When years had passed, when her city glittered again around the mouth of the river, she would lie in bed, gray hair falling in contrast against her brown skin, and trace Barbara's weathered face with her gnarled fingers, her thumb lingering at the corner of Barbara's mouth until Barbara smiled. That was enough to temper the bitter memories of the lonely years.

Grace always watched them with deadly calm, a sweet smile, and a heavenly name that belied the destruction she could cause. The showers were safe, though; Grace never dared set foot in the same room as a dozen completely naked women. There, they laughed and joked about anything and everything under the sun. There, she watched the water caress breasts and buttocks, hips and backs, to run inevitably into shadowed secret places. She was one of the Wave, after all; of course she would feel kinship with the water, yearn to follow it wherever it went.

But Grace was a specter more than a shooting guard, a back-breaker more than a zone-buster, a more effective threat against her own teammates than she ever was against the rest of her conference. Just the thought of sweet little Grace running off to open her dainty little mouth and have Coach getting involved in their business was enough to dampen anyone's ardor. Any of them who lusted after shapely and beautiful Barbara kept it to herself and suffered in silence rather than risk a misspoken word.

Barbara was a legend in the making, they all saw it. She was going to be the best to ever come out of their school- maybe she'd even make the boosters forget about baseball for a while and notice the untapped potential in a different part of the athletic department. So her teammates had another reason to look but never even dream about touching. The faintest intimation would be enough to drag her down. 40 picks and she wasn't one of them, and the AD called a team meeting to find out who had been the source of pernicious gossip.

Janell hadn't been the one. Janell loved her too much for that, or maybe at that point it was worship more than love.

The year in New England's cold had changed Barbara when she came home to visit New Orleans. Like a snowbank, she was majestic and cold to the touch, and Janell was afraid to touch her because of that. Another fifty picks went by, and again her name wasn't called out. She took her credits and never complained aloud, and Janell ached for her.

Another year, another draft, and even after sixty-four picks, after Grace had gone to Minnesota, Barbara had been left untouched. People wondered what was going on and muttered in corners of conspiracies and collusion, though Janell never knew who exactly would want to bring down a mid-major that had never really hurt anyone.

Barbara knew the answer, though, whispered it to Janell when no one was around to whisper in their turn. "You have no idea what it's like out there," she said. "The competition is out of this world. I'm good, but I know I'm not that good. They'd never believe that, though. We're so parochial, 'Nell. You've got to believe me if you're going to make it."

Janell had never let anyone else call her Nell, but Barbara didn't know that. Maybe she would have discovered that if the call hadn't come from Detroit; they were looking at free agents for camp, and would Miss Farris be interested in coming for a tryout? Janell had never seen anyone pack so fast in her life.

Janell had also forgotten how complete and confident she felt when Barbara was around until she felt the emptiness and fear that came when Barbara was gone.

A year later, Janell went where Grace had gone before, and she wasn't tactless enough to be thankful, but she was still more relieved to be in the company of strangers with fast Northern accents and strange foreign slang than she would have been in the same locker room with Grace. The fear that had silenced her teammates in college wasn't present in Minnesota, and some of what her teammates there said made her blush. She learned how to adjust in time, though, with the help of some of her gentler colleagues. Betty, a year ahead of and three years older than her, took her under her wing. It wasn't long until the team started calling them the Odd Couple, or trying to until Betty started flexing her muscles and getting offended at the suggestion.

It wasn't that Betty wasn't, and it wasn't that Janell wasn't, and it wasn't even that they found each other repellent. There was just no chemistry of that sort between them, and though Janell had never mentioned the reason why she never hit the club with a honey on her arm, Betty had intuited it early in the season when the Lynx went to Detroit and Janell dropped passes in shootaround while staring at #54.

"You can talk to her, you know," Betty had said that night in the hotel after they'd somehow pulled off a win. "This ain't Louisiana. If Coach is down with Katie and Pee-Wee, he's got no right to complain if you and Barbara take a shine to each other."

Janell had sputtered and nearly fallen off her bed. "But I- but she- I can't- it isn't- it'd be like you trying to get T-Spoon!"

Betty had wiggled her eyebrows meaningfully, and that did make Janell back away so quickly that she smacked her head against the wall behind the bed. "Seriously, JB, she's not a statue. She's a woman. The worst she can do is tell you she's not interested. She's known you how long now? She won't freak."

"But she's-" Janell had thrown up her hands at the look on Betty's face, and realized that trying to explain the sancity of tradition to a Lady Techster was like trying to extol the virtues of orange to a Husky. "All right. I'll get back in touch with her at the next alumnae game. Just please, please tell me you were joking about Spoon."

Betty's delay in reassuring Janell was nearly enough to drive Janell to madness. In later years, Janell would wonder whether Betty had traumatized her on purpose, to give her the drive she would need to pursue Barbara. Whatever the reason had been, it was enough for Janell to re-open old contacts and in a roundabout way get Barbara's number.

As much as Janell had forgotten about Barbara's voice, her acute awareness of the world, her wit, her charisma, Barbara remembered about Janell, and it was as if they had never lost touch.

Time passed, and some things changed- Janell's team, Barbara's colors- but some things stayed the same. Janell's roommates learned to watch the ticker to see whether the Shock had won or lost so they would know whether Barbara would call Janell and cause Janell to chase them out. The understanding that had grown between them had never found physical form in anything more than a quick hug before a game or an enthusiastic handshake afterwards. There was no physical intimacy between them, but instead a level of trust and emotional entwining that surpassed what Janell saw between Katie and Shannon, or Sue and Kate, or even Lauren and Sheri. Though they had never formally claimed each other physically, Janell would never even look at another woman, and she knew that Barbara would never either.

Then came the flood and the fear, and Janell hung on Barbara's every word like they were a lifeline that would keep her from going under. It seemed unreal that New Orleans had been so casually destroyed, that the school where they had both starred was underwater, that the house where she had grown up pretty much didn't exist anymore. Living at the mouth of a mighty river that fed into a gulf where hurricanes frolicked had its risks, everyone who had ever lived in or around the Crescent City understood that, but no one ever thought their worst nightmare would come true. That was why it was a nightmare, after all.

The reality she saw in Houston was almost too much for her to take, and she broke down on the phone after the game- it didn't matter that she and her team had pulled out the road win, the sight of her family among all those displaced was enough to bring her to tears. "I don't think I can take any more of this," she sobbed into the receiver, and that was when Betty found a flimsy excuse to be elsewhere until the wee hours.

"You'll be okay. You're so strong... I'm ashamed to be leaning on you the way I've had to these last few days, but it's the only way I can keep myself together."

"Leaning on me? But Barb, if it weren't for you I'd be the one falling apart. I've spent most of the time worried right out of my mind. I only feel properly myself when I'm talking to you."

"I had no idea, 'Nell. With everyone staying at your sister's, you let me think it was all okay and let me get on with worrying about mama at the hospital. You didn't sound any worse than Elaine or Cheryl trying to find out what was happening with their schools. If I ever wondered why I loved you, this is it."

There it was, the word that they had never said, even though they had come close uncounted times to hinting around the concept of it. Barbara dropped it so casually into the conversation that it almost didn't seem like something that should have redefined Janell's world. "Love? How do you mean that? Like a sister? Like a friend? Or like..." Janell trailed off, too well-raised in true Southern tradition to bring that sort of topic up directly.

"You know how I mean it, 'Nell. You've all but said it to me I don't know how many times, unless I completely misread you. Have I?"

"No. No, you haven't. I've felt that way about you for years now. I just- I thought if I said what it was, you'd run away because we're not supposed to be doing that kind of thing. If we never said it, I could believe it would all be okay." Janell broke off. "That doesn't even make sense to me now, and I can't believe I said it. I'm sorry, Barb. I'm just going all kinds of crazy. Forget I said anything, okay?"

"Only if you say what I know you meant to say somewhere in there," Barbara said softly, with a smile on her face that Janell could only vividly imagine from her hotel room.

Janell smiled back and whispered the three words.

They had their first real kiss when the frustrated Shock visited the frustrated Storm, and somehow Janell managed to be surprised that no one was surprised. Lauren and Sheri sent gorgeous tropical flowers that turned Janell's apartment into allergy-sufferer's hell for two weeks; Kate came by with a tray of chocolate chip cookies from Sue's own recipe; Betty declared that it was about damn time and paid the DJ to spin love songs for them all night at the club Janell brought Barbara to, where the first kiss took place to a syncopated hip-hop rhythm.

More of the same awaited them when they met again in the Motor City. Ruth bought several rounds of drinks and signed Swin's name to the tab when all was said, done, and drunk. Deanna taught Janell the secret Shock handshake, which seemed to exist only for the purpose of embarrassing Shock-in-laws. Katie promised her free dental care for as long as she and Barbara stayed together.

That was their first night together, locked in embrace at Barbara's apartment, and if Coach Donovan was to ask where Janell was that night, every teammate was willing to tell the same story and risk the sapphire death glare. There, they discovered a thousand and one things they had never known about each other; when they had had the opportunity, they had not had the inclination, and vice versa. Childhood scars, long-buried memories, and secret desires all were revealed that night, the details of which they never shared with another soul. It was a long-awaited consummation, but well worth the wait.

Janell would never forget that night, no matter how many years passed, no matter how many times they repeated the act.

Barbara asked Janell to exchange rings with her at the All-Star Game in Sacramento; neither of them was in the game, though several Seattle players felt Janell should have at least been considered as a reserve, but the annual spectacle in July was also a time for players to keep up with social lives that schedules would not accommodate. There was a hotel somewhat near the arena that had tacitly been designated as the place for lovers to meet and stay, where Janell had seen an All-Star team's worth of gossip in the hallways, including a couple of betrayals that would make the NBA scandal of the week seem mild in comparison. The single that Barbara was given and the one that Janell had gotten were nowhere near each other, but that was part of the thrill.

It was the night before the game, at a party that was rapidly earning the name of legend for reasons over and above the former Monarch hosting it. Someone had gotten a few too many drinks into DeMya, which was apparently all the inducement the Sacramento diva needed to shimmy on a tabletop and unbutton her blouse. Between that and the turf war between a pair of All-Star point guards, the crowd's attention was taken to the point where only a striptease would have gotten Barbara and Janell any attention, and even then it might have been unflattering comparisons to what DeMya was showing off.

"It feels like I've known you forever," Barbara murmured, barely audible over the insistent beat of the dance music spinning from the back of the room. "Seriously, 'Nell, I can't remember not having you in my life. And if you're willing, I'd like to keep it that way." She took a box out of her pocket and was on one knee before Janell had fully registered that she was receiving a proposal. But the sparkle of the ring was unmistakable; the first time she had seen it, on a special about the 2003 championship, she had wanted one so badly that it ached- no, not just any ring, but Barbara's ring, token of Barbara's love and passion, and now Barbara was offering it to her.

"YES!"

"Someone's getting a little too excited over there," one of the innumerable Tamikas remarked from a nearby table. Her teammate reluctantly looked away from DeMya's tabletop routine to admonish her.

Janell was too happy to notice.

Their first real fight was all New Orleans's fault, or so Janell would say in later years to anyone who asked why they had never painted over the jagged line on the side of the bookcase. Barbara hated the way she made light of it; Janell never let on that it was the only way she could induce the emotional scar to heal.

Barbara had wanted Harvey, and Janell had wanted Slidell, and what both of them had really wanted was the balance of power in the relationship, home court advantage, the illusion of being the primary breadwinner. There were times when coming in as equals had its disadvantages, and not knowing who was supposed to concede was one of them.

Janell called Barbara a shallow hypocrite and Barbara shot back that Janell was an irresponsible gold-digger. Janell threw Barbara's ring back in her face, and Barbara hurled Janell's ring contemptuously at her feet. Janell went on a bender involving cheap hooch and cheaper women, and Barbara spent two nights in Cheryl's bed.

But the only reason they didn't patch it up the first night was because they had called each other at the same moment and gotten busy signals that made them think they had every right to escalate the fight. And when Janell, a sobbing wreck on the tail end of her bender, showed up at the door in Detroit to beg forgiveness, it took only a moment for Barbara to in turn apologize; there was even enough time for Janell to rush to the bathroom, where Barbara held back her hair and massaged the tension out of her muscles.

Barbara had wanted Harvey, and Janell had wanted Slidell, and what they ended up with was a two-bedroom bargain on the edge of the French Quarter, slender columns and graceful wrought iron and the rumor of a ghostly grandmother in the kitchen. If the ghost were really there, she was a quiet neighbor who didn't seem to mind the young black women who had taken up together in her home. Both of them denied believing, but Barbara had sometimes caught Janell leaving the radio on the local standards station as they went out to dinner, and Janell had heard Barbara say goodbye to two people some mornings.

Janell didn't really mind; it made her feel less lonely whenever Barbara had to be away.

When years had passed, when their city glittered again around the mouth of the river, she would lie in bed, gray hair falling in contrast against her soft brown skin, and trace Barbara's beautiful face with still-sure fingers, her thumb lingering at the corner of Barbara's mouth until Barbara smiled. That was enough to tell her that she was home and lonely never more.