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tonight he was just the port in a storm she needed.
    I put the newspaper in my office, took the magazines upstairs, and laid them on her bed. The candle had been extinguished, but the smell of roses was overpowering in the hot stillness. I turned on the ceiling fan and opened the window to get some air moving. That’s when I spotted Amelia doing laps in her pool. When she works late, she often swims at night. She was moving through the water with barely a ripple, strong and graceful as a creature who was born for the sea. One of the reasons she bought that house ten years ago was because of the pool. It was full-size, completely tiled in shades of blue, green, and gray, and on the bottom it boasted a life-size mermaid mosaic that had fascinated me all my life. The mermaid was inexplicably and beautifully brown, and her long black hair flowed out from her head in curling tendrils that wound around the entire floor of the pool. She wore the mysterious smile that seems to be every self-respecting mermaid’s expression of choice, and she was holding a pale pink conch shell up to her ear as if to listen for the ocean’s roar or a midnight confession.
    The story was that many years ago when West End was the far frontier of what was Atlanta, and beyond which there was only woods, the wealthy white men who built these houses had engaged in a friendly competition. Each one wanted his mansion to feature something that would suitably impress his neighbors with the owner’s wealth and status in the world. Of course, it probably never occurred to them that black people would ever live in these homes. If it had, perhaps the original owner of Amelia’s house never would have built that pool. It is doubtful that our house’s original owner would have one-upped that pool by building a four-room playhouse in his yard, now my yard, for his daughter, then my daughter, to dress and undress their dolls and invite their friends for tea.
    Amelia and I hadn’t had a chance to talk since she came over yesterday to check on Phoebe, so I headed outside to bring her up to date. Our backyards were separated by a low stone wall and a wooden gate that was always open. By the time I walked through it, she had finished her workout and was drying herself with a fluffy white towel. At forty-two, Amelia looked ten years younger, and she intended to keep it that way. Tall and slender in a sleek black Speedo, she wore her hair in a short natural that didn’t interfere with her swimming or her sense of style. She had one son, Jason, who was a freshman at Yale Law School and fully intended to go into practice with his mother once he passed the bar.
    Her ex-husband, Jason’s father, also a lawyer, was an arrogant, overbearing man, with whom she shared cordial relations for the sake of her son. She was always urging me to use the pool, but I was usually too busy to take her up on it. Tonight, the water looked so clear and inviting I almost jumped in with my clothes on.
    “Hey, you!” I said, coming through the gate. “Finished already?”
    She looked up and laughed. “Hey, yourself! That was fifty laps, for your information. How’s Phoebe?”
    “She’s certifiably insane, but I think she’ll live,” I said, kicking off my flip-flops and dangling my feet in the cool water.
    She wrapped the towel around her waist like a sarong and flopped down on one of the striped canvas deck chairs. The mermaid’s hair seemed to be rippling gently.
    “Still in mourning?”
    “Sort of. She’s decided it’s all my fault because she hasn’t had a chance to observe her father, in order to better understand herself, and therefore make better romantic choices.”
    Amelia rolled her eyes. “Tell her not to worry. I saw my father every day of my life and men are still a mystery to me.”
    “I tried to explain that to her, but she’s really pissed.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Amelia said, sounding sympathetic. “I remember when Jason first got his little heart