H had a deep, white bathtub, big enough to accommodate two bodies. We bathed together sometimes, in the evening. The bottom half of a chrome-plated cocktail shaker was kept by the tub, and H would fill it with warm bathwater and pour it over my shoulders. H was a rather silent man, and so this act always felt intimate and sweet, a talking kind of gesture. Usually I would bathe alone, H in another room studying or listening, invariably, to Pièces Froides. The music would be accompanied every ten minutes by the tremor of the College streetcar rumbling in the distance. I would pour the bathwater over my shoulders, imagining the moment as a film scene.