In This Rain by S. J. Rozan Page A

at the way she wrote about friends and teachers without explanation, sure as only a child can be that, though he was away, he was nevertheless familiar with everything important in her world.
    Ellie asked him to call not more often than once a month, to permit her to “build a new life” and “put this behind me.” Conscientiously she sent him photos: Janet in a party dress, or playing peewee soccer, or smiling with thirty other children in her class picture (in the back row, a boy looking the wrong way, his attention caught by something more compelling than the photographer; in his own class photos, that boy had been Joe). Ellie never sent pictures of herself and never spoke about anything in their phone calls except Janet, or some rational, resolvable issue related to the sale of the house, the division of the savings account; she presented these emotionlessly, and he was careful to respond in kind.
    Though when, in November, Ellie told him she’d found a buyer for the house, he lost the thread of her words in thoughts of the plum tree he’d planted too near the door. Every winter, as its branches scraped the roof, Ellie was after him to take it down; he always agreed, but it blossomed so early that by the time the weather was good enough for cutting, the tree was too beautiful, and he let it stay. Would anyone tell the new owners not to decide about that tree until after they’d seen it flower?
    So on family day he watched the other prisoners’ women arrive, bringing their children, and as the last of them passed through the gate he turned back to his work, stabbing his shovel hard into the rocky ground.
    He’d tried to discourage Ann, too. He could have refused to see her. But she’d have stayed all day in the waiting room, talking with the women, giggling with the children, drinking coffee from the clunking machine. She’d wait him out, and if he didn’t break down she’d come back the next week, and the one after. She’d play chicken; he’d seen her do it. She’d make a fool of herself, challenging him to rescue her.
    So he gave in. And though, like the other men, he wouldn’t have admitted it, at first he was like the other men, counting the days. But three things happened.
    Ann’s visits began to loom like jagged rocks in the sluggish stream of his days. They interrupted the hypnotic flow, created eddies and undertow to disturb his dark slow progress. The unchanging boredom of prison days, often called a curse, was to him— to many— a secret salvation. Lose yourself in its seductive drone, stop tugging and straining to make the minutes move, and time passed more easily. It was the struggle that wore men out.
    And though (or because?) his days didn’t change, he was changing. Or not changing: early on, one of the iron men told him that men in prison never change, they just grow more like themselves. That might be true; either way, it meant some things mattered more to him, and some less, some things were getting easier, and some harder.
    The third problem with Ann’s visits was this: over the months the visits themselves seemed to fade, the way flowers soften and pale after they’re cut.
    As the first year grew old, Ann would arrive, fresh and smiling, and then sometimes after “How’ve you been?” neither of them seemed able to think of much to say. Ann would tell him about places she’d traveled, things she’d seen. “The only white person besides me and Jen, in all of Matsumoto, was a sushi chef.” When she’d bought the new apartment she’d told him about that— “Unbelievable view. Small, but who cares?”— and he’d had to smile: her last place, where she’d lived barely three years, had no view. “But it’s huge, so who cares?” she’d said then.
    “I give it three years,” he said, and she smiled with him.
    But then what? What could they talk about? Office gossip? Everyone at DOI was keeping so clean you could probably eat off them. And a lot of Ann’s colleagues were people Joe didn’t know anyway: after his