My sign

This heady scent on warm skin is evening pomegranate, a rich perfumed musk that lingers after the afternoon shower, the gracious return to water a kind of baptism that soothes the Scorpio's anxious mood.

She doesn't have to visit the place where she will be laid bare and examined. She is pardoned at the eleventh hour by a surprise call that sets the tone for the rest of the day. If she wants, she can return to sleep, her shower-damp skin layered in lotion and ready for cloth. She can sit in the chair near the old window and listen to the breeze rumble the glass. Should sleep not arrive, she can enjoy a light lunch, a few crisp pages of poetry, a phone chat with a friend.

This Scorpio, this water sign, is not the person the horoscopes make her out to be. Yes, there have been moments of jealousy and possessiveness, but she is hard pressed to think of a person who hasn't felt a similar passion. She is determined, loyal, dynamic, and magnetic, as much as she is unyielding when there is a cause worth fighting for. She is not the sex-crazed obsessive that some believe her sign to be. (She clutches at her pearls while licking her lips with a forked tongue.) Passionate and mysterious -- oh yes. She protects her secrets with humor, with surreptitiously built walls, deciding just who should be allowed entry. True trust is hard won, but there is salvation in the struggle. Betrayal begets the almighty sting from the curved tail, and the long memory which may forgive but never forget.