AN EXCERPT:

Connie had dozed off. Her chin was bent down onto her chest. The fine hair on her head puffed out in easy waves, and she wore a single wide red bangle on her wrist. Also, she wore a gold ring that had belonged to her mother. Mary was always unsure of whether or not to wake her. She chose to stand, and shuffle about the room rather than restate her question in a loud wakeful voice. She made a very little bit of noise by opening the roof of a small wooden music box shaped like a house. It began to play "The Hills Are Alive." 

"I've nodded off," Connie said, and she rose to her feet, a slow process of extending limbs. Connie's legs were as long and straight as lampposts, though her back was hunched in a low hill across the shoulder blades. "Would you like to have some tea in the kitchen?"

Mary thought she might, but she noticed an edge of coolness in the air. It would soon be dinnertime. It would soon be dark time. Connie's house in the dark was very different than in the day. In the day the place was curious; the steamy chlorine seeping from the invisible crack beneath the sliding glass doors of the poolroom enchanting. But in the dark Mary didn’t know the house. They were strangers then.

"I think I should go home for dinner," Mary said.

When Connie offered to accompany her to the door Mary told her she could find her own way. She didn’t want to steal all by herself through the lonely corridor to the door that seemed miles away. But worse than walking alone was imagining Connie’s dreary wandering back through the halls if she were to see Mary out...

Bellingham Review

• Spring 2010, Vol. 33, Issue 62
• Finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction