The man is sitting on the side of a bed to the left of the screen and looking out of the window. The woman occupies the right hand side lying in the bed. Beside her and behind the man, a rough-haired spaniel sits panting on the covers. Outside the right hand window frame we can see the neighbour's house (a wooden structure with a gable roof) on a green lawn, and beyond that a patch of the ocean. In the corner of the room, to the right of the window, there is a bedside table on which stands a yellow ashtray, an abstract sculpture and a large bedside lamp, the base of which has the same cylindrical shape as the base of the metal buoy. The pastel wallpaper has a flowery design in green and yellow, and both the curtains and the cover on the bed are different shades of yellow - a colour that will also feature prominently in the next scene.
The man nods in response to his wife's answer, and in the gesture Roy Scheider manages to convey both an acknowledgement of the seasonal variation of light and his own foolishness at not realising it. As we will learn over the course of the narrative, his character is a man not entirely comfortable in a non-urban environment, and it's fitting that his very first line of dialogue should reflect this essential trait. It's also telling that one of his last lines in the movie ('I think the tide's with us.') suggests that he has in some measure adjusted to his natural surroundings.
A more obvious reason for this initial exchange between husband and wife is to establish them as newcomers to the community, a fact that the Mayor will later use to attempt to undermine Brody's authority ('It's your first summer, you know.')
