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night she’s looking forward to. Not a month she’s looking forward to. But the four thousand bucks, yes—more godsend than windfall. And thesolitude. She could stay up in the empty room, say she’s sick. A migraine. She closes the closet door on her few things and looks around at the nothing that is not there. The nothing that is.
    Three teenagers fill the car, a battered Civic hatchback, pretty much to bursting. Jason gives her a quick glance as she opens the door; the other two stare straight ahead. The young know: eye contact contaminates.
    “Perfect—so, I think I’ll take my own car,” Ivy says. “I’ll follow you.”
    All three of them nod. Then the girl in the front (Elle?) unfolds herself, plucks a bag from between the seats, and scrambles out. “I’ll go with you, so you don’t get lost.”
    More good manners. Ivy is a bit surprised, but nods. “I’m Ivy Sage,” she says.
    “I know,” the girl says. “I’m L. The letter L.” She looks around for the car.
    Ivy points to her very old Volvo, slumped beside Ann’s new Subaru. “Are you wearing anything precious?”
    L looks down to check her clothes. “Guess not,” she says. But she is in unrelieved black.
    “Because the dog hair is dreadful. I have to get it cleaned out. I was dog-sitting all summer and I still haven’t faced up to it.”
    After a look at the fur-snowed seat, L takes off her black wool coat and puts it on inside out, cream satin lining gleaming in the streetlight. She waves to the boys and slides, or satin-glides, in beside Ivy.
    “The letter L, that’s unusual.”
    L looks blank. Bored? Ivy can’t tell. She snaps her seatbelt buckle, waits for L to snap hers. They trundle off in convoy down the street, and L’s nice manners reassert themselves. “My mother—her name’s Della—called me Ella, as in Cinder, but that seemed like an error in judgement, so then for a while she said I was named after Elle Macpherson. Which is crazy. I used to say it was El, short for Electra.”
    “At least in the morning,” Ivy quips. Then, at L’s raised eyebrow, “ Mourning Becomes Electra , a play I did when I was young. Never mind.” Sad to be old, Ivy thinks. Nobody gets her jokes. Well, they are not good jokes. She drives.
    L points. “Down here, left at the lights—so anyway, my mother’s crazy.” She gives an indulgent hoot for her crazy mother. (Ivy laughs too, in honour of her own.) “So we sent away to have it changed officially, butit turns out she never registered me properly at the hospital, so I’m Baby Girl Belville. Talk about a stripper name. I’m tempted to leave it like that.”
    “Well, yes! Are you in drama?” she asks L.
    “Orion is. Jason and I are painting the sets. We’re in visual.”
    Too bad. Ivy needs a few friends. Burton is such a weasel. Four thousand bucks.
    “That’s the house,” L says. A big old pillared place, front porch bulging out. Too many cars already parked along the street. Orion zips the Civic into a dubious spot, half-over someone’s driveway.
    Ivy pauses for L to hop out, saying, “You go in with the guys. I’ll find a spot.” She drives happily down the block into the dark. A few extra minutes before she has to be public.

(L)
    “Maybe she needs to toke up or something hippie,” Orion says, watching the tail lights of the Volvo diminish. “Chew nicotine gum. Chant.”
    “Light a sweetgrass, do a mantra, man.”
    The boys think they are very funny. “I like her,” L says.
    “Ivy, though?” Jason says. “Like, Soulcalibur .” Orion laughs, loud in the darkness.
    L bats at the dog hair on her coat lining and turns it right side out. Black again, she climbs the half-moon porch steps, not kicking the pumpkins all to hell, though that would feel good.
    Orion and Jason trip along behind her on big feet, gawky. L is so glad not to be male.
    Newell Fane is coming, he’s probably already there. She doesn’t want the flutter in her belly when she thinks about him,