“How about Mexican food?” Benny interrupted brightly.

  Mrs. Wright leaned forward, brushing invisible crumbs from her dress. “You shouldn’t eat such spicy food. Gives you gas. How about some nice American food?”

  “It’s Tex-Mex, Mom, it is American. Okay. Okay. Chicken-fried steak? Mashed potatoes? That all right?”

  “Fine, dear.” Mrs. Wright began humming off-key, smiled secretively, and broke off to say, “Abby, dear, don’t tell me you have some nice young man waiting for you back in Midland?”

  “Excuse me?” Abby blurted, and twisted around to get a good look at her face. Benny wouldn’t—no, from the shocked look on Benny’s face, she clearly hadn’t. “Ah—no, I’m afraid not. Not just now.”

  She wasn’t sure why she was lying, except that maybe it wasn’t lying, exactly—he was hardly pining away waiting for her; he was busy doing his work and living his life and damn she was already regretting the trip and that wouldn’t do at all. Benny deserved better than that.

  “Well, you really ought to find one, neither one of ou girls is getting any younger. I’m not saying your hobbies aren’t nice, but you really need to find some direction in your lives soon.” Mrs. Wright fanned herself with a battered leftover program that had Benny’s picture on the back, looked out, and said, “Lord, I do wish we’d just get on with winter. It’s always worse when it waits until February to let go.” Benny, face gone rigid, said, “Suddenly I’m not very hungry. I really need to take Abby to do some shopping for the party.”

  A taxi driver swerved in front of them, forcing Benny to brake; the driver turned to glare back at them as if they’d cut him off. Benny glared back, cornrows bristling. The taxi slowed to thirty and the car pitched and jerked as she tried to get around him but he leisurely changed with her, sliding from lane to lane and taking no notice at all of the other cars honking their alarm like frightened geese.

  “If that’s what you want, honey,” Mrs. Wright said. She continued to gaze out her window, eyes fixed on the distant horizon. “I’m sure you girls have more important things to do than eat lunch with me. Just drop me off at home, Benina, and let me know when you’ll want some dinner. I have my shows on tonight, so I have to be done with the dishes by seven o’clock sharp.”

  “Of course, Mom,” Benny said. She refused to look in Abby’s direction, even though Abby waved to attract her attention. “Can’t miss those shows.”

  It was a long, mostly silent drive through winding tree-lined neighborhoods. Abby had made the trip a hundred times before but it still managed to surprise her how suddenly and visibly the price tags of homes changed—overblown mansions crouched behind spiked iron gates, then down a tax level to rambling brick homes for corporate executives, doctors, and lawyers. The Wright home was several blocks farther, in a gently seedy neighborhood where the Christmas decorations were desperately festive. Mrs. Wright had a herd of plastic reindeer grazing on the dead grass of her lawn, with a dyspeptic-looking Santa lurking near the bushes like a Peeping Tom. The large front window featured an oversized diorama manger scene. Mary had a round-faced, wholesome, fifties sort of beauty. Jesus was the size of a toddler.

  “Door-to-door service,” Benny said as the Gremlin lurched to a stop in the driveway. She got out and folded down the driver’s-side seat and helped her mother out. Mrs. Wright offered her daughter a lukewarm limp hug and came around the car to offer a much more enthusiastic one to Abby. Abby squeezed very gently, aware of the woman’s crepe-soft skin, the frail bones beneath. She smelled of powdered gardenias and fresh hair spray.

  “Don’t let my daughter get you in any trouble, now,” Mrs. Wright patted her hand, bird-quick, and marched up the sidewalk to her bright-red-foil-packaged front door. Benny waited until the door was open and the plump cherry-pink figure had disappeared inside before turning to the Gremlin and banging her forehead off the roof two or three times.

  “She means well,” Abby offered. Benny stopped pounding her head and looked up. After a second or two of speechless staring, she pounded her head again. “Don’t take it so personally, Ben, she really doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  They got in the car. Benny, tight-lipped, started up the car and backed out into the street with a little too much speed. The sign at the corner was big, yellow, and said DIP on its diamond-shaped surface; Benny stepped on the gas.

  “It’s her new thing that’s getting to me. The ‘when are you going to quit this hobby and settle down’ thing. I mean, she’s sitting on top of programs with my picture all over them, and she’s still calling it a hobby!” Benny sucked in a deep breath, and so did Abby as she spotted the wide black ditch that the city of Dallas called a DIP. “Whoops. Hang on.”

  Abby grabbed the handhold on the door. The Gremlin went airborne and came down with a slam that she felt in her tailbone like a kick.

  “Sorry about that. Anyway, enough about my problems, let’s talk about yours. What disgusting habits does he have? Chewing his toenails? Eating raw meat? Kissing with chewing tobacco in his mouth?”

  “He’s not a problem,” Abby said, and smiled. “Far from a problem.”

  “Oh, sure, you say that now but just you wait, baby.” Benny shuddered. “Is he circumcised?”

  “Ben!”

  “Well, is he?”

  “Mexican food sounds just fine to me.” Abby sighed and turned to look out as winter-ravaged trees flitted by the window. Some of them were putting out cautious green buds, fooled by the mild Texas winter. They’d learn. After a few minutes of silence, she said, “He’s not.”

  “Didn’t think so,” Benny said serenely, and turned toward Margaritaville.

  Eating lunch with Benny was, as always, an adventure. She could hardly help but attract attention, but it wasn’t just the stares; Abby always felt invisible in Benny’s presence, so the stares didn’t bother her at all. It was the people.

  Benny knew everybody. Everywhere.

  She knew somebody standing in line at the restaurant. She was neighbors with the maitre d’. She’d been there, done that, dated him. Abby felt as if she’d been through a formal reception by the time she’d gotten her seat at the wide terra-cotta-tiled table and been handed her menu. She scanned it while Benny discovered a common interest with the waiter.

  “That’s very annoying,” Abby said, and glanced up as Benny folded her menu and sipped her lime and water.

  “What?”

  “The last time we went to the movies the person sitting ahead of you was your long-lost babysitter.”

  “Well …” Benny tilted her head to consider it. Her black and white cornrows made a shocking contrast with her plaid jacket. “That only happened once.”

  “For God’s sake, she was from Cleveland.”

  “Am I to blame for that? So, what’ll it be? Margaritas and tacos?”

  “Sounds good.” Abby gave up on the menu while Benny relayed the order, at length, to her new friend the waiter. “Tell me about the new show.”

  “New show … oh, that one. Blah. Pit orchestra for Cinderella. I’ve got the worst conductor in the world and I can’t understand a damn thing he says.” Benny shoved braids back over her shoulders with a theatrical flourish. “Ze douf ez non parsed.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I said. I still don’t have a clue, I just play it the way the guy wrote it. Anyway, enough about life in the pit, tell me about him.”

  “Is that all we talk about? Sex?”

  Benny pretended to consider. “So what’s your point?”

  She was saved by the arrival of margaritas, thick, lime-green mush. Abby licked salt and vacuumed up a slushy mouthful. It shimmied down her throat, icecold and tequila-hot.

  “I think this thing might actually last,” she said, and scared herself. She scared Benny, too; her friend paused in the act of straw-stirring her drink to blink several times.

  “I hope to hell you’re talking about the margarita.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “Last time you ended up calling me at four in the morning to tell me all about what a miserable jerk he was. Remember?”

  Abby nodded dutifully. She had, after all, made Benny promise to remind her about what’s-his-name. She did deserve it.

  “It’s just that—I know you’re not going to believe this—he’s different.” Abby laughed nervously and wiped cold sweat from the side of her glass. “I feel like I know him, Ben. Like I ought to know him. Is that nuts?”

  “Deeply. It’s hormones, baby, not karma. Six weeks from now …”

  “I don’t think so.” Abby stared down into the cool pale surface of her drink, the pebbly green curve of the lime wedge. “Something strange is going on. I know I always sort of laughed about it, but … I’m getting these, these visions. Not like déjà vu, worse. I know I’ve never been to Fall Creek but I know I’ve been there. I know I’ve never seen those houses but I know them. I know what’s inside them. Sometimes when I look at him I feel like … like he’s somebody else, and I’m somebody else, and things are all different. Am I making any sense at all?”

  She looked up to see Benny staring at her, drink neglected. No amusement in her face at all.

  “Should I not use the ’s’ word?” Benny asked. Abby frowned in confusion. “Psychic.”

  “I’m not psychic. I don’t even believe in psychics.”

  “Yeah, I forgot.” Benny licked hot sauce from a tortilla chip and took a small, neat, catlike bite. “So what exactly do you call it when you know things you don’t know?”

  Abby pushed her silverware around and shook her head.

  Benny’s voice turned soft. “You’re not jazzing me, are you? You’re scared.”

  She nodded. Benny’s hand reached across the table to cover hers, and in spite of the sudden weight of misery she felt, Abby couldn’t help but smile. Benny had chosen a different color of polish for each finger, shading from red to blue.

  “Tell me all about it,” Benny said.

  Abby took a deep breath, and started.

  “I thought we were going to go shopping,” Abby said doubtfully. Benny drove past the edgy, glittery gloom of downtown and into another neighborhood that featured clapboard and chain link as prominent design features. The cars were all Midland models, Abby thought—old, dented, sun-damaged. Left unlocked in the hopes of attracting a less choosy grade of thief. The Christmas decorations here were simple strings of lights, usually draped unevenly over sharpleafed pyracantha bushes.

  “Yeah, we will, Later.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I told you, to see somebody. Somebody special.” Her voice held a unpleasant amount of glee. Special, translated from Benny’s vocabulary, usually meant strange. Benny was taking her to a crystal-gazing, tarot-reading gypsy psychic with a fringed shawl and finger cymbals. Abby gave a heartfelt groan.

  “Are you finished?” Benny asked. She didn’t sound sorry.

  “It’s starting to look that way.”

  “I promise, nothing strange. You have a glass of tea, nothing bizarre will happen, it’s all very calm. And you’ll like him, he isn’t weird or anything.” Benny visibly hesitated. “Too weird. And he’s very cool. You’ll like him, I promise. And he’s been wanting to meet you.”

  There didn’t seem to be any point in asking why. They stopped at an intersection while a glitter-blue low-rider sedan cruised by, blasting Tejano music. The driver, a waiflike teenager, drove with one hand on a chrome chain steering wheel barely bigger than his palm. Around the interior of the car, orange fringe shifted and shimmied in time with the beat. He had a skull-and-crossbones laminated on the back window.

  “Gotta love it,” Benny said, gazing after the car. “Great neighborhood.”

  Abby made a sound low in her throat that could have been taken for agreement.

  Two blocks farther on the houses gave way to cheaply built 1940’s houses that had become shops. REDUX RAGS competed with VERA’S HAIR STYLING, identical buildings with only different-colored trim and signs to distinguish them. Benny pulled into the curb at the next house. The sign said COSMIC JOE’S TEA ROOM AND COFFEE HOUSE, and, in smaller script, MASSAGES, HEALTHY FOODS AND PSYCHIC SERVICES.

  “I don’t think this is a very good idea,” Abby said. Benny ignored her and got out of the car. Abby stared at the dashboard stubbornly, picking where the plastic had split and spilled out white fiber. “I don’t have to do this. I really don’t.”

  “Sure you do,” Benny said, and opened the passenger side with a limousine driver’s flourish. “One cup of tea. What can it do, kill you?”

  Inside, the shop smelled of cinnamon and ginger and fresh bread, the scent so strong she swallowed and thought she could taste it. It was jam-packed with aisles of packaged foods, a tiny corner grocery carrying no-fat, no-salt, all-natural products with herbal seasonings. The special of the day, stacked in a neat pyramid of cans, was vegetarian black bean soup.

  Beyond the shelves, where Benny went, was the coffee and tea bar—a long polished wooden affair, stools to fit, small nondescript chairs and tables filling the rest of the space. Earnest-looking college students who wore their hair too straight nursed foamy cinnamon-topped cappuccinos with their bran muffins. Older, harder-faced intellectuals drank straight black coffee, disdained muffins and pastries, and made notes on legal pads while they argued in whispers. A weary-looking aging hippy looked frankly glad to be back in the womb again.

  Benny hitched a hip on a barstool and tapped her fingernails in a drum roll on the bar. A short, whippet-thin man in black and white T-shirt and jeans came out of the back room. He had a whippet’s face, too—a sharp pointed nose, large close-set eyes, receding chin. He broke into a wide, enthusiastic grin when he saw Benny.

  “New hair,” he said, and reached across the bar to feel the cornrows. He had a lyrical, low voice, smoothed with an accent that she thought sounded European. “Very nice. Kaneesha’s work?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I have my ways. Tea?”

  “Yeah, with lemon and honey. Abby, you want tea or coffee? He makes really great cappuccino here, too.”

  “Tea’s fine,” Abby said, and perched uneasily next to her. The bar felt cold and slick under her fingers. The thought of cappuccino warmed her but it might take longer and she didn’t want any excuse to wait around. “Darjeeling. No lemon, just honey.”

  He nodded pleasantly and turned away, pulling china cups from a rack where other bars would have had wineglasses or beer mugs. His thick black hair was braided into a neat club that reached halfway down his back.

  “That’s Miklos,” Benny said, nodding at their server. “Miklos Azapolous. Used to be a dancer, right, Mik?”

  “Still a dancer.” He shrugged, deftly pouring with his left hand while his right stirred honey into the cups. “But not so much now. Benina and I, we met when she was in the pit orchestra for Giselle six years ago, yes?”

  “I try not to count. Miklos was choreographing. He did this great temper tantrum with Old CrossEyed Henry, the conductor—what was it—” Benny leaned back on the barstool, assumed her most theatrical expression, and affected a mock-Greek accent. “I never had to put up with this kind of bullshit when Bernstein was conducting!”

  “Really?” Abby looked at the man with new respect. He put her cup on a delicate white saucer, handed it to her, and raised an eyebrow like an exclamation point. “Bernstein?”

  He smiled and gave Benina her tea.

  “Old Henry looked like a bullet train had just run over him,” Benny continued. “From that point on everything was ‘Yes, Mr. Azapolous; No, Mr. Azapolous; What do you think, Mr. Azapolous?’ Heaven. I decided right then and there this was one guy I had to meet, so I offered to buy him coffee and he told me he owned this place. So we had cappuccino for free.” Benny squeezed her lemon wedge into pulpy submission and stirred her tea. For a fraction of a second she looked at Miklos and he looked back and there was something there, raising the temperature of the room by several degrees. Abby raised her eyebrows.

  “You just had cappuccino?”

  “World-class cappuccino.” Benny shrugged elaborately and her layers of chains jangled like wind chimes. “How’s the tea?”

  Abby dutifully sipped. The tea had a strong clean taste, sweeping away the Mexican food and leaving a pleasant tingle behind. The honey was a hidden reward on the back of her tongue.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “So, Mr. Azapolous—”

  “Miklos,” he interrupted, “To any friend of Benina’s, Miklos.”

  “I guess you danced in New York.”

  He nodded gravely, eyes bright as a crow’s. “When I was young and foolish, before my knee was plastic. A beautiful, terrible town, New York. Here is much better and much worse. Not as much dirt but the rich are too loud and the poor see them too much. It makes for bad feelings, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Abby said, and sipped tea. “I don’t live here.”

  “Yes, I know. You are from Midland,” Miklos agreed with a quick, firm nod and a soft smile “Maybe it’s Midland that brings on your bad dreams.”

  She shot Benny a look of panic. Benny raised her eyebrows and developed an interest in the contents of her teacup.

  “It’s nothing. Imagination, I guess.” Abby fumbled her cup as she tried to set it down, and hot liquid sloshed, amber-gold. Miklos’ hand shot out to steady it. Their fingertips brushed.

  Miklos’ eyes went wide and black, a whirlpool sucking down the light, and she fell.

  The sun squatted on the horizon, shivering in the heat. Pearl kept looking at the sun, checking it, making sure it hadn’t gone sneaking off without her, leaving her in the dark.

  “You ain’t scared, are you, Pearl?” Tommy Burline sneered, and poked the shoe box in her face again. It was his momma’s shoe box because it was pink and had some long name she couldn’t read. His momma was gonna whip him stupid when she found out what he’d done with it. “Go on, if you ain’t scared. Go on!”

  Nobody else had done it, not Carleen Boggs nor Evvy Dodermann nor even Big Gordon Kingston, who wasn’t afraid of nothing in this life. Evvy had messed her panties and run home crying. Carleen hadn’t run but she had that quivery look to her face, like she might sit down in the dirt and wail but hadn’t decided when.