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Playing for Keeps

A Couple about to Hit a Jackpot

By Steven Winn

"Excuse me. Did you happen to see my wife in there?" I teased, as she switched off the bathroom light. Sally shot me her deadliest look and headed for the elevators.

Poolside, in a field of taut, oiled and slowly browning flesh, she began to molt her protective layers. Setting her jaw at a purposefully determined tilt, she claimed a chaise and made herself busy being nonchalant. She rubbed on sunscreen, lingering longest on her forehead and shins – the only parts of her, as she liked to point out, that hadn't ballooned during pregnancy. She pulled a paperback mystery and a diet grapefruit soda out of her bag. Finally she lay back, adjusted her sunglasses and managed to look as if she were lost in thought on some remote island beach.

Feeling pointedly excluded, I considered going back to the room or off to a casino on my own. Idly scanning the rows of flat midriffs and long thighs, I noticed a young woman whispering to a friend as she pointed in Sally's direction. For a moment, the friend looked alarmed by the sight of an emerald green mound rising above an otherwise level plane of Lycra and skin. Then, her face suddenly lit with a blend of shyness and admiration, she stood up and walked over to Sally's chaise.

It turned out that she waspregnant herself. She had found out just a week before. Sally was her own future, boldly and publicly on view.

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