Drowning Lessons by Peter Selgin

sophisticated than he suspected. With that thought came another: that he’d been looking for just such a woman, childlike, beautiful, independent, curious, foreign, willing. Andrew had grown heartsick over the hypocritical bearing of many American women, who lulled men by assuring them that they weren’t necessary, until the trap was sprungand the burlesque of independence ended. Or maybe he’d just chosen badly.
    As they wound up the coastal highway, Andrew heard about George, the lover left behind, the investment banker who’d brought Karina to Zurich and set her up in a high-paying job and a cushy apartment; and Peter, the British lawyer who’d courted her with a box of roses — not six roses, or ten, but a full dozen (“And you know how expensive roses can be!”) — and awaited her now in London. The problem with George was that he wasn’t Jewish. The problem with Peter — and it was a big problem, a potentially insurmountable problem, a problem that Karina, the paragon of a noninsomniac, had apparently been losing sleep over — was that Peter was
old
. Karina was twenty-nine, and Peter had recently turned forty. Two weeks shy of his thirty-ninth birthday, Andrew had a hard time appreciating the gulf between these two numbers, each of which seemed to him safely removed from death. “Eleven years — that doesn’t exactly make him old enough to be your father.”
    â€œThat is not the problem.”
    â€œWhat’s the problem, then?”
    â€œSex. With someone so old there will be difficulties, no?”
    â€œI beg to differ,” said Andrew.
    â€œWell, let me ask you then,” said Karina. “Are you as enthusiastic a lover as you were when you were young?”
    â€œI
am
young.”
    â€œYou know what I mean.”
    â€œI don’t. And I’m not sure I want to.” He floored the gas and shoved the little Fiat into second up the first in a series of steep, green-carpeted hills. Finally, he said, “I’m a much betterlover now than I was at thirty, let alone at twenty or twenty-five.”
    â€œReally?” This interested her. It interested her greatly.
    â€œI’m a lot more patient. I know what a woman’s needs are, and how to satisfy them.”
    â€œBut what about you?” said Karina. “Are you as … you know.”
    â€œAs
virile
? As
horny
? Can I still
get it up
? I’m thirty-nine; I’m not dead!” But the fact was that even now, alone on a Greek island with this sexy Brazilian, he wanted sex less than he would have at twenty or even at twenty-five. Then he would have wanted it desperately; it would have filled the pit of his thoughts. Now he considered it an interesting possibility among possibilities. He certainly wouldn’t push the issue.
    â€œPeter is not like you,” Karina concluded. “But I trust him. And he takes care of me.”
    Andrew began to not like her so much. He turned his attention to the increasingly rugged landscape as they climbed into the clouds and he white-knuckled the steering wheel. Finally, he couldn’t resist asking, “Why should some man have to take care of you?”
    â€œHe doesn’t
have
to. I like to know that he can.”
    â€œYou fascinate me,” said Andrew, lighting a cigarette.
    â€œYou don’t approve?”
    â€œApprove? No. No, I don’t.”
    â€œWell, that’s your problem, isn’t it?” said Karina.
    They rode on in silence; Andrew tried to screw up some enthusiasm for sightseeing and considered using an excursion to the palace of Malia — in the town of their destination — as an excuse to dump Karina. But just as he thought so, she pointed to ascruffy side road banking into a field of poppies. “Oh, please, take that road!” she exclaimed with such dire enthusiasm Andrew hit the brakes and fishtailed onto it through a patch of sand. Soon the Fiat, which they