"I'm glad the remodeling is done. I know it is pretty...." A tropical cloud had gathered as she dressed and now, as she wrote, the rain lashed, hitting the lagoon side of the house. She was glad Raul had had men fix the living room roof; he was riding in the rain, she realized. She did not care. Probably Manuel was holding an umbrella over him. Raul had learned to look after himself long ago, he and his Negro. Putting down her pen, she went to the veranda windows, her elegant black swishing. But she was barefooted. More peasant than many peasants, she liked the tongue of tiles licking her soles, the hairiness of oriental rugs, the feel of the mountain lion before the fireplace. Her old-fashioned dress was low cut, with sleeves three-quarter; in the V of her throat, above her boy breasts, dangled a diamond cross of her mother's. She had braided her hair into a coronet, glossy, perfumed, perfect. Returning to her desk, hearing the rain, feeling the nakedness of her feet, the nakedness of herself under the dress, she swayed on her chair. As thunder rumbled, she recalled fragments of a poem by Felipe Clavo, a passionate outcry: he had expressed what it was to be manacled by tropical isolation where "white butterflies made love to protruding lianas." Clavo's lines had the sway of a hammock. Clavo had said: "Love between women is superior to love between men and women--it asks so little." At the Degollado, Clavo had read his poetry but she could not remember him or what he had read; she had been too young. The woman's poet, some called him. That didn't matter. Only loneliness, only love mattered. "Caterina, do you mind the storm?" she asked, the huskiness of her voice softer than usual. "I guess you don't mind the rain. I guess none of us mind the rain when our day comes. No thunder reaches us...." Taking her pen, she completed her letter to María and then wrote Estelle Milan. A streak of lightning blazed. In Guadalajara, when it rained, a carriage whisked them to the theater; they laughed as they bumped over cobbles; after the theater, they had supper at the Copa de Leche: Cota, Lorenzo, Cordero, Gouz, Aguirre, Milan. In spite of the storm, she had rejoined her friends: a shiver ran through her because they were so real, so close. Chavela lit candles on the desk, on the mantelpiece and in wall brackets. "It's gotten dark so fast," she complained. "What a rain! Do you want me to light the kerosene lamp?" "Later," Angelina said. "Bring me my cup of coffee." "I'll bring it right away." Angelina poured at the desk, mixing her particular concoction of strong coffee and hot milk, pouring the milk from a diminutive Turkish pot of brass. As she drank, she heard Gabriel coming in. She liked Storni and rose to welcome him.