The ocean waters rush upward endlessly and surround an unseen swimmer, breathing hard and struggling against the current. "Georgie!" calls a woman on the shoreline. "You're going too far out! You come in here right now.".
George Findlay awakens from his nightmare, his wife Julia admonishing him that he is about to miss his car; he is on a three-day assignment to produce a TV magazine feature on a fashion model. "Well, she's a little young for you," Julia says waspishly, studying the model's photograph. "I guess I don't have to worry about this one.don't forget your asthma medicine." She has taken notes on a script he left for her to read, and promises to put them in his briefcase. As he leaves the room she reaches for the briefcase, but her attention is distracted by his jacket, lying on the chair above the briefcase, and an open envelope in its pocket; surreptitiously, she removes a piece of paper from the envelope and starts reading.
"He had never before been in love. He became intoxicated by the novelty, by the miraculous luck. This couldn't happen to him. For him, love belonged in the world of fiction and dreams, and he lived in the rational world. So at first he tried to understand it with lists: Her morality, her imagination, her sense of humor, her style, body, sex. The list grew longer and more idiosyncratic the more time he spent with her--toes, teeth, openings, eating habits, blemishes--until he realized he didn't love her because of the list, he loved the list because he loved her. He loved her for a reason he couldn't grasp, for something intangible and profound. The first time he said 'I love you,' it slipped from between his lips as an impulsive, mysterious, dangerous invitation. A year later, it would become a truism as self-evident and crystal-clear as a perfect line of poetry.".
Near tears, she puts the paper down.
At a sun-splashed coastal resort, George ogles the fashion model Alicia Hunt and instructs his assistant, Allison, to ask her if people are surprised by her intelligence, what she's reading and if men fall in love with her for her looks.