For several minutes she stood in the path uncertainly, watching a veil of rain drifting toward her from the distance. She’d said she wanted to stay, so Aaron had drawn her a crude map with a few landmarks, then he and Alana had headed back without her. On...

     One afternoon she emerged from the “heladeria” with a small scoop of pistachio ice cream on a huge, brittle cone and ran directly into Alana and Aaron. They were taking provisions to Eben, they said, and asked if she would like to hike out into the hills with...

She got to the “panaderia” right before it closed and bought a couple of long, skinny loaves of bread for Alana’s supper, then dropped by Jean-Michel’s to take a shower. The water came out in a tepid trickle from an apparatus like a dangling telephone receiver on the...

     To tell the truth, Seely wasn’t as self-sufficient as she tried to appear. She’d all but abandoned her manuscript, her past life having come to seem as irrelevant to her as it was to the parade of passing acquaintances who struck up conversations with her at the...

     Late one afternoon she rounded the small cove on her way to the Flat Rocks on the end of the point. Catalan matrons in bikinis, their breasts like huge urns, lolled on the stony beach, while wiry, naked children and half-starved dogs scampered among the beached...

     That night she dreamed she was standing by a window, gazing out at a forest so dense and dark she couldn’t see beyond the first row of trees. Then, from out of nowhere, two birds appeared, one iridescent red, the other green, their feathers glinting like jewels....