Sublime

Not twenty men, twenty coworkers, twenty colleagues who’ve been stuck at sea together for months and are fairly sick of one another’s company, and not a single solitary beer for lubrication, because of the no-alcohol rule.

As if the rigors of everyday life at Eugénie were too much to bear without a period of recovery, the Guérards decided not long ago to open a rest camp by the sea. Their new outpost, the Domaine de Huchet, is on the Atlantic coast, about an hour and a half from the spa. It overlooks the longest beach in Europe—a wide, unbroken ribbon of smooth, clea

Summer had passed. The winter of boredom had set in and frost had formed in the crevices of Blackshear’s mind.

Ancient, this shape-song. In it, rhythm of tide, of moon-ripple played out on night water. Of buoy-clang near the beach and shore of man. Of crab-scuttle and claw-clack. Of fish-dart and propeller-chug. Of whale-song in the wave. Rhythm of the struggle in the jaw of the shark, the loss of limb and spray of ink as the hero battles back against death

This was my one great vacation in life. It would have to end sometime, but until it did I was determined to enjoy it.

Summer was now in full swing in Paris, which meant that by mid-July, almost everybody would be closing up their apartments, offices, and shops for the annual exodus, when Parisians go on les vacances, which happens en masse, hence the use of the plural. (Or because there are so many of them.) Government workers get the longest vacations, and that w