“I’ll wait till he wakes. I need me some coffee. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and brought it over to the table. She bent over it, then she lifted her head and looked up at me. There was so much pain in her eyes I couldn’t look at it. I lowered my eyes and she looked away.

Light was pouring in the windows. Pouring down upon the kitchen table with its blue and white china and its white-painted enamel top and the vase of lilies I had cut that morning.

Klane sipped her coffee, then set the cup down into its saucer and was still. Her hands lay in a streak of sunlight. I met her eyes again; the pain was still there, so deep and old and frazzled there was no way to untangle it.

“I know what,” I said. “We’ve got half a bottle of wine in the refrigerator. This South African wine Robert got from his cousin. Let’s drink some of it. I haven’t had a drink in the morning but once in my life and that was at a hunt breakfast. I mean, early in the morning like this. Have you ever?”

“I don’t know. You mean, when you get up, not staying up all night?”

“Yeah.” I got up, opened the refrigerator, and took out the bottle. “This is so decadent. We’ll just have one glass, then I’ll help you do the floors. The floors are a goddamn mess. They tracked in all that rain from yesterday and God knows what all.” I took down two gold-banded wineglasses and filled them with wine and handed one to her. She took it and shook her head.

“Listen, Klane,” I said. “I’m going over to the library later to study something. It’s by this man named Freud who discovered everything about the brain. The brain’s divided into three parts and they are always fighting against each other. One part is the ego, that’s the part that’s you and me. Like I think I’m Rhoda and you think you’re Klane. Then there’s the superego, it’s like your daddy, and the third part is the id. I don’t know what it does yet because this stuff is so hard to read and you have to work real hard to figure it out. I’m going back to the library this afternoon and read it some more.”