Rain clatters on shingles, clinks on pipes, taps at windows, sighs a slow drip from the eaves. Rain news, various and plaintive, various and bossy, urges from every direction. There is no getting away from the headlines: RAIN. ALSO RAIN. RAIN CONTINUES. RAIN.

Vague first light unmasks the street gutter, a rain creek running downstream to the sea. Maples, laden with infant leaves, sag under rain. Grass shimmers and gloats--green and greedy, insatiable. "More rain, more rain!" screams the grass.

The house is a wooden box. Rain fingers rattle and shake and pry at the seams. Rain mutters, "How does this thing open?"

Meanwhile, lamplight. Growl of a furnace. Hot black coffee in a white cup. A Murdoch novel splayed on a table. Pale cat curled into a pale blanket.

Rain and rain. On the table a novel splayed. It is called The Sea, the Sea. All of the words demand their air today. Repeat, repeat. Say our name.

How to be a self and not a self . . . how to listen and wait and listen and wait. The hour is slow. Day opens her heavy eyes reluctantly. She was up all night on a rain bender. She hardly recognizes a self.

The Sea, the Sea remarks, "But supposing it should turn out in the end that such a love should lose its object, could it, whatever happened, lose its object?" Should lose its object, could lose its object, should lose its object, could lose its object . . . rain approves of sentences that are like rain. "Clatter and drip, clatter and drip," agrees the rain. "Why leave when you're already here?"