“I told them I’d stay here until you woke up. Better than a note.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“They’ll be another couple of hours at least. Want to fuck?”

“You’re going to kill me.”

“You’ll die happy.”

They showered upstairs, and she brought him into her room. It must have been Scott’s old room. Model airplanes hung from the ceiling. He recognized a Hellcat and a Corsair. On the floor was a small valise, which was empty, and Alma’s clothes and underthings were scattered all over. He recognized all of it. She hadn’t packed much.

She wanted to draw him. She took up her pad and pencil from the little desk by the window and made him pose back against the pillows, one arm behind his head, one knee bent, the foot of the other leg hanging off the side of the bed. She sat Indian-style at the end of the bed and began to work. Sunlight streamed through the open windows. Her breasts glowed. For the first time in days, he felt clean and well rested. For a long time they said nothing. He loved the look of concentration on her face, as she scratched the pencil on the paper, how intensely she looked at him. His penis wouldn’t stay still. She laughed. She told him to hold it in place, where it naturally fell when he was on his back: angled slightly toward the right of his belly button. He held it, and then it was hard, and stayed there on its own. Perfect, she said. When she was finished she showed him, and he was shocked: there he was, exactly, lying back on the bed, legs spread, everything exposed. He’d never been drawn before. It made him shy to look. It reminded him of the view he’d had of himself when he was younger, with the hand mirror. She’d even got his tan lines, the shading, his mussed hair, even the furls in the sheets where his weight pressed into them. “That’s amazing,” he said. “Really. You’re incredible.”

She was pleased. “Thank you.”

“I hope you won’t leave that lying around,” he said.

She gave the drawing an appraising look, closed the pad, and tossed it back onto the desk. “Don’t worry. It’s for my eyes only. I’ll keep it forever.”

He pulled her to him.

By the time the others returned, Alma had left the house, and Henry was lying on the sofa under the afghan, reading the book of H. P. Lovecraft stories.

“Baby, how are you?” Effie cried. “You’re not angry we went without you, are you? I hated to leave you.”

He wasn’t angry at all. He’d needed the sleep. “I don’t know, but I might be coming down with what you had.”