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box—whom she always pretended to know, and who always waved back eagerly as if he knew her too—wound down the cul-de-sac to the Blanks’ lengthy horseshoe driveway, and parked her car before the big white colonnade of their French Colonial home, she was past the trials of the morning. The day held promise, and the world did too.

 
    III
    On a Saturday two weeks later, Vivienne’s alarm rang at nine. She worked five days a week at the store, and in order to make her days off feel full, Vivienne imposed order. Rising by ten was essential to this. From her window draped in gathered floral curtains, she enjoyed the view of an old reaching pin oak. Her most luxurious moments of the day were often spent watching gray squirrels scamper along its limbs; the tree was their on-ramp to the roof. If she slept late, she missed her time looking out the window. But if she kept her eyes open after the first alarm, she had forty-five minutes to lie in the fractured sunlight and snuggle into her duvet—Katherine kept the townhouse at sixty-eight degrees in the spring and even cooler in the summer—and watch the goings-on of the tree. She’d suctioned a hummingbird feeder to the window, but it hadn’t attracted any hummingbirds yet. Maybe they’d come in deeper summer.
    She could usually guess the weather by how much condensation was dripping from the pane. Today it was sopping wet, but the room was unseasonably cold, so it was possible it was a less humid day than the window let on. Her thoughts wandered around what clothes to pack for the Memorial Day party, her goals being to attract Bucky and to look better than the other girls. She reproached herself a little for this thought. Vivienne was aware, in her heart more than her mind, that she didn’t have to try so hard, but this didn’t stop her. After all, she’d been an active participant for as long as she could remember. It was a way of giving her mind immediate purpose. Bucky would pick her up in a few hours.
    She curled up on her side and hugged her knees. The squirrels were tearing up and down the oak. Katherine seemed to be out. There was no vacuum running, no yard blower blazing outside, and no ring of Katherine’s voice directing the hands operating the machines. The house quiet, Vivienne closed her eyes and thought of Bucky. She narrowed her mind hard to clearly see him and the parts of his body she knew best. His rough hands, firm calves. She narrated in her mind the nights to come at the ranch and what she would wear that would lead him to say what she wanted to hear and to touch her how she wanted to be touched. The weekend’s outfits came to her as if in a dream.
    She nestled her computer in her lap on the bed and checked her email, even though the only people who ever emailed her on Saturdays were the credit-card company, Neiman Marcus, and Waverly. She replied to Waverly’s pronouncement that the Memorial Day party was going to be SO FUN. Next, with the usual bad feeling in her stomach, she checked her bank account. Today the balance was three hundred fifty dollars, more than she’d expected but over budget for the month. There was still a week left until June, and she’d already spent more than twelve hundred dollars, four hundred dropped yesterday on a dress for the weekend’s party, at a little shop with an unpronounceable name Waverly had discovered near the Galleria.
    She sank her chin into her palms and calculated. The boutique would owe her about three hundred dollars next week. She’d probably be fine as long as she avoided expensive dinners and shopping trips—easy enough to do in theory. The dinners were more problematic than shopping, due to the element of group consensus. If six people wanted to get dinner, for example, even at some moderately priced place where drinks just added up, her choices, unless Bucky was there, were to go home for the night, not eat, or pretend she could