L.

The figs are just ripe. A few dead scraps, scattered after an attack of parrots. The shawl of the wind is silken. The gargoyle head of the soap bottle gleams on the basin’s edge. The half-coiled garden hose drips on the ground. “If he were here with us,” she says, “it would tickle him, the breaking and rebreaking wave of plans left to be made.”