When her partner was ready, Jazmynn was in the kitchen. She held the basketball in her hands: the weathered rubber and leather, the little orange bumps, the little light beige bumps, flattening. Jazmynn touched the engraved black indentation with her calloused fingertips: Spalding. Jazmynn bounced the ball lightly on the wooden table, the floral tablecloth sliding under its weight. It needed air, it didn’t bounce with enthusiasm.

They had lived those eight years together in the same house, pale green, with a wraparound porch, big windows, 128 acres of land, their house set against it, the silver sky and the clouds, but they never learned to grow anything from it. They were too lazy to learn. They ate canned vegetables, canned chicken soup, canned corn, canned peas, dry pasta, canned tuna, and capers.

They spent their days washing the large windows, sweeping the dust from the bookshelf. Him—reading on the porch. Her—plucking the guitar. They would open their checks from Law, or they would sit on the kitchen floor with his picture between them.

They enjoyed not only the land but also its absence. They liked the large hole next to the house, muddy and emptied. A steamboat had been excavated from it. The steamboat had been lost in what was once a river. The discovery of it had been exhilarating, they were excited to have selected a fertile land.

On the last night they sat on the kitchen floor and waited for the rain to slow, they washed the windows, they ran the bath, they undressed and fucked and bathed with chamomile tea, green tea, they pretended it was a river, in the beige water they pretended to save people from drowning. On the last night he told Jazmynn about Law—about Law’s skin, which was covered with eczema, and about Law’s arms, which could lift substantial things, about Law’s fingers, the way they pressed down on the keys of a piano, about Law’s torso (too short) and Law’s laugh (too loud and too high-pitched).

Law is jealous of you, he whispered. He touched Jazmynn’s forehead as he whispered it. Jazmynn kept very still and calm as he spoke, but her face flushed.

On the last night they prepared for bed. Jazmynn’s partner took a photograph of her while she braided her hair. Her fingers moved quickly between strands and when the flash went off she did not look away. She never saw the developed image, never witnessed the blurry hands.

The excavators who dug up the steamboat found things: 4,007 pairs of shoes, 751 pipes, 346 eyeglasses, 2,502 unopened bottles of champagne. They didn’t find any human bones.