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me.
    â€œThis song’s been haunting me all day,” he says. “I thinkit might be about you. Tell me the truth, Greg Brown’s in love with you, right?”
    â€œCan’t get anything past you,” I say, but now I want to shut up so I can hear the song and find out what Clay thinks of me. I can only catch certain lines now and then, though, between the crickets and the breeze playfully tousling the pines.
    With your pledge of allegiance and your ringless hand, with your young woman’s terror and your old woman’s plans…
    â€œUh-oh. I just realized,” Clay says. “I’m doing it again.”
    â€œHmm?” I’m still straining to hear the song. Will your children look at you and wonder, about this woman made of lightning bugs and thunder…take in what you can’t help but show with your name that is half yes, half no.
    â€œI’m being a DJ.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œI do this when I’m nervous—try to talk through music. Not even my music. Pathetic.”
    â€œI don’t think it’s pathetic,” I say. “I think it’s sweet.”
    He turns slightly, and so do I, and our arm contact becomes my breasts fitting warmly against his chest, and now the sound of his breathing is so close it blends with everything else: the shimmery pine needles and the cricket-frog chorus and the lyrics I can’t quite follow anymore.
    He bends down slightly, the shadow of his face moving toward mine, but instead of the expected searching lips, I feel his teeth biting down gently on my lower lip. I suck in my breath.
    â€œI wanted to do that for hours,” he says, his voice thick in his throat.
    â€œBite me?”
    â€œMmm. Taste you.”
    This guy’s not normal, I think, and a montage of our day unfurls inside my brain with the frenetic pace of time-lapse photography: the bus exploding into ribbons of orange and yellow, the kaleidoscope of the pool balls at the Owl Club,Nick and his jelly-smudged Ramones shirt, Clay feeding me calamari with his fingers. His mouth closes on mine now, and I can taste the day there, the effervescent weirdness of it, the unshakable sensation that I’m being marked by every minute.
    You won’t remember the half-open door, or the train that won’t even stop there anymore, for you.

CHAPTER 7
    D awn. Sky is a crazy electric blue. Slivers of it appear when the grass-scented breeze lifts the airy curtains and reveals the morning in triangular slices. I flip over and notice for the first time the circular skylight. Human beings are made for yurts, I think. “Stars make things taste saltier and sweeter.” You won’t remember the half-open door. Clay is positioned in a slightly diagonal tilt; one leg is draped over mine, lips slightly parted as he snores a soft, wheezing prayer to the sleep gods. Medea’s here, curled up close to my head on the foreign pillow, and Dog—what’s her name? Cindy? no, Sandy—is curled up at our feet. Medea opens one eye, checks out proximity of Dog, goes back to sleep. I should be shocked at abruptly finding myself in this tranquil, domestic tableau.
    Nothing has ever seemed more natural.
    I follow Medea’s lead and collapse back into dreams.
    Â 
    Knock knock knock. Knock knock knock.
    Who’s drumming? Jesus, California hippies for you. Always beating their bongos…
    Knock knock knock. Knock knock.
    â€œClay? You awake?” A woman’s voice. Edgy. Irritated.
    My eyes pop open. Friend? Has Friend come to visit?
    â€œClay? Come on, you there? I need your help.” Softer now, asking, “Can I come in?”
    I look over at Clay, who is still in the position I saw him in last: stretched corner to corner across the bed, mouth open, snoring. I poke his arm urgently. No response.
    â€œListen, I know you must be in there, hon.”
    Hon?
    â€œI know I said I’d respect your privacy, but the