I woke easily, rearranged the pillows, skewed by some unconscious nocturnal tussle, and got up and walked to the window. I stood there, naked, looking down at the pool. On my skin clean white triangles marked out the shape of my bikini. “You’d be that color all over if you spent the winter in Connecticut,” Mason had teased. “What’s it like?” I’d asked. “Winter in Connecticut.” “Too frosty,” he’d replied, cupping one breast and pinching the rose nipple slightly so that it firmed and darkened, “for a creature with blood as warm as yours.” Now he was swimming. I stepped forward, leaned my thighs against the sill and put one hand, tenderly, to the glass. I hoped he would pause and look up. If he had, I would have smiled, blown a kiss maybe, but he didn’t. I watched him a few seconds longer, then shook my hair and went to take a shower. I dressed with extra care in an embroidered dress he’d recently admired and, lowering my head to look in the dressing table mirror, added a slick of pastel lipstick.
