One afternoon, chilly as it was, she took off her apron after workand put on her jacket and walked in the waning light down to the river. There was a park there, a long skinny one that consisted mostly ofparking places, plus a couple of picnic tables, and then a muddy bankand a river that seemed to be as wide as the San Francisco Bay. Dirtyand cold, that was the Mississippi. It didn't call out for you to swim init, but it did keep moving leftward, flowing south, flowing downhill toNew Orleans. I know where this river goes, thought Rainie. I've beenwhere it ends up, and it ends up pretty low. She remembered NickyVilliers sprawled on the levee, his vomit forming one of the Mississippi'sless distinguished tributaries as it trickled on down and disappeared inthe mud. Nicky shot up on heroin one day when she was out and thenforgot he'd done it already and shot up again, or maybe he didn'tforget, but anyway Rainie found him dead in the nasty little apartmentthey shared, back in the winter of -- what, sixty-eight? Twenty-twoyears ago. Before her first album. Before anybody ever heard of her. Back when she thought she knew who she was and what she wanted. If I'd had his baby like he asked me, he'd still be dead and I'd have afatherless child old enough to go out drinking without fake i.d.

The sky had clouded up faster than she had thought possible --sunny but cold when she left the cafe, dark and cloudy and thetemperature dropping about a degree a minute by the time she stoodon the riverbank. Her jacket had been warm enough every other day,but not today. A blast of wind came into her face from the river, andthere was ice in it. Snowflakes like needles in it. Oh yes, she thought. This is why I always go south in winter. But this year I'm not even assmart as a migratory bird, I've gone and got myself a nest in blizzardcountry.

She turned around to head back up the bluff to town. For a