A trio of clouds, bruised and smoldering from the summer night’s rain, lingered over the lake as Ava and Gino ate breakfast. They sat on the resort’s west patio, dishes scattered about, their attention diverted by a heavyset man as he crossed the parking lot and crowded himself into the passenger seat of a late-model sedan. The car sagged to one side, failing to budge from its low position as the man’s wife, beanpole-thin, slid behind the wheel.

“Yo—Marco Polo,” Ava said, aiming her fork at the melon slices on Gino’s plate. “I said, can I have those?” 

Gino’s lips parted, but he didn’t answer, mindful of the lopsided vehicle exiting the lot. “It’s always that way, isn’t it?” he said, still tethered to the jejune stupefaction. “Tall and short. Skinny and fat. Introvert, extrovert. It’s a fundamental law of magnetism—how people attract.” 

“Right—” Ava said, “—the lionhearted and the chicken-livered. The cruel with the kind. Predator and prey.”

Gino’s jaw grew slack. “Predator and prey? You don’t get it at all.” 

His glower, impossible to ignore, pressed in on Ava, permanent, implacable. Not even the broad, silvery lake lapping the shore a hundred yards away could dilute the hostility. Two tables over, a couple nuzzled close and held hands, trading intimacies. 

Ava leaned forward. “Okay, Sigmund Freud. What’s your point?”

“Even businesswise—opposites attract. I’m spitballing here, so stay with me. My revised goal is to foster an alliance of commerce and art—a subgenre niche between contemporary and crossover jazz, to be exact. To achieve this, I merely need to reroute the sequence of the original formula—” Gino gasped as though frightened by the brilliance. “Why, this is the—key—to—my—comeback,” he said, his meaty finger thumping the table.

“Sorry, but your latest brainchild has a slight defect in logic—in order to come back, you have to have been somewhere,” Ava said between bites of fruit. She resisted throwing too many stones at him, for what she knew about the subject of art, you could store in a teacup. His knowledge wouldn’t fill a thimble.

A knot formed over Gino’s nose, and he pitched back in his chair. “In case you’ve forgotten, I spent eight years at the top of the heap.”

Ava pretended to choke. “What—top? What heap?”

“Midwest Jazzco regional music coordinator. That heap.”

Ava’s fork clanged against her plate. “Eugene, you wrote algorithms based upon lists of popular songs you took from industry trade mags. You’re no influencer.”

“You’re painting me with the wrong brush,” he bristled. “I’m a pioneer, a modern prophet—a disc jockey for the new age. Avant-garde. Au courant.” 

“French phrases for the unemployed.”

“It means—plugged in, baby.” Gino slanted his head, and the wheat field of hair he’d sowed into middle age fanned across his forehead. 

Although thoroughly familiar with Gino’s rugged appeal, Ava detected a stir. “You’re a computer programmer—for chrissakes,” she said, feeling betrayed by the emotions. 

“I had listeners in the tens of thousands.”

“No—the satellite radio and television stations who adopted your playlist formula—they had listeners.” Ava reached for his hand. “Gino. Everybody knows you’re good at what you do. So good, you put yourself out of a job. Know what I mean? Now, do you want those capers?” 

“Go ahead. I thought they were burnt peas, anyway,” Gino said, gazing skyward.

The gentle, flowing river of ease Ava drifted in on two days ago had evaporated. She remembered a time—at the onset of their marriage—when Gino’s aloofness carried a scholarly type of appeal. More recently, the dignified way he presided over the death of his profession—playlist selection programming for music channels—and the subsequent loss of his job, she considered impressive. But the weekend getaway in this romantic location had played out like a bitter parody. Gino was at his best daydreaming about terahertz waves, not freely roaming the beach. 

Ava pulled her hand away, and Gino reached under the table to fumble with his luggage locks. The sunny-faced waitress, pony-tailed and all of twenty-two, arrived with their bill. While Ava dug around in her purse, Gino assumed a distant, thoughtful pose.

“—the wildness of white caps over Lake Michigan—and—like diamonds they danced in the moonlight,” he said, quoting a passage of poetry.

Familiar with the passages of poetry Gino often laid bare with an air of smugness, Ava handed her credit card to the server. “Meghan,” she said, reading the girl’s nametag, “be a dear and take our photo?” Ava surrendered her phone, tousled her hair, and shifted closer to Gino. 

“Sure.” A dimple creased Meghan’s cheek. “Have you stayed at Willowwinds before?” 

“Once, on our honeymoon,” Ava replied.

“Aww. So—this is an anniversary?” Meghan exclaimed. The open-air veranda, solemn as a Quaker wedding, reverberated with congratulations.

“I suppose you could call this an anniversary.” Ava edged forward and whispered, “We’re celebrating our divorce. The final papers went through.” She and Gino angled their heads together in a playful look. “Be sure to get the lake in the background,” Ava said.

Unable to regain her composure, Meghan aimed the phone and snapped several pictures in rapid succession. “It’s touchy,” she said, handing the phone to Ava.  

“Not so much—of late,” Gino replied with a wink. 

Ava squinted into the sun at the girl’s bewildered face. “Forgive us. We’re not ourselves,” she said.

A customer on the far side of the deck signaled for assistance, and Meghan hurried to their aid. Ava imagined herself connected to one of those manually operated butt-kicking boots and yanked the cord multiple times. How ill-prepared she was, revisiting a romance gone sour—this Greek tragedy of theirs. Let someone else pander to Gino’s narcissistic preening—entice his roving eye, which now fell on Meghan at the hostess stand. 

His sunglasses leveled over the bridge of his nose, his penetrating stare—the one he compared to Picasso’s—directed toward the mark. Far from putoff, Ava was strangely grateful for the affirmation, to have witnessed his parade of imperfections at street level one final time. Little had changed since their first years together, and what a carnival ride it had been. But he was one of those frightening, fascinating, charismatic clowns throwing candy at the curb, this last piece, more bittersweet than the rest. 

Only once in the fifteen months since their separation had Ava allowed Gino to move back in, and she regretted every moment of the misspent compassion. Aside from the occasional contract work, he’d been unemployed for over two years, and his funds were more or less depleted. She couldn’t help but sympathize with his troubles, but loneliness played into it, too. An eighteen-year marriage is an unassailable island, a safe harbor surrounded by uncertain tides, where familiarity, however wretched, is preferable to sailing into the unknown. So, instead of your typical, unfulfilling post-divorce rebound, the one after Gino—was Gino. 

A taxi drove up the quiet road, wending its way between the dune grass, and parked in the guest lot. Gino edged closer. “This could have been so awkward—for you,” he said. “So I’m super glad you booked separate rooms—best idea you ever had.”

“I agree,” Ava said, twisting her napkin in her lap. “It would be less awkward if you left.”

She refused to watch him tug his suitcase toward the vehicle. The taxi door slammed, and she swiveled around in her chair. If this was their ultimate farewell, she wanted an image—a dark blue mini-van dispatching him to the airport. 

Ava flagged the waitress down, ordered a mimosa, and sauntered down the terrace to a sun-faded, scarlet-colored wicker sofa. Meghan returned minutes later with the drink. Ava pressed a twenty into her hand. “Keep it,” she said.

“Oh—what a—pleasant surprise. Thank you,” Meghan said in her camp-counselor voice. “I hope you enjoyed your stay, regardless.”

“Only Gino left. I’m here another night,” Ava said into her drink.

Meghan scuffed her sandals against the deck. “What you did—it’s courageous,” she said, her brief pixie smile abandoning her face, and she walked away.

Despite the compliment, sainthood wasn’t in the works for Ava after her short-lived affair with the butcher—the end-of-marriage payback for Gino’s numerous infidelities. But was Meghan privy to their separate rooms? It had been done at Gino’s request—the sleeping arrangements. Ava knew what it meant. Only a fool’s fool is surprised by the audacity of a cad. On their second morning at the retreat, Gino had arrived by cab just in time for breakfast. 

Ava tried not to brood, but how to spend the rest of the afternoon? A forty-dollar bottle of sparkling wine they had intended to share at sunset was in the mini-fridge. She might pop the cork, sit at the sidewalk table between Gino’s empty room and hers, and distribute hand-written bulletins—Wanted—Dead or Alive: Soul Thief. A robin’s cuck-tuck came from the sycamore tree overhead. Even Mother Nature approved of the scheme. 

On the other side of the property, past the gardens, an alabaster sign shouted GUEST SERVICES, and so, drink in hand, Ava started down the flower-lined sidewalk toward the shamrock-colored lodge. A young man looked up from his computer as Ava entered the spa. 

“May I help you?”

“Depends,” Ava said with a mischievous grin. 

The kid handed her a menu that listed an array of holistic therapies available to guests. Ava lipped her mimosa while she perused the laminated card. “This one sounds delicious,” she said. “I’d like the full-body treatment.” 

“One of our most popular packages,” said the attendant.

“I can only imagine.”

“Let’s get you signed up. Do you prefer a man or a woman?”

“Excuse me?”

“For the therapy session,” he said. “The next available slot is at 8 pm. Do you want to book it with a man or a woman?”

“In my current state, any humanoid will do as long as it has hands, ears, and a heart.” 

Ava waited on a chair outside her room, ruminating over the day’s events and then back to her honeymoon with Gino almost two decades ago. Their two-bedroom suite was directly across the compound. The one with a maroon clownfish on the door, a secluded porch out back, a garden, and private access to the beach. On their second night, they shared a champagne magnum on the patio, arms coiled around one another on the sectional, and took turns picking out constellations. A warm breeze blew in from the lake, and at some point, Gino drew her close and said. ‘This weather is tremendous. How about we lay down in the grass and do it?’

‘Okay,’ Ava said, removing a strand of windblown hair from her face. ‘We’ll have to find the right position.’  

‘You’re right,’ Gino said, ‘Facing the wrong direction, certain parts might start to whistle.’

She would miss Gino’s irreverent humor—but little else. Perhaps she should cancel the masseuse and turn inward for a while—reenergize. Bits and pieces tend to disappear when you love someone like Gino: bones, skin, internal organs, reason, psyche, fortitude—gray matter. It’ll take time to reclaim those parts and fit them back in. To become yourself again.

A dense cloud settled over the last hump of the sun, low on the water, and light beams spilled through the gauzy veneer. Ava capped the wine bottle and put her empty glass on the table. As the breeze rattled the branches above her head, she tilted back in the chair and began to whistle an airy tune. And she could almost see the quavering, melancholy notes as they drifted upward into the cold, cobalt sky.