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DESCENT OF MAN STORIES BY T. Coraghessan Boyle PENGUIN BOOKS sing ages ge ag et Nese oo Sa ‘ui aks Hast Mais, Ean Pes os Na gon ss Cans init 98% Jon Stet, ‘int Oe Coos gh sb feo ons A a been Waa en, "lb Nw Zs he Un Seo ea adn en Boks g8y appre 0 Cages rk 174 7, sagen rasan gas Detent Soy ane Sc Sin” taped the Re eco i the ate Moe re crest ier ean spent igre tel mpc Acer ts ohne, pee reduc ‘rape ers Ear Noe Ren a wt ata tn Oss “Dove be Sul Dk eto soared Stine orm yal ss ilo te parvo Oni 3. Sate nti Aner, mie aon wep the ed Se Aer ‘sine coniton tts aby tf al tet c Kuen, mtbr cece For T, Senior and Rosemary, and especially for you, KK Drowning I ‘THs sroRY, someone will drown. Yet there will be no spparent reason for this drowning —it will nt for example be attributable to suicide, murder, divine retribution—nor even such arcana as current and undertow. It will instead be like so many events ofthe future: inexplicable, incomprehen- sible. Nonetheless, it will occur. ‘There is a girl alone on the beach, a mere inkspot in the white: nothing realy, when compared with the massive dunes that loom behind her and the sea, dark and implacable, which stretches before her to Europe and Africa. She is lying there ‘on her back, eyes closed, her body loose, toes pointing straight out to the water. Her skin glistens with of, tanned ‘deep as a ripe pear. And she wears a white bikini: two strips of loth as dazalingly white in this sun as the sand itself, She is aftr an ofcct, a contrast aa DESCENT OF MAN Now she sits up, the taut line of her abdomen bunching in soft creases, and glances slyly around. No one in sight up and ddown the beach, for miles perhaps—the only sign of life the gull beating overhead, muttering in its prehistoric voice. Her hhands reach behind for the strings to the bikini halter—the elbows strain out in sharp triangles and her back arches, throwing her chest forward. She feels a quick pulse of excite- rent as her breasts fill free and the sea breeze tickles against them, She's brown here too—a shade lighter than her shoul ders and abdomen, but still tanned deeply. ‘She fll back on her elbows, face to the sun, the hair soft down her back and into the sand. The gull is gone now, and the only sounds are the hiss of the foam and the plangent thunder of the breakers smoothing rock a hundred yards out She steals another look round—a good long one, over her shoulders and up to the peaks of the dunes. No one. "Why not?” she thinks, “Why not?” And her thumbs ease into the

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