James Brawley

We might want to go.

You know what?

I think I'll ask them.

And before I can tell her what a bad idea that is, she's over there talking to them in French.

And they're pointing at me.

And a few minutes later, she's introducing them to me.

Isabelle is the beautiful one, and her sister is a gloriously beautiful woman named France, who has a face off of one of those French go to war, buy war bonds posters that makes you want to invade.

So I'm just staring at her as Susan says, guess what, James?

They're going to Positano, which is one of the numerous fishing villages we debated going to.

What do you say we all travel together?

And two minutes later, Franz and I are on the same vacation, sitting on a train to Naples, and then on a hydrofoil to Positano, and then checking into the same hotel in two adjacent rooms where we're going to change into our swimsuits and meet on the beach.

Now, I haven't been in a swimsuit for a year since the last time I was on the beach.

And I'm looking in the mirror in the hotel, and things have changed since then.

A little Italian bakery opened up around the corner from my office.

And I've been going there every work day, having apricot bear claws.

And now I have two apricot bear claws.

hanging off the sides of my waist, kind of bubbling up over my swimsuit.

And it's one thing to decay in front of your girlfriend.

There's a kind of mutual decay contract where you're all going to atrophy at more or less the same rate.

But I don't have that deal with Franz.