"Yeah," Art said. "He lives in a house behind his mother's. She's got money, or the family does. Don't know much about Martin; he went to private school, was only around summers. His father was a pilot. He died about ten years ago." "He plays banjo pretty well," Willow said. "Yeah, I guess. How come you stopped playing the violin?" Willow scratched one knee. "I love the old greats," she said. "I mean they are great souls, but . . . " "They weren't your soul," Art said. "No. I mean, they are, but they aren't." She put her hands behind her head into her hair and paused, spreading her arms out slowly, letting long dark strands run through her fingers and fan across her shoulders. She shook her head. "I didn't want to be stuck in that scene forever. Doors were closing." "Willow's father is a music prof," Amber said. "My mother plays, too," Willow said. "A nice Jewish musical family with perfect children who know how to get along." "What's wrong with getting along?" Amber smiled meaningfully in Art's direction. "Maybe you could sing; you look a little like Joan Baez." Art was a decent guy, really. And he had those shoulders. Willow's ears were buzzing. "I wish," she said. "You got any Coltrane?" The guy was full of surprises. "We do." She rose slowly and flipped through the albums that Amber had borrowed from AhnRee. "Night music," she said, putting it on the stereo. Amber was smiling broadly and wiggling her toes. "Ice cream," she said. Willow remembered that she had to work in the morning. "Bedtime for me," she said. Amber promised to do the dishes. "Great dinner," Art said. She closed the porch door behind her and stepped out of her clothes, feeling the cool night air on her skin. She stretched, reaching high with her fingers, and then slid her hands appraisingly down her sides and hips. This feeling of aloneness, this new sense of herself, wasn't so bad. Whatever it was, it was real. She pulled a blue broadcloth nightshirt over her head and lay in bed, drifting away from the muffled tenor sax, out toward the trees and the summer night. The quiet lured her, not so much for itself, although it was wonderful, but for what might arise within it. In the morning, Art's truck was gone; Amber was nowhere to be seen; and the dishes were dry, upside down in neat piles. Willow ate a bowl of cold cereal with milk and then rode into town. The first thing she did at Ann's was to make a pot of coffee. Drinking too much wine gave her a headache, but dope left her head filled with a dull cloudiness that drove her nuts. It didn't hurt, but she couldn't think. It was as if she'd watched a dumb television show all night. "Dumb, dumb, dumb," she sang. "I'm dumb, dumb, dumb-deedoo-dumb, dumb, dumb. Where's my bass man?" she asked the coffee pot. "There we go," she said as coffee began running into the Silex pot. "Dumb, dumb, deedoo." "So it's a canary I hired?" "Tweet. What are you doing up?"