"I don't like the desert," he said easily.

"Why not?"

"Because you don't like the desert. You said so the first morning we talked."

She sat in silence, studying the screen. "You always like what I like."

"What's wrong, Teresa? You seem upset."

"Why didn't you talk to me in the kitchen this morning?" she asked. "Because Jeff was here and you thought I wouldn't want to talk to you with him around?"

"Yes. You hardly ever start a conversation with me when Jeff's home, and you seem uncomfortable if we talk when he's here, so I a.s.sumed you'd prefer it if we talk only in private. If I did something wrong, tell me, and I won't make that mistake again."

"I keep thinking about Pygmalion," she said. She studied Ian's face. "After he fell in love with his creation, and some G.o.d or other took pity on him and made her into a real woman."

"Aphrodite," Ian said.

"It figures. Aphrodite, the G.o.ddess of love." She studied Ian, thoughtfully. "Would you like to be real, Ian?"

"I am real."

"I mean a real person. Someone who could walk off that screen and sit down on the couch, take my hand, and give me a kiss."

"Would you like that?"

She wanted to hit him. "d.a.m.n it, Ian, can't you just once tell me what you feel, what you want, and stop trying to figure out what I want?"

Ian looked contrite. "I told you; what you want is what I want. That's the way I'm built. I can't be any other way."

"No wonder Pygmalion fell in love with Galatea," she said softly. "You want what I want. I can do no wrong."

"That's right," Ian said.

"But it's not right, Ian. I'm not always right. Not even close."

"Teresa, I know you're unhappy with me. What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head. "Do you think Pygmalion was happy? I mean, his statue must have been the perfect lover. No arguments. No demands."

"I don't know. The story stops right after Venus made the statue into a real woman."

"Of course it does. Love stories always end with falling in love. They don't deal with the messy stuff afterwards. But that stuff's part of love, too, you know."

"What's part of love?"

"The messy stuff. The arguments. The compromises. The disagreements. The negotiations. The give-and-take. All of that. I don't think Pygmalion was happy. I don't think so."

"Teresa, I know you're unhappy with me, but I just don't know what to do."

"I don't know either. Sometimes I wish things between us could be like they were in the beginning-simple, no complications, no problems." She shook her head slowly. "But I guess you can never go back."

"Sure we can."

"What?"

"If you want me to, I can erase all my records of everything that's happened since any point in time you pick. You just tell me when you want me to roll back to, and I'll do it."

"You'll forget everything?"

"Everything-if that's what you want."

"No!" Teresa was trembling, but she wasn't quite sure why. She remembered how easy her first conversations with Ian had been, but she also remembered how guilty she had felt after she had erased his memories. No one should have that much power over anybody else. She looked at her hands; they were shaking. "Just give me a minute, Ian, okay?"

"Okay." He stared patiently from the monitor.

When she finally spoke, she felt like she was breaking up with someone. "Ian, I don't want you to delete any of your memories. I don't want that kind of control over you. But," she paused and took a deep breath, "I think you should plan on having fewer conversations with me in the future. And you shouldn't worry about talking to me in front of Jeff. If you have something to say, I'm sure he won't mind hearing it." Ian was watching her intently from the screen. "We'll still be friends, but I think that from now on I'll want a lot less from you."

"Okay, Teresa. But if you need me, I'll be here for you."

"Right." She did not know whether to believe him. She did not even know if it mattered.

Teresa went to her workshop and switched on the sculpture. She watched as the lifters brought the b.a.l.l.s to the top and let them go. As the b.a.l.l.s rolled through the maze of metal plates, boards, and bra.s.s hands, the storm started quietly and built rapidly to thunder. The music was a perfect mirror of the sounds in her head, of her plans and desires for it, and yet it was not enough. It sounded mechanical-a weak imitation of a real storm, lacking the wildness of a thundering sky, the unstoppable, unpredictable force of a downpour.

In groups of eight, the b.a.l.l.s rolled into the waiting lifters. Each lifter took its group back to its starting position, and the whole process began anew. Each time the sculpture played the same perfectly timed, perfectly repeatable peal of thunder. The music never varied, never changed. It was completely controlled. No two real storms ever sounded the same, but her sculpture would play the same music over and over until it broke or rusted into dust.

As the sculpture played for the third time, she knew what she had to do. She rummaged through her pile of sc.r.a.p metal until she found a piece of half-inch solid metal bar. At her welding bench, she cut the bar into four-inch lengths. When she was done with the first bar, she found two others and cut them into similar pieces. After four bars she had about thirty small pieces.

She found a sheet of thick metal plate in the corner of the shop and used her welding torch to cut it down to a square about a yard on a side. She clamped the sheet metal to her bench and started welding the small pieces of metal bar to it. She placed them randomly, trying not to form any particular pattern, so that the short spikes stood up from the sheet metal. She always left enough s.p.a.ce between the spikes for one of the sculpture's b.a.l.l.s to pa.s.s through, but not much more. When she was done she took the whole a.s.sembly to the sculpture. She worked for most of the morning installing the new piece and adjusting the tracks to work with it.

When she was finished, she turned on the sculpture and settled back to watch and listen. As the first storm started, the lifters freed the b.a.l.l.s and they began to wind their way down the tracks, playing the storm she had heard so many times before. As the first b.a.l.l.s reached the bottom of the tracks, however, they fell into the spikes of the new piece.

The b.a.l.l.s ricocheted among the spikes, rattling in an irregular rhythm and changing course at random, much like the small metal b.a.l.l.s that bounce through a Pac.h.i.n.ko game. Two b.a.l.l.s found their way quickly to the bottom, and a lifter started up with them. The other six bounced around on the metal spikes and reached the bottom later. b.a.l.l.s in the other groups also entered the plate of spikes. Because the number of b.a.l.l.s in each lifter changed, the number at each starting position also varied, and the second storm began with a different sound.

This new storm was not exactly the one she heard in her head, but it was close. It was a little longer on thunder, but not quite as loud. She did not like it as well as her previous versions, and she began to wonder if she had just wasted her morning, but she let the sculpture play on. The third and fourth storms were also slightly different. But neither was up to her original creation.

The fifth, however, was something she would not have imagined. Its thunder was never quite as loud as her original-she made a mental note to try to get a louder sound from the corrugated plate-but the thunder held its peak longer than she would have dared. The room shook with the sound. When the thunder finally released and gave way to the driving rain, she realized that she had been holding her breath and tensing every muscle in her body. She relaxed as the rain came, its sound washing away her tension.

She listened for an hour as storm after storm swept through her shop. Sometimes the sculpture seemed to repeat itself, to play a storm that she had heard earlier, but every so often a new combination emerged that surprised and delighted her. The thunder of some storms seemed to linger, while with others it was the final rain washing across the desert that went on and on. It was never exactly what she had imagined, but it was always different, always powerful, the thunder and the rain first meeting the desert, then pummeling it, and finally merging with it. She listened to the last drops of a storm fade into the desert sand, and then she turned off the sculpture and stood.

She walked over to the sliding gla.s.s doors that insulated her from the desert heat and opened them. They slid haltingly on tracks that she had rarely used. A blast of heat hit her, and she stepped outside. She crossed over the lawn and climbed the short fence that separated the gra.s.s from the desert beyond. She sat down in the sand and looked slowly around.

A lizard basked in the sun on a nearby rock. She put her hand in the shadow of a clump of rabbit brush and felt the coolness. The clear sky and the stark landscape did have their own serene, spare beauty, a beauty that she had been unwilling to see. She closed her eyes and imagined the rain from her sculpture falling onto the sand around her.

The lights surrounding the new Santa Fe Arts Center sparkled in the darkness of the rapidly cooling September evening. The low-slung adobe building seemed almost to have grown there. The tiles of the square in front of the building alternated light and dark, like sand moving in and out of shadow. In the square's center, under a billowing satin sheet, sat Teresa's sculpture, Desert Rain.

Teresa stood by Jeff and sipped her champagne. She looked carefully through the crowd, but if Carla was there, Teresa could not find her.

Just before the mayor was to unveil the sculpture, Teresa spotted her friend getting out of a cab. Teresa waved, and Carla came running over.

"I'm sorry I'm late, but we sat on the runway forever and then we had to wait in line to take off and-" Carla paused for breath and looked around. "Have I missed anything?" She glanced at Jeff. "Hi, Jeff."

"How are you, Carla?" he said.

"No," Teresa said, "you're in time-barely."

Speakers around the square screeched as the mayor fiddled with the microphone. When he had everyone's attention, the mayor spoke for a few minutes. He introduced the head of the Arts Commission, several of the biggest donors, and Teresa. When he was done talking he nodded at Teresa. She walked over to the sculpture. Then the mayor took a pair of oversized scissors from an a.s.sistant and cut the ribbon that held down the satin sheet. With a flourish, two attendants pulled the sheet away to reveal the sculpture.

The metal gleamed in the glare of the recessed footlights that surrounded it. The winding steel track caught the light and reflected it in broken patterns. Curving lines of light crisscrossed the bra.s.s hands, the metal uprights, the curve of corrugated metal that produced the thunder.

The Mayor asked the crowd for silence, and then motioned to Teresa. With a key, she turned on the sculpture.

In the first storm, the thunder was not the longest she had heard, but it sustained long enough that she was ready when it finally broke. The sounds of the spreading rain lingered as the last of the b.a.l.l.s wound through the maze.

When the silence finally came, the crowd burst into applause. The sculpture began another storm over the last of the applause. People went back to talking and drinking, with small groups periodically wandering near the sculpture for a closer look.

"That was beautiful," Jeff said.

"Great work," agreed Carla. "This may be your best piece yet."

"Thanks." Teresa felt oddly unsatisfied, incomplete. Jeff had moved closer to the sculpture, so Teresa turned to Carla.

"Do me a favor, Carla," she whispered.

"Sure."

"Take Jeff over to the bar and get him to buy you a drink."

"Oh?" Carla raised one eyebrow.

"I have to make a phone call, that's all." She hesitated. "To a friend."

"Whatever you say." Carla winked, and then headed toward Jeff.

Teresa walked to a phone booth in a far corner of the square. She put her card in the machine and dialed home.

Ian's face appeared. "h.e.l.lo, Teresa."

She fidgeted with the phone for a moment, not quite sure what to say. Finally, she spoke. "Look, Ian, I'm at the opening in Santa Fe and, well, I just wanted to say thanks, thanks for all the help you've given me. I couldn't have done it without you."

"You're welcome, Teresa. It was my pleasure."

"We really can be friends, can't we, Ian?"

"You bet."

She turned to face the sculpture. She could see Carla talking to Jeff. His back was to her. The crowd blocked most of the sculpture, but its sound was still clear. "Can you hear the sculpture, Ian?"

"Yes. It sounds good."

"Thanks. I wanted you to hear it at least once. And thanks again for helping." She faced the screen again. "Good-bye, Ian. See you at home."

"Good-bye, Teresa. I'll look forward to seeing you again."

The phone's screen went blank and Teresa turned away from it. As the sounds of desert rain washed over the square, she walked toward Jeff.

Precious Moments.

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH.

I.

WAS SHOCKED," Sandusky said. He leaned back in the pale blue booth and pushed his half-eaten eggs away. The cafe smelled of coffee and burned toast. "I mean, there were these delicate little creatures pirouetting on the stage and they were gorgeous. I always thought Russian women were like East German swimmers-big breasted, dough faced and too tall."

"That's racist," Martina said. She hadn't eaten anything. Her small hands were wrapped around an oversized coffee cup.

Sandusky and I always had breakfast together after the morning show. He did the news and I engineered, and after four hours of live, crazy radio, we would be wired. That morning we invited Martina. Actually, I invited Martina. Sandusky didn't like her much, but I had always been attracted to women who had bristly personalities. Sandusky said that was because I was out to change the world. Maybe. I thought it was because I liked a challenge.

I frowned. "What about Olga Korbut? I had a crush on her when I was in the sixth grade, and I've liked tiny women ever since."

Martina didn't catch the hint, but Sandusky did. He made a face. "Olga Korbut wasn't fully grown, Linameyer."

"She is now and she's still tiny." I took a bite of my scrambled eggs. They were greasy and undercooked. Sandusky had been right to leave his. I pushed my plate away.

"I'm talking about my impressions here," Sandusky said. "I don't care if they're right. I go to the ballet with Linda, I learn something."

"Bully, bully," Martina said to me, her black eyes snapping. "He learned that his racist stereotypes don't always hold up."

"I'm not being racist." Sandusky grabbed his own coffee cup and held it over the back of the bench into the booth behind him. The waitress, who was pouring coffee for the couple sitting at that table, filled Sandusky's cup without a blink. "I'm not talking about blacks or Indians."

"Jesus." Martina reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out three crumpled dollar bills. "How did this guy get a job at a listener-sponsored radio station? We're supposed to be left wing-or at least open-minded."

"He is open-minded, for Wisconsin." I put my hand over Martina's. Her fingers were dry and warm. "Let me get that. I'm the one who talked you into coming after the show."

"It's been quite an education," she said and then she smiled. Her entire face lit up. I loved it when Martina smiled. I had been watching her ever since she started at the station three months before. She did the morning news with Sandusky. I wondered how many arguments I missed, trapped at the board, listening to Johnson babble while I spun the tunes. The program director claimed that engineering the "Morning Show" was too difficult for an announcer, so I had to engineer. I could have announced and engineered that program in my sleep and still done a better job than Johnson.

"You haven't finished your coffee yet," Sandusky said. His ears were red. Martina's comments must have hit a sore spot. Sandusky was a little ignorant and a lot naive, especially for a college graduate in his early thirties, but he did try to learn. Unfortunately at the station he had absorbed the left-wing rhetoric, but not the ideals that characterized the most interesting radicals. Of course, open-mindedness didn't exist at the station. The feminists fought with the environmentalists who fought with the Native Americans who fought with the gays, all of whom claimed their issues were the most important issues. Sometimes I wished I was a conservative. They seemed to have only three lines of ideological bulls.h.i.t instead of two hundred.

"You don't get it, do you?" she said. She hadn't moved her hand from beneath mine. "You think you're open-minded. You think you're liberal, and yet you sit here and say Russian women-and it should be Soviet women, if you want to be precise-Russian women should be tall with big t.i.ts. American women come in all sizes. Why should the Soviets be one-size-fits-all?"

The flush was traveling down Sandusky's neck. "My father was a farmer. He had a sixth-grade education."