Everyone in the meditation group, including her, seemed a bit off in some way, but she liked closing her eyes and imagining the path through her park for forty-five minutes every Wednesday night. This foot, that foot, this foot, that foot. She liked the Rumi quotes in dime-store frames hanging precariously on nails here and there. LOVE IS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN YOU AND EVERYTHING. This, that, this, that, until eventually there was nothing but the gray sky of her mind and the faint odor of the carpet.

Someone who worked in her building showed up at yoga class, a pale woman with bobbed hair like a flapper’s and dark lipstick. It was her clothes that Joan had noticed more than the woman as she went up the stairs past the journal office in the mornings: billowy slacks and tailored dresses and narrow skirts with crisp blouses and once, in the fall, a soft belted jacket with felt flowers appliquéd on it, which sounds terrible but wasn’t. The last thing Joan would see after the outfit went past were the shoes—flats, ankle boots, or, sometimes, a pair of slender wingtips that looked like men’s shoes except for the heels. The woman was quietly hopeless in yoga class; when they bent over to touch the floor, she was still basically upright.

“I refuse to do the sun salutation until there’s a sun,” Joan whispered to her as they were watching the others do headstands.

“I just had to get the fuck out of my house,” the woman whispered back.

“Could we maybe do a tripod?” the teacher asked them gently. She was in her early seventies and wore harem pants and a lavender leotard. She moved her topknot out of the way, put the crown of her head on the floor, balanced knees on elbows, and smiled at them upside down.

YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE IN ECSTATIC MOTION. One of the Rumi signs wobbling on its nail.

Once in the tripod, Joan raised her legs slowly and balanced there while the teacher stood behind her, just barely touching her ankles.

“I met someone,” she told Mary the next day. “A woman in my building. Her name is Deirdre, she’s a technical writer, and when I asked what that meant, she goes, ‘Well…it’s technical’—i.e., sense of humor.”

“I thought you were going to say a guy,” Mary said. “But this is very good.”

That afternoon on her way out, Deirdre stopped in Joan’s office and invited her to go to a party over the weekend. Her neighbor was having it and Deirdre wouldn’t really know anyone there except him.

“Who is he?” Joan asked.

“I’m not sure, just this guy scientist,” Deirdre said. “He’s kind of”—and she made a waving gesture around her head. “He has a lot of plants in his house is all I know, and he rides a bike in the snow.”