In the past when summer returned, the rich returned too. Tents went up behind the hedges on the lawns, and bands played music under the night sky. Men and women dressed in light summer clothes, and the heat never bothered them. Rich with expectation from their accidental good luck to be situated on a strip of enviable beach near a good harbor, the town decorated itself with plants and ribbons, stores were stocked with adventurous foods, marzipans, ripe figs, candied dates, cheeses from around the world. In the winter, when the rich left, taking their limousines and horses and boats and servants and music with them, the village shrank to a spot covered with snow. Now the rich no longer came in the summer or the autumn, and their estates had been chopped up into housing developments. A few s
