Three Junes by Julia Glass

planned. Marjorie rallies a shopping group in record time.
    Jack, Paul, and Fern walk through the streets until they reach a taverna that juts on stilts toward the water. As the waiter serves their lunch, the rain begins: large, ominous drops like the crystals that dangle from chandeliers. Jack winks at Fern and says, “So much for your delighted sailors, love.”
    “Sailors in Greece,” she says, “probably go by different rules.”
    Jack nods. “All the rules are different. It’s a turned-around place.”
    “Widdershins,” says Fern. “Like in the fairy tales.”
    Briefly, Jack sets a hand on top of her head. “Girl, if you aren’t a stitch.”
    They eat quickly, without much talk. Jack looks repeatedly at the sky. Fern pushes away her plate after just a few bites of lamb. She takes out her book and a pencil, begins a sketch of the tossing boats.
    When the rain lets up, Jack stands and gives Paul some money. “I’ll head over now, round up the souvenir hounds.”
    As Paul counts out drachmas, Fern continues to draw. Only after they have left and are walking along the water does he speak. All that comes into his head is “You must love Paris.”
    Fern doesn’t seem to find this pathetic. She says, “Oh, well,
love
is a tricky word, even in that context. But yes, I love it. At least, in all the ways you’re supposed to. As anyone would, right?”
    “But in others . . .”
    She looks at Paul, puzzled.
    “In other ways, you’re not so sure?”
    “All I meant was that people take their same old lives wherever they go. No place is perfect enough to strip you of that. And some places have a way of magnifying your demons, or of, I don’t know, giving them pep pills. And
there
I’d better stop.” She laughs, but the humor is forced.
    What, Paul wonders, is a “same old life” to Fern? What could even be “old” to someone so young? When Fenno left for New York at her age, was he out to strip himself of some life he perceived as too same, too old?
    “But you’re happy to be there.”
    “To be somewhere that lives up so exactly to its reputation, it’s so outrageously beautiful—it’s fabulous and paralyzing all at once. Anna says the paralyzing’s self-inflicted, my fault entirely. But right now, I doubt I could be happier anywhere else. Or luckier. Most of my friends back home are in punch-the-clock jobs. I guess that’s the fate I’m just putting off, right?” She laughs awkwardly again. “So what do
you
go back to, after this trip?”
    “Quiet. Domestic peace and quiet.
My
same old life.” They are almost at the quay, and Marjorie has spotted them. Paul stops. “Listen. I’m thinking of going over to Naoussa for dinner tonight, on my own. But I wouldn’t mind a companion.” She does not look up in response, and he adds, “Tomorrow we leave for Santorini.”
    “Tomorrow? That’s quick.” She looks up now. She looks alarmed.
    “Tours,” says Paul. “That’s tours for you. No stopping to savor anything, just a taste here and there, a sampling . . .”
    “Antipasto,” says Fern, her nervous young way of deflecting unwanted silence, just as Marjorie pulls them both toward the queue at the gangway.
    THE SAME AUTUMN they were invited to Conkers, Betsey had her second litter. The night she whelped, Paul sat in bed reading. Downstairs, he could hear Maureen coaxing the bitch. Now and then he heard whining. He had been through a dozen such nights and still could not sleep when a bitch was whelping. He’d think of Maureen when she had Fenno: the long labor; Maureen’s gasping—more like a prolonged seething of air between her teeth, over and over—from the other side of the bedroom door. He was sure that if she were dying, no one would tell him. All he’d been told was that Fenno had turned around in the womb (as if, at the last minute, he’d decided to run for the hills) and was entering life backwards. “A nonconformist, just you wait,” the doctor joked once the baby was