Joan was too shy to go to a party where she knew only one person slightly, because what if nobody talked to her. Then she remembered she was in Ithaca, where nothing mattered. “Okay,” she said.

On Saturday afternoon she loaded wood from the shed with Sheba and then they watched a movie, curled up together on the sofa while it snowed. When they woke, the sky had gone from tarnished spoon to black and Joan didn’t have time to make herself look any better than usual.

It took forever to get the snow off her car, and she ended up leaving it with a tall crown on top that looked like a haircut from the eighties. She slid sideways down the big hill and then fishtailed into town, arriving at the address exactly when everyone else did. Somebody immediately parked behind her.

The house had a wide porch and carved front doors with bubbled glass, like an old Iowa farmhouse. The walk had been shoveled haphazardly and they picked their way up the steps and onto the porch and then a tall guy in a thick sweater banged on one of the doors, pushed it open, and they all herded inside.

There was an awkward stamping of snow off boots and smiling; everyone had hat hair and was trying to do something about it.

“I’m Deirdre,” Deirdre said to a portly guy with a bushy beard.

“Ari,” he said.

“Chris,” said a woman with short red hair, unzipping her coat. “This is Diane.”

Diane said hello and then the tall, sweatered guy said, “Thor here.”

“Joan.”

The foyer was clean and empty, with apricot walls and a neat rag rug.

Just beyond was a kitchen where she could see big bulbs of garlic hanging in a bunch over a butcher block, bright crockery on the open shelves, and a ladder-back chair with what looked like her mother’s homemade noodles draped over its rungs. In a room off to the right were pots of ferns and orchids, a ficus tree with lights sparkling in the leaves, a scarlet begonia blooming next to a guitar in its stand, and a big gray sofa. There was music in the background that she recognized—her old friend Jerry Garcia.

Diane asked what they should do with their coats. Ari pointed toward a closed door.

Once in a while you get shown the light. Joan felt the warmth of the house and the people radiating through her like home. It was the universe in ecstatic motion. There were two doors, actually, and she stepped forward and opened the right wrong one.

Now