“Cute,” she says. She keeps her face still while her mind races.

“I mean as friends,” he says quickly. “Tonight?”

“Uh,” she says.

“Only, I go away a lot.”

“Oh,” Dee says.

“I might be spending more time at my weekend place, soon.”

“A cabin?” Dee says.

“Kind of.”

“Up by the lake, I suppose.” Her heart is pounding. “That’s a lovely spot.”

“No,” he says. “You wouldn’t know it.”

“Well, we’d better have that drink before you disappear.”

“I’ll meet you at that bar off the 101,” he says. “Seven p.m.?”

“Sounds good,” she says. “I’ll see you there.”

“Cool,” he says. “Great. Sayonara!” He stumbles a little as he backs away from her, and almost falls, but he recovers just in time.

“Well,” she says as she comes into her living room. “I’ve got a date.”

The yellow-eyed cat lifts her head. She and Dee have a good understanding. Neither of them likes to be touched.

Dee says, “It has to be tonight, before he fixes the window.” She wonders who she is trying to persuade. Get it done.

At 6:30 p.m., in the silvered near-dark, Dee is crouched in her living room by the shuttered window, watching Ted’s house. In this light everything has a velvet quality. The world looks mythical and interesting. She waits, legs cramping, as she hears the turning of three locks next door. The back door opens and closes. The locks turn again. Ted’s steps fade and she hears his truck start. She waits five minutes and then slides up the wall, muscles trembling. She goes quietly out of her back door and steps over the fence into Ted’s back yard. She is somewhat screened from the alley by the timothy and pampas grass that grows wild, here. But she had better hurry. She goes to Ted’s rear living room window and takes the clawhammer from the pocket of her overalls. She pries the nails from the plywood that covers the window. They come out with little reluctant squeaks, but at last the sheet loosens and she pulls it free. The latch on this window has rusted through. She noticed it when she was in the house. He must have forgotten about it, after he boarded them up. She slides the sash upward. Paint flakes scatter like snow or falling ash.

Let me in—let me in. But Dee is the ghost at the window now. She throws her leg over the sill. Inside, she is immediately filled with the sensation of being watched. She stands in the green living room, breathing the dust, and lets her eyes take in the dark. Ted’s house smells strongly of vegetable soup and old, used-up air. If sorrow had a scent, she thinks, this is what it would be like.