It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do, but she was tired of working outside and freezing her ass off. She could have landed on Claire’s doorstep, but she had a decent life with Don. Miranda didn’t feel right barging in on it. They were living above a pizza place somewhere, sleeping on a pull-out couch in a one-room apartment. She had some secretary-type job, he’d lined up something at the Ford plant. You could make good money there. Someday, he said, they’d get a nice house out in the country.

Miranda was happy for Claire, happy that she had a boyfriend who loved her. They were probably going to get married, that’s what Claire had told her. Miranda didn’t want to mess that up. She had to try to make it on her own. She’d been put down all her life, but she still had pride. She wouldn’t allow her parents to steal that from her.

“You can stay with us,” Claire told her. “Really.”

But Miranda said no, don’t worry, she had plans.

Going to Canborough and trying out to be a stripper, that was her plan.

She hitchhiked up there, carrying everything she had in a backpack she’d found in a secondhand store. Got herself cleaned up in the washroom of a McDonald’s. Someone must have told, because just as she was finishing up, this short woman in a brown uniform and nametag that said “Lulu” came in, said, “This ain’t the Y, sweetie. Scram.”

Then she went to the Kickstart. “Heard you’re looking for dancers,” she said.

“You done any dancing?” This was some short, nasty-looking fellow who kept sticking his finger up his nose.

“Sure,” she said. “But, you know, not on an actual stage or anything.”

“Let’s see ’em.”

“What?”

Rolled his eyes. “Jesus, you come in, want to be a dancer, you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say ‘Let’s see ’em’?”

So she showed ’em.

“Whoa,” he said. “Not bad. Rack like that, we got other ways you can make money too. Upstairs. Nice chunk of change to be had.”

“I don’t think so,” Miranda said. “I’ll just dance.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “But when you see the other girls pulling down major bucks, you’ll be begging me, you wait and see.”

And then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “What’s your name?”

Miranda had already thought about this part. “Candace,” she said.

9

SARAH SENT ME AN E-MAIL.

“Working late. Will grab something to eat on the way home. S.”

She wasn’t more than seventy or eighty feet away from me, in her office, but she decided to send me a message rather than walk over and just tell me. True, she couldn’t actually see me at my desk the way she could when I was working in the newsroom. I was now down the hall and around the corner, working in Home! But honestly, was this what Bill Gates had in mind? That the greatest technological advances in history would be used to make it possible for people who were within shouting range of one another to not speak face-to-face?