By the time they reached the sea road they were out of the storm, the rain and its torrents behind them. Here the tar was black and sleek with water, so that cars made slick fast sounds as they went by, tossing up fine droplets from their wheels, leaving textured tire-streaks behind. The sea was dark green and hurled grey waves at the shore, smashing them against sea walls and jetties; the tops of the palm trees bent and were flung back like slingshots in the wind. He turned towards the fort, not east as he should have done to go home, but west towards the setting sun. She looked at him. He caught the look, meeting her eyes for a moment, and then he watched the road, turning up onto the esplanade without slowing, without signalling. She stared out the window again, watching the sea, looking at the tiny fort, its limestone walls blackened with age and pitted by years of falling rain and flying seawater.

The fort was built on a headland where it could look west, north and east, commanding a view of the whole harbour, ostensibly erected to protect the town. They parked facing west, where the waves rushed by in swells towards the marinas on the foreshore, snagging themselves on rocks by the fort as they passed, sending up green and white and grey droplets to collect in brackish puddles inside the sea wall. He turned the engine off and played the radio down low, opening his window all the way to flick ashes out to the wind, and watched the live sea. She, too, rolled down her glass, but not too much because he had parked the car so her side received all the spray, and she stared out at the water, twisting in her seat so she could see the barrier islands to the north. Even now, despite the rainwashed air, despite the wind from the water and the sky turning a pale clear blue in the east, her chest was tight. The horizon was tight, bounded by the islands, and she felt squeezed by the pressure of them in front of her and him behind, till she had to lean her head out and breathe deep on the salty air.

The islands were long, low and flat, mere slices of grey and green floating on the water, blocking her view of the world beyond. There were two of them. The first was forested with pines and dotted with condominiums and private docks; the second, narrower and lower, was bare rock, a single ridge topped with scrub. They were separated by a strait, the Narrows, through which the tide poured in turbulent eddies; there the surface of the sea was always capped with white froth.

A motor boat was weaving its way between the islands, navigating the Narrows. It was a small boat, but it came through triumphantly, bouncing on the waves and swerving from side to side till it was safely inside the harbour; then it shot across at full throttle, leaping like a raceboat, its wake white and crested like Hawaiian surf, and made a wide impudent sweep to head in toward the marinas. It docked at a jetty near the fort, and she could see the people on it; three white boys with skin gone dark from the sun, Yacht Club children, good at handling the sea.

He finished the cigarette and chucked it out the window, blowing smoke after it. From the corner of her eye she could see he was looking at her; suddenly he moved towards her. She turned to face him, rigid, not ready for a reconciliation. He caught the look in her eyes and held the stare, reaching past her to the glove compartment and pulling out a tape. He pushed it into the tape deck, rewound it, and then dug in his pocket for another cigarette, aiming to smoke his anger away.

She looked away from him again, staring westward down the harbour to where the ominous green storm clouds were cracking and giving place to the sun. Handfuls of intense gold spilled out over the edges of the clouds, lighting them up from behind, glancing defiantly off the waves. The music began: Billie Holiday singing the blues, his favorite, lovemaking music. He had lit the cigarette, she could smell it, snatches of smoke gusting towards her on the unreliable wind; and she could feel him watching her. Stubbornly she stared down the harbour. A mailboat chugged along it, slow-paced, peaceful, low in the water, laden with people and produce. Behind it a slow wake spread, broken by the chop of the sea; overhead, gulls circled and dipped, jubilantly playing catch with the wind. One of them dived in front of the car, plummetting into the water after a fish and glistening as it resurfaced further away. In the marinas the masts of the sailboats rocked, swaying from side to side like trees or pendulums, their lines slapping against them, plucked and tugged by the wind. He was silent. Still smoking, probably, dragging long and deep and slow on the cigarette, savoring it. She knew that if she turned to look at him he'd be relaxed now, leaning back into the seat, one hand resting on his thigh. That was him. All intensity and fury for a while, then sudden good humour; he never stayed mad long. He'd be waiting now, waiting for her to turn and look, just so he could smile and reach across his free hand, ready to make up and make love, half-ashamed of his behaviour. But she wasn't like that. When she was angry she kept her anger, forcing it down into a sort of hotbox inside her where it was compressed and intensified till she was in need of an explosion to release her. The tension building inside her was unbalanced now, with nothing to answer it but his thoughtless good mood, and she wanted a reason to let it out, to blow everything up and start again. She stared down at her fingernails and stroked the smooth polish on them and listened to the wind and the sea and the gulls and Billie and breathed the smell of him smoking his cigarette.