He drew the door shut against its broken spring, his features clouded by the screen. McEban thought it made him appear younger than he was, and wondered if they even made waders for kids. He thought he'd have a look in the Cabela's catalog later on. "Have it your way," he said, "but be careful at that headgate."

The boy turned away, waving like there was a chance he'd be gone longer than the irrigating required, and McEban watched him go down the drive kicking a rock ahead of him through the loose gravel, a shovel slung over his shoulder. At the edge of the pasture he bent through the fence and, when he was clear of the wires, slapped the blade of the shovel into the ditch, a spray of water fanning up before him, sparkling in the sunlight. For a moment McEban felt a jolt of contentment, something akin to a boy's decent happiness.

He popped a handful of ice cubes loose from a tray, filled a glass with the cubes and quartered a lime.

Then he lifted the bottle of tequila down from a cupboard, easing the glass stopper out and holding it under his nose. Roses, cinnamon, vanilla. At three hundred dollars a bottle he'd come to imagine it as the scent of an exotic perfume. The ice cracked when he filled the glass. "Herradura Seleccion Suprema." He liked to pronounce the name out loud. He'd done the same thing the first time he ordered a bottle on the Internet with Paul leaning over his shoulder, eating an apple while he studied the screen.

"Jesus Christ," Paul had said. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure it's the right kind. I heard her say it once." He turned in the chair. "That it was the best. Can I have a bite of that?"

Paul handed him the apple, reached around to the mouse and scrolled down the screen. "Creamy to the palate," he read aloud, then stood away. "I guess it better be." And then: "It's your money. You want to spend it on my sister, that's fine by me. The rest of that apple's yours too."

He waited until Paul left the room before clicking on the BUY IT NOW BUY IT NOW button. button.

McEban carried the glass down the hallway, setting it on the floor to pull his boots off. He stood them to the side of the door, and when he smelled the sour odor of his socks he pulled them off too, then knocked on the door.

"Come in." She managed to make the two words sound like lyrics from a song.

He closed the door behind him and handed the glass down to her, and she held it balanced on the edge of the tub. He lowered the toilet seat and sat, watching as she pushed her feet against the foot of the tub to slide herself upright, closing her eyes as she sipped from the glass. Her shoulders and breasts were foamy with bath bubbles.

"Oh, that's perfect. Won't you try it, Barnum? Just once?"

"I'm okay."

"Just a taste. I want you to know what a sweet thing it is you're doing." She held the glass out to him, her arm dripping on the bathmat.

"All right."

He leaned over and took the glass from her and she slid back into the water, her knees folding up out of the bubbles. He took a sip, holding it in the back of his mouth, wondering if Kenneth was having trouble with the dams.

"It's wonderful, isn't it?" Her face was turned toward him, watching as he swallowed.

"It's good."

"Just good?"

"I thought it might be better."

"It's not a crime to enjoy yourself." She turned the hot-water faucet with a foot, until it started drizzling. "If you're done you can set it there on the floor."

He placed the glass on the bathmat, the sides already slick with condensation.

"The ranch looks better than I remember," she said.

"You were only gone three weeks."

"It always looks better than I remember."

"I might open this window a little," he said. The boy was probably now at the headgate. He imagined the water boiling in the chute as the slide was raised, the smell of alfalfa and clover.

"If you're hot you could always take off those heavy clothes."

She was widening and closing her knees, the movement stirring the bubbles into islands.

He pushed the bottom sash up a couple of inches, watching the steam bleed out through the opening. "I'm okay."

"I forgot," she said. "I forgot we don't do that anymore." She leaned over the side for another sip, the water sheeting and finally beading across the blues, reds and yellows of the tattoo that covered her shoulders. Then she slipped back into the water, with her head gone under and her feet up against the tiles by the faucets.

When they were new to each other, right after Kenneth was born and Paul was the age Kenneth is now, they'd settle the older boy in his bed and skid the cradle into the hallway outside the bathroom door where they could hear the baby cooing and check on him if he wasn't. She'd take him by the hand, leading him in to sit with her while she bathed, and they'd talk about how both boys might turn out, and what she imagined she'd do with her life, asking about his past but rarely speaking of her own. When they ran out of conversation, she opened her legs and let him watch as she languidly caressed herself, one hand slowly circling, the other fingers pressing against a nipple and finally squeezing the whole breast, then the other, and he unsnapped his shirt and lowered his pants and pulled at himself just as slowly, watching as she stiffened and rose against her hands, imagining them as his own.

Afterward he cleaned himself at the sink, gaping stolidly at the big, grateful, unmarried son of a bitch in the fogged mirror, still fumbling with his pants and shirt and feelings of mild indecency. He never once believed it would go on like this forever, thinking of it as a sort of prelude, but after two years it finally occurred to him that nothing more interesting was likely to happen, that their evenings together in the bathroom held no more significance for her than the occasional load of laundry she washed and dried. She was just helping out.

He still masturbates, alone at night in his bed, but not for the pleasure of it. Now he jacks off so he can sleep.

She rose up out of the water sputtering, smoothing her hair back, and drank from the glass again. "I'll bet you're wondering what the Guides are thinking," she said.

"I wasn't, but that'd be fine."

She settled and closed her eyes, pinching her nose and then inhaling through the left nostril, clamping it shut, exhaling through the right. Back and forth. It's a technique she'd spent some time trying to teach him, but it only left him feeling uncomfortably lightheaded.

She dropped her hand away, breathing in heavily. The bubbles were completely gone from the water's surface and her breasts bobbed in front of her tucked chin. "They're ready."

"I guess I could hear something about Paul," he said. "If they're willing."

Her face tightened in concentration, in seriousness, and he turned to see a raven outside the window, cawing from the branches of an apple tree.

"Family questions are the hardest," she said.

The bird shifted black and silver in a shaft of sunlight, mottled where the leaves shadowed its shoulders, and she turned the faucet off with a foot without opening her eyes. There was just the sound of the overflow draining.

"This will be his last lifetime," she said. "They say he's filled with the immutable soul of the divine."

"They actually said immutable?" He was wondering if Kenneth was done setting the dam above the knob in the east pasture, but didn't feel he could just get up and go check. "What about Griff, then?"

The strain showed in her face. She spread a hand on her belly. "She's not pregnant."

"That isn't what I was thinking about." He leaned over and took another sip of tequila and put the glass back. He wanted to see if it was better the second time around. "I was only wondering if she and Paul might get married sometime."

"They say it's not yet determined."

The steam was mostly cleared from the room.

"They say there're obstacles for the female. That she's caught in a muddied vibration. Don't you want to ask about Kenneth?"

"I don't worry about Kenneth."

"You could ask the Guides about yourself if you wanted."

"I don't worry much about me, either."

She scratched the inside of her left thigh and, bringing her leg up, her calf.

He stood from the toilet. "I need to help that boy with the water. I shouldn't have let him out there by himself."

She opened her eyes. "You used to ask about us. About you and me."

"I already know something about that."

Her hand still rested on her belly. "I always think about you, Barnum. When I'm gone I always do."

"I believe you." He was standing over her now, looking down at her hair floating in dark fans to the sides of her face.

"Our souls are entwined." Her voice was even and patient, as though she was instructing a child. "They were even before we met. Can't you feel it?"

At the window a pair of pale-blue butterflies now dipped, guttering in a slight breeze.

"No," he said, "I can't."

She crossed her ankles, turning her legs out. "If we allowed ourselves the luxury of intimacy on this physical plane"-she swept her arm through the air to indicate the room, or the house, or the whole universe-"it would shatter our sacred union."

"Is that what your Guides say?"

"It's a fact my heart knows for certain."

He looked down at his feet. They were pale and dirty and he meant to shower before he went to bed, in his small upstairs bathroom. "I just wonder sometimes why you bother to drive back here like you do."

She sat straight up in the tub, shivering. "Would you close that window?"

He did.

"I come home because I miss you and Kenneth. And the ranch." She started the hot water again, dropping some bath beads in under the stream. "It's important to me to be from somewhere."

When he didn't say anything she looked up at him. She'd worked her face into a convincing expression of contrition, the kind that gets her a day's extension on the grocery coupons she's let expire.

"A thing's always sweeter when you miss it." She reached out and took his hand, pulling him toward her, guiding the hand to a breast, holding it there. "You can't miss something if you have it all the time." thing's always sweeter when you miss it." She reached out and took his hand, pulling him toward her, guiding the hand to a breast, holding it there. "You can't miss something if you have it all the time."

He nodded, imagining how clumsy he must appear, hunched over, his knees angled into the porcelain rim of the tub, his free hand hanging uselessly at his side.

"Can you feel my heart?"

"Yes, I can." He wasn't sure he'd spoken aloud.

"I love you in my heart." She smiled full tilt, and when he thought he might tip forward he drew his hand away, wiping it on his shirttail as he straightened. He stood watching as she finished the tequila, her head thrown back, her throat smooth as jade.

"Would you be a sweetheart and fix me another?" She extended the glass, a drift of new bubbles rolling back along her thighs. "Maybe two wedges of lime this time?"

"Sure."

"Have we got plenty?"

"I bought half a dozen."

In the hallway he poured the remaining ice out of the glass into his mouth. Hearing her shut the water off again, he swallowed a trickle of melted ice, feeling as hollow as he had when he was just nineteen and his mother had left and he'd found his father sitting dead in the barn in his only suit, the pistol in his lap, his brains blown back against the upright stanchion and along the length of weathered lumber at the side of the stall. He felt he could understand how something like that might happen.

Seven.

GRIFF ROLLED to the edge of the bed and sat blinking. She was gummy with sweat, logy, and it took a moment before she could straighten up into the half dark and reel through the clothing they'd left scattered across the floor and finally into the bathroom. She ran water in the sink until it turned icy, drawn up from the bottom of the well shaft, and held the insides of her wrists under the faucet. And then she drank. to the edge of the bed and sat blinking. She was gummy with sweat, logy, and it took a moment before she could straighten up into the half dark and reel through the clothing they'd left scattered across the floor and finally into the bathroom. She ran water in the sink until it turned icy, drawn up from the bottom of the well shaft, and held the insides of her wrists under the faucet. And then she drank.

She returned to the bedroom toweling her neck, beneath her arms and breasts, and threw the towel back into the bathroom. She'd been angry when they'd made love, grasping, careless, crying out as someone drowning might, and afterward, when she was still upset, they'd made love again. Now he slept turned on his side, his knees drawn up, with a panel of moonlight on his back, the headboard and the night table.

She slipped into a robe, knotting the sash loosely, and pulled the sheet from under his legs. She covered him, set the portable fan up on the chest at the foot of the bed and turned it on. He shivered and drew the sheet over his shoulder.

In the front room she found a cup of yogurt in the refrigerator and sat at the table next to the open windows that looked out over the porch. She bent a leg underneath to sit up higher in the chair, scooping the yogurt into her mouth with a forefinger. She hadn't turned on a light, and in this darkened room the memories of Ansel Magnuson here in the evenings with his zwieback and herring and schnapps were unavoidable. And then she thought of Mitch Bradley in the bunkhouse at Einar's. Two honest bachelors hired by these separate families, consigning their lifetimes' work as though this were part of the adoption process, finally dying with the achievement of being remembered not as trusted strangers but as blood.

She mopped her forehead with the hem of the robe, the smell of her heated body rising into her face, and she couldn't think of a single thing left in this world that held the good animal scent of Ansel or Mitch.

She'd never been comfortable in the summer's heat and wondered how people managed in Mississippi or Louisiana or Latin America, and maybe it was the heat that had sparked their argument, but it still was a variation of the same fight they'd been having for the last year, this episode peculiar only because of the application she'd found in his printer. She was sitting at the kitchen table reading through the paperwork when Paul came in from his run. She held up the top sheet.

"Uganda? You're applying for a year in Uganda?" Uganda?"

She looked back at the form, trying to find an exact date, and he peeled his T-shirt over his head.

"It's just an application."

"Were you going to mention it, or just send me a postcard?"

He took the pitcher of ice water out of the refrigerator and poured a glass, drinking it down all at once, squeezing his eyes shut against the sharp pain that spiked between his brows, then pressed the heel of his free hand against his forehead.

"Are you going to answer me?"

He nodded, dropping the hand and leaning back against the counter. "They want me to do a statistical analysis of rural HIV patients. If I get it." He poured another glass full. "My thesis advisor suggested it. He said there's no problem in finishing my master's when I get back." He wiped his mouth with the T-shirt. "Anyway, I don't see what difference it makes where I go. You weren't going to come to Chicago, so now you won't come to Africa."

"Fuck you." She stood out of the chair. "I could visit you in Chicago."

"So visit me in Africa."

"For what, a weekend? How long do you think I can leave Einar?"

He sat down at the table and she walked out onto the porch. She screamed, and again even louder, then slammed the screen door when she came back in. "Did you even stop to wonder how I might feel about it?"

"It's a chance to do something I think's important."