  Instead they were just sitting out on the deck the next night when Steve stood up and said he was going down to the bar.  The Knicks lost again, a blowout.  During the post-game the New York fans retreated to a table in the corner and discussed their defeat in private.  Conversation wandered and shifted.  Eventually they weren’t even talking about basketball anymore, Steve was just sipping at his beer, peeling back the label while one by one the men excused themselves to go back to their rooms and the guy sitting next to him, middle-aged with a bad comb-over and a green golf shirt, talked about his kids getting into college and how he wished he could see them more often but their stupid mom was always getting in the way.  Steve didn’t want to hear it.  He was barely even listening, just staring at the images from the game flashing on the flat-screen TV opposite.  He was bored, but he couldn’t bring himself to go back to the room.  Sitting at a bar, watching the game, it’s what he would have been doing before the wedding, it seemed wrong to not do it so soon afterwards, to not do it during the finals.

The guy with the comb-over took out his wallet to show pictures and Steve stood up suddenly, swaying for a second before settling his balance with a hand on his chair.  He went to the bar to settle his tab.  The girl was there again, with the crowd of other Texans. 

“Enjoying yourself?” she asked.

“Not particularly, no.”

“Karin,” she said, offering her hand.

“Steve.”  Her fingers were thin and long, her nails painted red.

Steve settled on the bar stool next to her and they talked some about the game, about the series, about the islands, their vacations.  She was there with some girlfriends from high school, sort of an annual trip they all did, but none of the others liked sports so she was always left alone.  “And you?”

“Yeah, same kind of thing,” Steve said.

When he got back to the room all the lights were out and Gwen was already in bed.

The next morning, Gwen was gone.  A note on the living room table said she had registered for a SCUBA lesson and that it was a full day, she’d be back around four.  Steve crumpled up the paper and went down to the café on the beach and ate alone, wearing his aviator sunglasses so he could watch the women walk by on the sand, scanning the crowd for Karin, wondering if any of the groups of girls might be her friends, his eyes drifting inevitably from their exposed skin to the blue expanse behind them, opening up like eternity, nothing until Antarctica.  He went swimming and then headed back to the room to shower and he was laying out on one of the deck chairs listening to the voices on the beach below when Gwen came back from diving.

They woke up early the next morning for a group tour of a volcano.  Bouncing up and down in the back of the jeep as it wound its way through the rainforest roads, passing outcrops of volcanic rock before ultimately bringing them close to what the guide informed them were “new lava flows,” Gwen seemed in a particularly good mood.  Steve couldn’t have cared either way.  It was nice to see, but it seemed like a waste of a day they could have spent at the beach.  Gwen snapped pictures almost constantly with their digital camera, a wedding present.

“Smile,” she said as they were on their way back and Steve was trying not to fall asleep.  “I put it on the setting where it won’t take a picture unless you smile.” 

He smiled, but it wasn’t enough and she scolded him to try harder.  He smiled harder.  She turned the camera on herself to demonstrate and the flash went off a minute later, her stupid grin evidentially just what the engineers had wanted.

When they were back in the hotel at last, walking through the lobby, passing the bar, Gwen said: “I don’t know why you like basketball so much.  I mean, it’s just a stupid game, and it’s so limited, they win, they lose, who really cares?  And they always score like a hundred points and then it comes down to a two point difference – why don’t they just start in the fourth quarter?”

Steve didn’t say anything.

Game four started at three pm.  It was another blowout and Steve drank hard to dull the pain of it.  By the end he was barely paying attention; the guy with the comb-over had settled onto the stool next to him and was rambling on about kids and ex-wives and how he never should have gotten married except for the kids, they were great, did Steve want to see pictures?  Steve didn’t, but he couldn’t leave before the game was over either and so he saw the kids, smiling in their school photos.  He knew their names by the end of the night; the name of their mother.  Taylor.

During the fourth quarter he switched his position to stand next to Karin.  She seemed happy to see him, they talked about the game, he bought her a drink. 

“Do you play?” she asked.

“Used to, in high school.  You?” 

“High school and college, we even made it to the D-3 tournament my senior year.”

“How’d you do?”

“Sixteenth.” 

He laughed.  Someone came to push through the crowd then and he put his hand on the small of Karin’s back to guide her out of the way, just above the waist of her short jean skirt. 

When the buzzer sounded, she invited him up to her room.  “Why not come up for a drink?  Room 408.  It’s a mess, so don’t come right away, I need to clean some.  But maybe later?  If you’re interested?”

Once she left Steve left too, heading back through the floral-carpeted lobby with no particular destination in mind, deciding in an instant not to go to the suite, detouring out onto the beach instead.  Outside, the waves rumbled in the dusk light, foam lips vivid in the falling darkness.  Steve walked down the short expanse of sand towards the advancing water, taking off his flip-flops after a few feet.  He walked into the surf up to his knees, the waves wetting the hem of his shorts.  Laughter drifted from somewhere down the beach but he couldn’t see anyone.  Probably a couple making out in the sand.  He thought of Gwen back in the room.  His wife.  The memory of her laughing at him in the hot tub came back to him, that noise he had never heard her make before, her mouth hanging open on the plane, the Knicks fan with the bad comb-over, his ex-wife, Taylor.  Karin, waiting in her room.  408.

He had known Gwen only eight months, and the thought, staring south on that beach, of the rest of his life spent with her made him shiver.  He could walk away maybe, but to where?  It was an island.  She had the plane tickets.  Besides, they were married.  Till death do they part.  He turned and headed back to the suite.  Gwen was lying naked on their bed when he walked in, reading the book she had bought in the airport, a few clear vodka bottles from the mini-bar empty on the nightstand. 

“Well hi there,” she slurred, rolling onto her back when he came into the room.

“Hey,” he said, and shuffled over to his side of the bed to flop down flat on his stomach on top of the sheets.

When Steve opened his eyes it was daylight the next day.  There was no note on the table this time but Gwen was gone just the same.  He assumed it was SCUBA and that he’d see her around four.  He ordered breakfast from room service and took a long shower while he waited for the food to arrive and then ate out on the deck next to the hot tub again, staring out at the horizon as he chewed his eggs, fixing his gaze on the spot in the distance where the dark blue of the ocean seemed to dissolve suddenly into the light blue of the sky, trying to imagine the open space out before him, to picture the penguins that lived on the next bit of land in that direction.  Ice.  Snow.  He shivered.  Antarctica.

Steve was sitting in the same spot on the deck the next night, paging through the stats in USA Today before leaving for game five, glancing periodically up at the blue horizon, when Gwen came out suddenly from the bedroom.  She walked straight to him and straddled his lap, her miniskirt riding up around her waist, the newspaper crumpling beneath her, her eyes the same dark blue of the abyss behind her, taking its place in his field of vision, the skin of her bare thighs cold on his legs.  She kissed him hard, taking his arms from the paper and wrapping them around her waist.  After a minute she pulled her head back and Steve looked quickly at his watch. 

“I gotta go,” he said.

“Please don’t.”

“It’s game five, I have to.”

“It’s our honeymoon.”

“It wasn’t our honeymoon when you went SCUBA diving.”

“Or when you decided to sleep all day.”

“This is more important than that, this could be the last game of the season.” 

Steve almost picked her up and put her on her feet as he rose from the chair.  So light.  He went inside the bedroom to get his wallet and when he came back out Gwen was crying.  He glanced at his watch again.  It was always something with this one.

“Please don’t go.”

“Oh stop it, you know I have to.”

“We haven’t even had sex in like a week, what the fuck is going on?  It’s our last night on our honeymoon and you just want to watch basketball?”

Steve went in the bedroom door to leave but she went into the living room and blocked his way.

“What do I have to do to get some attention?” she said.

“What the fuck do you want from me?”

“I want…” she swung her arms out to her side, pausing with her mouth open as if the words just wouldn’t come, her face red and her eyes already pink from crying.  “I want you to want to be on your honeymoon,” she said at last.

“I have to go.”

“No!”

Steve slapped her, hard.  Her cheek was soft, but his hand burned from it just the same.  Gwen’s tears stopped and she looked up at him and the room was silent for a minute straight, no air conditioning, no waves, no voices from the beach.  She slapped him back.  He grabbed her by the arm then and dragged her into the bedroom, almost picking her up she was so light.  He threw her down on the bed, slapping her face again, then he twisted her arm behind her and flipped her over and pushed her down on the sheets and slapped her hard on the ass, as hard as he had ever slapped anyone.  Then again on the head. 

Turning, leaving her sobbing behind him, he went out to watch game five.  Karin wasn’t there.  The Knicks lost by twenty points. 

Back in New York the next day, Steve and Gwen stood shivering from the temperature change, exhausted and silent.  The empty baggage carousel made a rumbling tour as Gwen’s cell phone rang.