“Oh, stay on the fucking floor,” I said.

“Too late,” Raf said.

I glanced around my magazine.

He was having great difficulty scaling the bed. He was hauling himself by his arms and hands, as if climbing from a diving pool.

He lost hold and fell out of sight.

“Come on, up and over,” I said. “You can do it.”

He stripped off his jacket and T-shirt, and lunged onto the mattress, landing beside my legs.

“Well, that was almost,” I said.

Raf said, “This is the moment all those grueling months of training were for.”

“That’s right.”

“The hours on the practice mattress . . . The work on technique . . . All that is over. Right now, right here, it’s just a question of pride and character; a question of will.”

It was one of Raf’s better nights. He was ambitious and strong, which surprised me, and it surprised me that he could carry through.

The Church of Sun and Flowers

AT DAWN I PULLED on a swimsuit and crept down to the pool court.

The gulf air was warm and there were breakfast smells from the restaurant, and the chlorine-clean odor of the blue-green water, and there were tree and leaf smells as well.

The surface of the lighted pool wobbled and glistened.

I dozed on a lounge chair and dreamt in bolts and bursts of neon color. I awoke excited by the escalating heat.

Maybe it was ten.

Trundling past me on this side was a maid with a loaded utility cart.

On my other side was Raf, a morning cup of bourbon balanced on his open hand. He held the cup forward, offering me a taste.

Beside him was a shrub with leaves like bayonets.

I said, “Houston, right? The world, third planet from the sun? Not just that I read too much Beckett?”

“Paints up your dreams,” Raf said.

“Intensely. How did you know that?”

He sipped his bourbon, shrugged. “Your dreams are same as mine, Paige.”

“No, hardly. Well, O.K., yeah, sure. Some, maybe.”

Raf said, “A house with a well-kept yard, two boys . . .”

“Lyle and Vartimin,” I said for him. “Lyle has a red wagon, a paper route. Vartimin has a complexion problem and also a weight problem—he needs to reduce—but he’s an awfully nice fellow. These were really vibrant shades in my dream. I didn’t know my mind could duplicate such color.”

“Umm,” said Raf. “That’s Houston.”

I reminded him I’d once gone very far away, where everything was different, every rule changed.

“Africa, yeah, but you’d had your shots.”

“Where’s the farthest you’ve been?” I asked.

He looked at me, thinking. “South Pole.”

“Oh, of course, the South Pole.” I shook my head. “And I’ll never know if that’s true. No way to know.”

For lunch, Raf chose a Mexican restaurant with rough plank benches. On the walls hung acrylic paintings and straw dolls. There were potted cacti.