I kept glancing at people’s faces, checking for Elena’s eyes, but everyone looked the same under those caps. I began to relax when I realized that aside from my Casper ’s-ass skin, I looked the same. My hair hidden, I was anonymous. There was nothing to do but move from pool to pool, consulting the map and deciding which number two pool to head to next, then which number three and four. At each pool, we eased ourselves into the soothing water, and I found something equally soothing about being with Theo, being with him in that beautiful place so far from home.

Each pool was shaped differently, one like a kidney, some perfect circles of differing sizes, a few long rectangles, a couple of squares. Some of the pools were surrounded by shrubs and plants, others lounge chairs.

Theo stopped outside one pool. He pointed. “Look at that.”

I glanced across the length of the pool, this one a number four and shaped like an oval. At the end of the pool was a stone throne built out of the smooth rock of the cliff that bordered the gardens. The throne held a woman in a green bathing suit and a yellow cap. Her head was down, eyes closed, shoulders slumped. Behind her, water poured from the side of the cliff as if it were coming from inside Ischia itself. It cascaded from the mountain and onto her shoulders, and she looked as if she were experiencing ecstasy.

We watched her for another minute as she continued to sit there, in complete silence, her eyes closed. Finally, she threw her shoulders back and yawned as if she’d just experienced the best massage of her life. Then she stood, and another person who’d been waiting outside our view sat down in the throne.

“Want to try it?” Theo said.

“Absolutely.”

We walked to the other side of the pool and sat in orange lounge chairs where there was a small line of bathers waiting for the water throne.

When it was finally our turn, Theo gestured at it. “You first.”

I got up and walked across the wet stone floor. I felt almost nervous as I saw that water pouring down. Finally, I slipped onto the throne and sat. Like the first woman we’d seen, I closed my eyes and hunched my shoulders and let the water beat upon me. I let it pound out the questions I had about my father. I let it pound away my desperate hope to see Elena. I let it pummel out of me any thoughts about Sam. I let it strike away the day and anything but that moment until, finally, it was just me. Me on a stone throne, the sun hitting my face through the cascade of water, without any thought of all that had happened the last year.

Theo went next, grew as blissful as I had. When he got out, he gestured with his head at the pool. “Let’s get in.”

Instead of looking around and studying faces for Elena, I merely let my toes, then my feet, then my shins, my knees, my thighs slip into the pool until the water was at my waist, then the depth at my chest. At last I ducked my head under and stayed beneath that water, weightless, timeless.

When I came up to the surface, Theo wasn’t there. Momentarily alarmed, I swung my head around.

And there he was, at the opposite end of the pool, his arms behind him on the ledge, staring at me, grinning a little as if he were watching his favorite show on television. Somehow he managed to make his black bathing cap look adorable.

I paddled to him, not hurrying. There seemed nothing to hurry for just then.

When I reached him, I said, “Are you happy?” I never asked him those kinds of questions.

“Never more.” He grabbed my arm lightly, pulled me to him and wrapped my legs around his waist, our favorite position. But this time, in the water, he didn’t have to hold me so tight. Loosely, my ankles met behind his back. I let myself float backward in the pool until I was lying there, my back supported by the water, legs around him. I looked up at a blue sky softly dotted with cotton puffs of clouds.

Theo let me lie there like that. He didn’t do anything, not anything sexy…nothing at all. He simply let me be suspended, and after a few seconds I felt as if I had slipped into a deep sleep. When I sat up, the sun had shifted, angling now onto the beach a hundred or so feet below us. I put my hands on Theo’s arms. He was always muscled. But now, his body was slick and wet. I could feel every tendon, every sinew, every vein, every part and portion of his muscles. And it was as if I could feel, for the first time, every part of Theo. He looked in my eyes, and I knew he was thinking something similar, that he was feeling me, seeing me, in a new way, as well.

Slowly, his hand traced its way onto my lower back, pulling me gently toward him until I was closer, my arms around him, my legs wrapped tighter.

Around us, the water moved from the soft jets of the pool, hypnotically lulling us. It shimmied us back and forth, like a mother coddling a child. I bowed my head and leaned on Theo’s shoulder. He squeezed me tighter until there was no space between us physically. And I felt that there was no other kind of space between us, either. I felt one with Theo. The feeling was not only soothing, not only profound, it was sexy as hell.

I reached my hand down, below his waist, and through his bathing suit took a hold of him. But the feel of him shocked me.

I sat up straight. “Jeez,” I whispered. “What am I doing?”

Theo shook his head lazily, then he nodded across the pool. I could see another couple embracing. Because the water was high, you couldn’t tell what, if anything, they were doing underneath the water. A third couple was sitting on the steps at the entrance to the pool. A few individual swimmers dotted the water. Those on the lounge chairs surrounding the pool were all sleeping or reading. But no one seemed to be observing anyone. People kept to themselves, soaking in the healing waters, the healing atmosphere.

I looked back at Theo. I reached down again, slowly, careful not to show what I was doing, and I took him in my hand.

He inhaled sharply, his head hanging back a little. “God,” he whispered. “God, God…God.”

I kept touching him like that. He was completely at my mercy.

Finally he raised his head. “We have to find somewhere to go.”

A few minutes later, wrapped in towels, we climbed the steps of the cliff to the highest point of the gardens. There were a few lounge chairs up there, no one around. Theo pointed at a corner, where the rock curved slightly. We tucked our heads around it and saw that there was another throne there, a seat carved into the rock, this one without water and hidden from view.

Theo sat on it. He started to pull me toward him. Then he stopped, shook his head. With his eyes locked on mine, he reached behind my back and untied my bikini top. I tossed it off. He tugged at the bottoms and pulled them down. Now I was standing naked before him.

He stood and pulled off my bathing cap. “There,” he said. “I have to see that hair.”

He slipped off his own bathing suit and cap, his long, soaked hair settling around his face.

Soon I was on top of him, my head smashed into his wet hair, and then I threw my face back, stretched my neck long so that all I could see was the slick ceiling of the throne, and at that moment it felt as if the two of us were one being and we were somewhere else, in a distant but distinct world that was so delicious, so wonderful, I hoped we would never leave.

Later, satiated beyond description, we made our way down a stone path.

“Don’t forget to put your cap back on,” Theo said behind me when we had almost reached the populated area of the gardens.

I stopped and looked up at him. “Thanks.” I pulled my cap over my head. I could feel the smile on my face.

When I’d wrestled my hair back into place, we headed down the path. I glanced at the pools below. “Which should we go to now?” I called over my shoulder to Theo. “Or maybe we should sit there.” I pointed to my right, where a small deck overlooked a square pool, a bubbling number six.