I could have followed her. I had my car keys in the pocket of my robe, which was with my towel, under the beach chair where I’d been sitting before I started my swim.

But I might have looked just a shade conspicuous jumping into the Opel GT soaking wet, in nothing but a pair of swim trunks, and considering I was already afraid she might have taken some notice of me, following her, at this moment, in my present condition, didn’t seem, well, prudent.

The next best thing to following her was to find out where she was going.

So that’s what I decided to do. Try to do, anyway.

I hadn’t ever gotten in her apartment to look around, despite the number of days I’d been there. She hadn’t left the grounds of the place since I’d arrived: she sent her boyfriend out to do the grocery shopping, and with all the drinking and sex available on the premises, who needed to go out for anything except supplies?

I maybe could have got in and searched her place while she was down by the pool with her blond plaything; she did spend a lot of time down there, after all, but who was to say when she or the plaything might tire of the pool and come up for a nap or something. And, too, during all but a few of the nocturnal hours, I was playing plaything myself, for Nancy, so when the fuck was I supposed to get in that apartment for a look?

Now.

Now I could do it. The dragon lady was gone, packed and left in the middle of the night, as a matter of fact, and her boyfriend was apparently shacked up, at least temporarily, with a new mistress… and I don’t mean mistress in the modern sense, not exactly.

I mean mistress in the dictionary sense, “woman in authority, in control.” Women ruled at that place. It should’ve been called-the Amazon Arms (and not Beach Shore Apartments, which is redundant as hell, I know, but then the owner/manager’s name was Bob Roberts, so you figure it). The Beach Shore rented exclusively to women. Divorced women, mostly, alimony-rich divorced women.