She hoists the bucket with a grunt to tip it, careful of the lolling sponge, spilling filthy water into the bowl of a toilet likewise seafoam green. Her cargo shorts of frayed and ragged khaki, bleach-splotched, the velcro’d running shoes socklessly loose on her feet.

Clunk and rattle the bucket into the tub, tilted under the faucet she levers open, fresh water a whitely foaming gush that thunders at first, modulating as it fills. Her saggy, short-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way up to a collar the same dark green as the palm’s width placket, paneled to either side with a pale green almost but just enough not quite seafoam.

Shuts off the water, turning and twisting the weighty bucket to dump it, hurling water about to rinse away suds and smear but leaving, left behind touches, streaks, stubborn marring dregs. Fishes out the sponge to scrub at one, quickening, roughening, grinding with the heel of her hand to squeeze out greyly dribble and plop, but to no effect on the stain. She sits back, shakes her head, slams the sponge back in the bucket.

The pillars, though. This one, here, one of the central file, flat grey face of it figured with a hermit in chalky white, a lantern held high in one hand, and calligraphed above, well out of reach, faded letters that say Diogenes the Greek Cynic Philosopher walking the Streets of Athens with a lantern looking for an honest man. He was born about the year 412 B.C. She reaches up to lightly brush the chalked rays of light stroked out from the lantern-shape, just above her head. Black curls hang loose in artless tangles about her shoulders. Her slender, knee-length gown of ivory satin, edged with lace the color of bone. One last tap at the pillar as she steps away, slowly, even regally, despite the hint of a limp. Her feet are bare, and filthy, stickily damp, glistening amidst the grime.

The deck of the viaduct slopes gently down and closer until some dozen yards ahead it declines much more sharply to end, of a sudden, in a blank flat concrete wall. She looks down, at the random assemblage of litter strewn about between the pillars here, the screwed-up twist of paper, an uncrimped can, Washington’s Viking Beer, it says, the crisp plastic wrap spilling soy sauce packets, a grimy yellow dish-glove, ripped half inside-out. She looks back along the length of the viaduct, the pillars. Shading her eyes against the rising light.

Her limp is more pronounced, crossing the sunstruck pavement. She leaves the most faintly glistening footprints.

“Come on,” says Ysabel, hushed, into the hall, opening the door to the right on a narrow bathroom, tile and fixtures barely a-gleam in the darkness. Ushering Jo inside, closing the door, Ysabel hunts about reaching, patting, finding the light switch, chipped gold trim, white tile, white sink, white toilet, lid of it covered by a plush brown cushion, a bathtub, dingily white.

“Go on,” says Ysabel, skinning her ivory nightgown up and off, awkwardly, with just the one hand. Dropping it to the floor, she reaches to tug at Jo’s sweatshirt, “Run a bath,” she says. “Get ready.” Her other hand closed about something. Jo kneels, skroink, skoink, adjusting the taps for water hot and cold. Fits the plug in place. Ysabel’s holding whatever she has in both hands, now, and watches. The sound of the water falling deepens as it fills, thickens, loses its trebled edge.

“Jo,” says Ysabel.

She looks up from the filling tub to Ysabel, up the bare brown length of her, black curls about her shoulders, the green of her cooly expectant gaze. Wrestles her way out of the sweatshirt, drops it to the floor, shoves off her briefs. Her one hand to her chest, she holds out the other, but Ysabel doesn’t take it, instead, she drops into it what she’s been holding, a weightily sodden handkerchief.

“That better not be,” says Jo, hoarsely wry.

“Don’t be a child,” murmurs Ysabel, stepping into the water, lowering herself with a hiss to sloshing sit, water gurgling, steaming, lips pursed, she looks to Jo, crouched beside the tub. “Show me,” she says.

“What?”

“Let me see it.”

The handkerchief still in her one hand, she lifts the other from over the nodule there, at the end of the long pale scar stitched from hip across belly up and up between her breasts to end in a whitened pucker about that thumb-sized gem, all of a single color now, a red so rich, so full, so very opaque.

Jo’s up on her hands and knees, “Ysabel,” she’s pushing aside confusing folds of kaftan, “Ysabel!” but “I’m here,” says Ysabel, muffled, “it’s all right, I’m okay,” and a half-hearted laugh as Jo throws a placket aside to reveal her black-haired head, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“You fall, you’re gonna land, sooner or later.” Jo sets to yanking free that length of rough grey wool, hunched over, away. Ysabel sits suddenly up, heel of a hand pressed to her frown, “You’re,” she says, and then, “we’re still.”

“What,” says Jo, draping the wool about her shoulders.

“I would’ve thought,” says Ysabel.

“What,” says Jo, snatching up the brooch.

“What is that,” says Ysabel, getting to her feet, heading toward the parapet yonder, where the menace is loudest. The sky above a mighty bowl of cobalt blue piled high with stark white sharp-edged clouds that do nothing to dim the sun, and the hills away across the river and the towers downtown before them stand in merciless focus beneath it all. Somewhat more slowly Jo follows after, looking out over the parapet and down.