He stepped toward her, smiled, then walked back toward the steps leading down to the beach. He had nodded at her when she passed him before; his grayish-green eyes seemed familiar. He might be a former student. Her memory for faces was poor, and often she forgot what even her best students looked like once they graduated. All she noticed about most of them now was their youth; they were currents in an ever-renewed stream while she aged on the shore, eroded by their movement through her life. She leaned against the railing. He was below her on the sand, gazing out at the ocean; he glanced up as the wind ruffled his blond hair. She looked away. He couldn’t have been a student; even with her poor memory, Jacqueline was sure she would have remembered him. He had the tanned, handsome face of a television actor and the body of a man who frequented gyms; he was exactly the kind of man she would expect to see here on a California beach. He would not have been in her classes, which drew intense or slightly neurotic humanities majors; aggressive and grade-conscious pre-law students; or studious, asexual, aspiring scientists trying to fulfill a philosophy requirement.
