WlNClNG at the sting of water in the paper-thin saw grass cuts on her hands and arms, Anna slid down in the bath. Not a great bath by any means. Great baths had gone out with claw-foot tubs. The passion for showers that had replaced them with prefab white plastic boxes at the bottom of featureless stalls was incomprehensible to Anna.

In New York she'd lain for hours in the tub in the kitchen of a five-floor walk-up in Hell's Kitchen making pictures from the water stains on the ceiling and waiting for Zach to come home and make the wait worth her while.

Always he came home. Sometimes he made love to her. Sometimes he didn't.

Rogelio always did. Whether she wanted him to or not. Anna wondered what time it was, wondered if he would come, wondered if she cared, and took another sip of wine. Mondavi Red, her vin ordinaire. It was cheap, came in big bottles, traveled well in a backpack, and didn't taste half bad. Sipping again, she enjoyed the feeling of heat within and heat without unknotting her mind.

Piedmont sat just outside the bathroom door. His eyes glowed red in the light of the single candle. His thick, yellow-striped tail was curled neatly over his forepaws. Piedmont liked the sound of running water. Anna thought it was because he was probably born of a feral mother near the banks of the Black River somewhere down by Rattlesnake Springs. He would never come near the tub though. Perhaps because he'd half drowned in a flash flood. After the monsoon's worst cloudburst the July before, Anna had found him tangled in dead branches in the crotch of a tree.

The cat closed his eyes: going into his river trance.

Anna's gaze moved to the candlelight on the bath water, then, idly, down the length of her body. At thirty-nine she still retained her boyish figure but her skin didn't fit quite so snugly as it once had. Elbows, knees, neck, wherever the bending went on, there were wrinkles. Her muscles-better defined than when she was twenty-were beginning to look ropey. Still, it was a good body. Even in the face of the changing physical fashions touted in the glossy magazines, she had always liked it fine. A strong body: easy to maintain.