While here she struggled slowly, stitch by stitch. Still, she was actually knitting. If she kept this up, in a year she’d have a potholder.

Margot hadn’t watched television while she knitted, but talked with Betsy. Of course, there had been the odd pause while Margot counted stitches—knitters were forever losing track, it seemed—but on the whole, Margot had been able to keep up her end of the conversation.

It had been very comfortable up in that apartment, the puddles of yellow light making everything warm and intimate. They’d done some catching up—though now that she thought about it, Betsy had been allowed to do most of the talking, about Professor Hal (the pig), and the cost of living in beautiful San Diego (the sunlight in April on the white buildings and the endless sussurant crashing of the ocean, the dry, harsh, beautiful desert), and the big El Niño of ‘97 spoiling things.

Margot had said El Niño had even reached as far as Minnesota that year, giving them a very mild winter. Betsy, recalling the news footage of snow up to the eaves of Minnesota houses, decided that mild temperatures were a relative thing. Was she up to a Minnesota winter, she who could not knit well enough to produce a pair of mittens? Maybe she should cut this visit short and be on her way before the hard freeze set in.

She had asked, “Is living in a small town like it is in books, everyone knowing everyone else’s business?”

“It is harder to be anonymous, because there is only the one main street where everyone shops, so even if you don’t know someone’s name, you recognize the face. It’s like when you take the bus to and from work; you don’t know the people who ride with you, not really, but you recognize their faces. And if someone’s been absent for a few days and then gets on with his leg in a cast, you might express concern, even ask him what happened, as if he were a friend.”

Betsy had nodded. Okay, living in a small town was like sharing a commute. She could do that.

“And if you get really sick of small-town living there’s Minneapolis and St. Paul down the road—and hey, there’s the Mall of America, right? Is it as big as they say? How often do you go there?”

“About as often as you visited the Statue of Liberty when you lived in New York City.”

“But that was different! You go, you climb, you look out, you go home. At the Mall of America you can ... shop.”

“That’s true. I went when it first opened, and I’ve been back, I think, twice. No, three times, twice to take visitors and once because they have a specialty shoe shop. You wouldn’t believe it, but I’m hard to fit.” Margot had stuck out a small foot complacently. She counted stitches for a bit, then continued, “But you know, there’s so much stuff there, a great deal of it things you don’t really need, like dried flower arrangements and personalized scents for your bath. To be so rich that you can shop as a form of recreation is ... sinful. Yet people come from all over the world to entertain themselves by buying things they don’t really need.” She moved her shoulders. “It makes me ashamed somehow.” She stopped to count stitches again, and then twinkled over at Betsy. “I know, you want to go glut yourself in all that shopping anyhow, be sinful for a day. Okay, maybe a week from Wednesday?”