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his voice. “Still a little skittish, huh?”
    â€œWho, her or me?”
    â€œBoth.” He’s standing in the doorway, keeping Sandy from entering by gently nudging her away now and then with one leg. “Come out here, will you? I want you to see something.”
    For a fraction of a second I hesitate— Dismembered Arm and Paw Found in Remote Woods —but then I remember Clay’s story about adopting a baby raccoon when he was eight. He named it Zorro and fed it with a bottle, for Christ’s sake. Would a guy like that dismember a girl like me? I extricate Medea from my lap carefully and follow him outside.
    He leads me down a short path in the dark, mumbling, “Watch your step.” When we get to the middle of a broad, grassy meadow that smells of yarrow and pine, he looks up and I follow his gaze. Oh, my God. Above us, the stars stretch out in luxurious multitudes, crowding the sky with a million pinpricks of light. I feel suddenly minuscule and happy. I think briefly of Jonathan’s bus packed with all my belongings, reduced now to a charred pile of ash sweeping off on the night breeze. Out here, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. I’ll figure it out. Dwarfed by the enormous carpet of stars, I take a deep breath for the first time in days.
    â€œSmells so good out here,” I say.
    â€œYeah,” he says. “I think it’s the stars, myself.”
    I squint at him in the dark, wanting my eyes to adjust so I can study his eyes. “The stars have a smell?”
    â€œYeah, I think so. Don’t you?”
    I look back up at the layers and layers of them, so vast they surprise me all over again. “Never occurred to me.”
    â€œI think everything’s different in the presence of stars. Food tastes different—”
    â€œDifferent, how?”
    â€œSaltier, I guess. And sweeter. Music’s different, too—more dreamy, and lonelier. More—” he pauses, and I can see his silhouette clearly now; his face is tilted upward “—more longing in it. And everything takes on this particular scent. You smell it, don’t you?”
    â€œMmm-hmm,” I say, thinking he’d make a damn fine Romeo if he were ten years younger—he’s got that dreamy-melancholy thing going.
    â€œWait a second,” he says, and sprints back the way we came. In a minute I hear music floating on the warm September air: acoustic guitar and a melody I’ve never heard, but it’s like I already know it and love it. Some things are like that; sushi tasted totally familiar the first time I put it in my mouth. My parents were choking on the wasabi and I just went on chewing with the gentle smile of someone coming home.
    The man singing has one of those resonant, ragged, sexy voices that comes from someplace deep and cavernous in his smoke-filled lungs.
    With your measured abandon and your farmer’s walk, with your “let’s go” smile and your bawdy talk.
    Clay returns, and he stands so close to me that our arms touch.
    â€œYou see? Sounds different under the stars, right?” he asks.
    â€œI haven’t heard it any other way,” I say. “How can I be sure?”
    â€œYou’re not a Greg Brown fan?”
    With your mother’s burden and your father’s stare, with your pretty dresses and your ragged underwear…
    â€œI could be converted,” I say, smiling. “I’ve just never heard him before.”
    â€œNever heard of—my God. Talk about deprived.”
    The skin of his arm feels very warm against mine. Hot, in fact. I lean slightly toward him so that more of my skin touches more of his.
    â€œIt’s good you’re not set in your ways,” he says. “If there’s one thing I’m evangelical about, it’s music.” It’s a good thing I refuse to analyze this; if I did, I’d hear the whispered implication that he plans to evangelize