He was mad. Owed an explanation. Some sort of capitulation. An apology. A reason. He would even be happy to hear a lie.

He was motionless, in the tub, listening to Skip James lilt the words out over intricate finger-picked patterns. “Crow Jane, don’t you hold your head too high / Some day, baby you know you got to lay down / and die / I never missed my water, till my well went dry / Didn’t miss Crow Jane until the day she died…”

The bath water was dirty, and cold. He had been sitting in it for well over an hour. He had brought his book, a field guide to the trees and shrubbery of southern Spain, in Spanish, with him, but hadn’t touched it. His hands were wet anyway, his fingertips gooey and sickeningly white. His eyes were closed and his hair stuck to the pale plain of his face like rivulets of muddy rivers as seen from a helicopter.

And none of this would be happening if it weren’t for her. He hated her. He hated her for existing.

Revenge fantasies bubbled up in his mind as he lay still in the tub. He couldn’t stop them. He became rich and famous. The first artist in twenty years that anybody truly cared about, who was truly celebrated by people everywhere, outside the incestuous backbiting circles of critics, gallery hucksters, wannabes, and blind patrons. She was failed, miserable, living on the street, poor, ugly, and alone above all else. He would slide past with his entourage, drop a knowing look in the plastic cup gripped in her emaciated hand.

Or she died. And he was at the funeral. Stoic, unmoving but not unmoved. Everyone knew of their history. He gave the final eulogy. Tears over the soft hills of patent leather toes. Some final dramatic action, and then it would be over, and memory could shape her to suit him.

“I’m gonna dig her grave, with a silver spade / Ain’t gonna let nobody take her place.”

Or he called her up and she came to the door, disheveled and wet from the storm, eyes besieged and recessed into dark sockets. He fucked her passionately, beautifully. And then kicked her out. Without her coat. At the weather’s mercy.

Or she had a mental collapse. Preferably in public. Was admitted to some horribly debasing and pedantic treatment program for a year, after which she had to live with elderly relatives who spoon-fed her in her generic back bedroom with no sharp edges, from which she refused to emerge.

Or she married some awful tart who slept with every awful artist in town, precipitating an awful divorce in which she lost her awful shirt.

His head was slowly sinking below the water. His nose created two little ripple rings on the oily surface, in tandem.

When he put his head under, the dull thud of Skip James thumbing the bass line echoing in his water filled-ears made the thoughts stop. He could only hold his breath for so long.