Elizabeth and Mark host the best pool parties in town. It is a fact. Undisputed. Their sprawling, weird, wonderful compound makes every other home in town look petite. Elizabeth's art installations dot small nature trails and Mark's green-thumb hobby makes for interesting and exotic planters.

The pool is a spring-fed expanse of water that could pass for a pond. Except Mark, a lifelong swimmer, took the time and money to install walls, ladders, diving boards, lane lines, and a waterslide. The spring dumps ten million gallons a day into a lush, overgrown stream that flows off their property. Tubing on the creek - or just floating without a tube - is always a great part of their pool parties.

I've been going for years. It's a tradition. September. End of the summer. The tourists have left the beaches, the kids are back in school, and our little north Florida community gets a lot quieter.

This summer's send-off party was different. It was one I am not likely to forget. And it began with a woman named Aphrodite.

Fittingly, she looked like Sex with a capital S.

The pool parties tend to reflect our conservative community; modest suits, sarongs and coverups, sunshirts. The other guests are our neighbors. We see them at school and Walmart and church. Everyone has a good time.

I was at the funky cabana Elizabeth had built during the cooler months. It was a pergola, a bar, and an art feature. The big-box lumber was almost completely obscured by seashells collected along the gulf and set in high-sheen epoxy resin. It shone in the sun and invited closer inspection of the shells.

Aphrodite's arrival pulled my attention away.

She came alone, a new arrival in town, wearing a white, summer-weight linen cover up that only barely obscured the blue and white bikini underneath. Her skin was summer tanned. Her muscles toned and lean. She wore blocky rectangular sunglasses in a dark smoky gray. Her hair was the sun-bleached and streaked color you saw on blonds late in the summer. It was tied back in a ponytail that reached the deep curve of her spine.

She filled the blue and white bikini like she'd had it molded onto her. The cleavage from her bikini top was visible at the nadir of her cover up's neckline. Through the translucent linen, the fulness of her breasts was clearly visible. The bikini top was struggling. She was slim and toned through her core and perfectly curved at her hips where, again, the blue and white stripes of her bikini bottoms were clearly visible through the linen.

She walked with a confident purpose that was as attractive as any of her physical features. Her long legs were slender with muscles clearly defined. Each stride was nearer to a strut than a step. Her hips rolled, her legs gleamed, and she seemed to flow from the lush green of the garden path towards the large pool.

She caught the attention of every man and many of the women. Some of the younger kids kept playing, oblivious, but the boys - especially those near or into puberty - paused to look.

She greeted Elizabeth warmly. A hug and a kiss on each cheek. The sunglasses, the mannerisms, the coverup that didn't cover anything - it all looked more Monaco than Milton. More French Riviera than Redneck Riviera.

I watched Jen Baker, recently divorced and rumored to be on the prowl again, roll her eyes and say something to the women gathered around her. Doubtless judgmental. Doubtless bad. The eldest of Jen Baker's boys stared at the newcomer as though a veil had been lifted from his eyes. "You and me both, little man," I said over my beer. "And all the other guys around here, too."

In time, the other guests returned to their conversations and games in the large pool. Cannonballs resumed, Marco Polo got lost again, and conversations were picked back up.

But I followed Aphrodite's movements. She greeted a few of the other guests, shook hands with Mark in a formal way that suggested they hadn't met before, and, slowly, angled towards my perch at the cabana's self-serve bar.

I didn't realize I was alone at the bar until she arrived.

She stopped near me and smiled. "Hi, I'm Aphrodite, I'm new in town." She pronounced it afro-dee-tay which flew in the face of my high school mythology lessons. "Please call me Fro."

"Fro?" I said. My voice was different. Froggy and deeper than normal. I wasn't breathing. "I'm Connor."