THE LIFE GUARD

This slim sheaf of situation stories won't run up any mileage beyond the self-evident point they make effortlessly rather than incisively. There's a little terror in ""The Life Guard,"" a variant of the boy who cried wolf; a little sadness in ""A Sample of the Ocean"" in which a once famous actor's claque is reduced to a fellowship of one -- an ungainly provincial spinster; a little humor in ""You Could Have Fooled Me"" in which an artist, in ""dynamic contact with creativity,"" insists on painting his model before transferring her to the canvas; a little cynicism in the portrait of a fringe critic; and just a little more in ""The Innocent"" wherein Wain manages to suggest a mood beyond the narrative givens he has chosen to work with while not extending himself in any way.