“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.”

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.