“Of course I’m sure, I remember it exactly. I mean, modeling nude. . . . And Mario—opera roaring away on the phonograph—in his apron and goggles. I think he was just so frustrated by failure he wanted to spit in the eye of propriety. As if to say, ‘Fine, you want jigsaw puzzles and car wrecks for your sculptures? And turn your backs on Michelangelo and the Greeks and three thousand years of figurative art? Well, here’s what you’ll be missing.’ ”

“He sure never mentioned this to me,” Raf said. “Jesus. His own daughter.”

“Well,” I said, “whose other kid was he going to get?”

“I can’t judge the man,” Raf said. His voice was scratchy and low from drink now.

Through the doorway and windows came a brown-orange light that meant sunset. And over the sweet scent of Raf’s bourbon I could smell palm, and a flinty odor from fireworks the neighborhood kids had set off.

Dawn, and I came awake as if falling from a great height; falling from somewhere hot, white, hectic with the sounds of screaming machinery.

My one leg was tangled up with Raf’s.

I found nothing hot or white in the motel suite, nothing noisy going on, but pulling loose from Raf I saw the angles of his cheekbones and jaw and the line of his brow looking sharp and starved and terribly dark and beautiful against the bedding, and suddenly I had no patience for empty time, plotless hours, quiet.

Room service brought up a carafe of coffee. While cold water streamed into the bath, I printed words in my poetry notebook:

Live Oak Drive

Lido Six

saffron

Cujaness

rispetto

the summer with all the falling stars

Palo Pinto

baby lizard—detailed, nectarine orange-yellow body, thread of vein on belly, silver and lavender eye stains

San Saba

island lace

black gum on saloon floor

crystal wood

pin nails

hackberry

rain on the convent grounds

the Chickanut Sewing Circle

I phoned my mother at the seaside inn she managed. Eastern time, it would’ve been about eight.

“Oh, thank God,” Dottie said.

I pictured her in a dressing gown, her pretty legs bare, her feet half tucked into mules, sitting on the side of the bed in the Commodore’s Suite, her hand pressed to her chest in relief. She adored Raf.

“Your father lit a candle to—I think—Saint Anthony,” she said. “Whoever’s the patron or angel in charge of lost and found.”

“Yes, well, Saint Anthony can’t grab all the credit. I get some.”

“I’m sure it was an anguished search,” my mother said.

“Wait a second, Mother. How would you know anything about Dad?”

Dottie squirreled out of answering me.

My parents had been divorced twenty years.

Someone tapped on the window sill. I notched the chain and cracked the door open on Raymond.

“Raymond?” I said.