The holiday crowd is thinning out. Dusk shrouds the less decorative elements of the beach—the ragged holes left by children and the empty, soiled paper lunch boxes. Those revelers who are left see only the long curving line of the shore and a mysterious intermittent foaming as the lazy waves crash slowly against the sand.
Eloise lounges on the beach, watching the slow ebb of the Sunday gaiety. She thinks vaguely of going in for one more dip before she gets dressed; thinks of the shock of cold water on her already-dry bathing suit; thinks of the damp, dank-smelling dressing-room, and decides to postpone the whole thing for a few minutes. There is no hurry and she isn’t cold. She runs her hand through her fuzzy hair and yawns. She is a slim girl with a slightly bored expression, and she is younger than she looks.
It has been a pleasant Sunday, withal rather dull. She hasn’t come to the beach alone; she and the other file-clerk in the office have ventured out together. But Bessie has met up with a boy-friend and disappeared. Eloise does not hold a grudge against her for her desertion; it is understood that such accidents are likely to happen on Sunday afternoon. But she surveys the long lonely ride home with distaste. She chews her wad of Juicy Fruit dreamily and gives to the ukelele clutched to her diaphragm a pensive plunk.
It is at this moment that you sight her. You are strolling along the beach on your way in, after an arduous day of life-saving. Not that anyone has needed his life saved, but three blondes and two brunettes have required swimming lessons and all of them have been plump. By this time you prefer them slender; all the ladies tattooed on your arms are very slender indeed; and two of them wear red bathing-suits of the same shade as Eloise’s. You stop short when you see her and wonder if you haven’t seen her before somewhere. You decide that you haven’t; and regret the fact. You wonder if she has noticed you. If she has, she doesn’t show it. Not a missed beat has interrupted the mastication of her chewing-gum.
True to your vocation, adopt a nautical method of approach. In other words, tack. First walk along a line inclined at forty-five degrees to the most direct approach to Eloise. Somewhere at her right pause suddenly and examine a sand-crab. Then look up quickly, obviously under the impression that someone is calling you. After carefully looking at everything else on the beach, drop your eyes to Eloise, who blinks and turns away.
Sigh loudly and drop heavily and prone on the sand near her feet. Startled, she looks at you again. Grin and flip a pebble at her.
“Say!” says Eloise, indignantly.
“What do you say, girlie?” you counter. Then raise yourself in sections and redrape your lean length on the log next to her. “Ain’t you lonesome?” you add.
It is a rhetorical question purely, but she does not want to play. She chooses to take you literally.
“Not much,” she retorts. “I’m waiting for a guy.”