That night, her Portuguese lover shows up with a bouquet of white lilies, wearing a navy blue suit, and she is transported back to her wedding day. Her cheating husband, nearly a stranger by the end, had been such a hopeful bridegroom, boutonniere pinned over his heart. Even then, Sam’s hair was turning silvery. He made his father-of-the-bride speech and his strong voice had boomed across the banquet hall: My child is yet a stranger in the world. The tea house woman realizes she has been staring at her old lover for far too long without making any movement. It seems too late to say anything, so she shakes her head, and he recognizes this motion for what it is. As he is leaving, he remembers his bouquet and returns to her on the porch, holding them out with both arms. She takes them. An act of kindness returned to him for his own act of kindness in her time of suffering. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He is disoriented. His shoulders sag, and she is filled with all new longing for him, for who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love. Quickly, she brings him inside, upstairs, and undresses him as Iris watches silently from the tub. Ignoring Iris, he says he has never seen a bathtub so monumental, so historical, and we step in together, lowering ourselves into the water. Facing Iris, I relax into the heat and breathe in the rising steam. I lean back against his thighs, which are wrapped around my thighs, and then my breasts are in his soapy hands. A pair of castanets makes two sounds, he says, you hold the female hembra in the right hand. He holds my right breast in his right hand and lifts, gently. It is smaller and higher pitched than the macho. He lifts my left, which is held in the left. I smile at Iris, who shrugs, and he goes on, One translation of macho y hembra is hook and eye. I reach for Iris, who takes my two hands in hers, pressing and caressing them as if she is bathing me. I hold hers as mine are held, stroke her knuckles, her palms, then realize the finger I’ve lightly traced is my own. How strange, to find I can show myself such tenderness.