I laid the feather on it. The little poof of white rode up and down, up and down.

I’ve driven their car before, once to get Gretchen to a lecture when her taxi didn’t arrive, and another time to pick up a package. I’d volunteered as an acolyte and friend. It seemed like a long time ago. I shifted the seat for my shorter legs. I always put it back when I returned, to be ready for Harry.

I turned left onto Barton and stopped at the light at the bottom of Grange Road. Six other cars idled with me. A dozen pedestrians flowed past on both sides of the street.

A pair of women walked up Barton together, from out of Wolfson College. They were dressed up. One wore gold, the other white. Knee-length dresses and feminine coats. Gloves. The one in white had a veil on her head, a short one, grazing her shoulders. Her hair was down. They both carried flowers. They were arm in arm, like European girls. Like Therese and Annick. They were heading toward the river.

It was Alice. Today was Dr. Keene’s wedding. I’d forgotten.

They crossed the road in front of me. The light turned green. I went. What else could I do? There were cars behind me. There was nothing for it but to go forward.

Alice was so beautiful that I cried.

CHAPTER 12

I woke up. It was dark and the clock said four. In winter, a dark four could be a.m. or p.m. and I didn’t know.

I still had all my clothes on under the covers. My jeans felt stiff, like casts on my legs, and pinched my stomach. I tried to swing my legs over the side, but there was friction against the bedclothes.

I was still wearing shoes.

“What the fuck?” I said out loud. I kicked, hard, until the covers ended up on the floor. They sucked one of my shoes with them, and I had to crawl around down there and stick my arm into the tangle of blanket and sheet to get it back out. It was an awful lot of fucking work just to get out of bed.

I got dressed and went outside. The long line of twinkle lights across the shops were on. People bustled. So, four p.m. December shoppers from the villages were wide from the bags they carried. There wasn’t room on the sidewalk for all of us; I got bumped on both sides. I put my hand on my cheek and shivered. How long had I slept?

My jacket wasn’t warm enough. I didn’t need one in California. I shouldn’t need one here either; it’s not like it ever snows. The only snow I got I’d had to make myself, little scraps of paper. The white Christmas reputation that England has is Victorian. You’d know that if you think about it. Those British-people-skating scenes on cards always have long dresses and muffs and sleighs. You don’t get snow here now, except maybe one day a year. It snowed once last year, and it didn’t stick or even slush. It hit the street and melted immediately. You could watch it happen but it didn’t stay and pile up. Which makes it not really snow, not the snow that I dreamed about when I was a kid. Snow is only snow when it’s accumulated. Snow is what happens after it’s hit the ground. The falling is just the way that it gets there.

It’s like a guy who touches you at a party isn’t really a boyfriend. It’s not like you can tell people the next day, He’s my boyfriend. Because he’s not, not until you see what sticks.

Nick looked upset. Not in my head; Nick wasn’t in my head. He was in a car at the intersection.

I was stopped at the corner with the flower shop. I was flanked by a window of bright living things, and the doorway was like this halo over me. Flat brass flowers were embedded in the sidewalk all up and down this road, scattered like they’d grown up through the concrete by accident. Someone had designed them and cast them and pressed them in at random, all the way from here to beyond the river. God, it was beautiful.

I think he saw me. He looked right in my direction, but he didn’t act like he saw me. There were other people around, so maybe he didn’t. He wasn’t driving. Someone else was driving. It was a woman. She drove the car through the intersection and on down Chesterton Road.

I leaned back against the shop door. Nick. He wasn’t gone. None of it had happened.

How much the fuck did I drink last night that I dreamed all that? Right?

I only needed to figure out how far back it all went.

I almost ran. I was so sure of what I’d find, I wanted to run. But I didn’t, because of the narrow sidewalks and all those fancy shopping bags hanging from everyone’s hands. So I kind of skipped and half jumped around, jogging but not really jogging, you know? I almost tripped over a busker’s bucket of coins.

The gates were closed. Of course they would be-Monday. Museums close on Mondays because they’re open on weekends. I didn’t rattle the gates; I didn’t need to. The window I was looking for was farther down the building. There-between the main stairs and the handicapped entrance. Over the giant Henry Moore. There. That window there.

Three Chinese vases, each as big as a toddler. I wrapped my fingers around the iron bars of the fence to hold myself up.

None of it had happened. None.

It was Christmas. It was presents and snowflakes and cards with prints of Victorian skaters. I hadn’t fucked it up with Nick; he wasn’t gone. Maybe I hadn’t even met him yet. If the vases hadn’t been shattered, I hadn’t even met Polly yet. I was still nineteen. I was young. I was happy. I was still a kid.

What a fucked-up dream. What the fuck did I eat last night? I had curry or something or a street vendor sausage with hot sauce. Right? What a fucked-up…

I’d wait till they opened. I had to go in. Maybe I could put my hands on the vases, just like a stroke or a pet, and no one would notice. They wouldn’t have motion detectors, right? It’s not like paintings, right? Because there isn’t a guard on those stairs. And the vases aren’t that old. They’re not even that valuable. Just to me. I just wanted to touch them, like, to say “thank you.” I wanted to draw them. I didn’t have my sketchbook, but the front desk gives out these packets to kids who ask for them. They have paper and colored pencils and even a little sharpener. I needed to draw those vases.

I’ve been waiting, like, my whole teenaged life for this. For something to draw. For something that’s mine. For something that means something to me so much that when I draw it it’s more than a stupid still-life or landscape or portrait that everyone says is amazing just because it’s recognizable. Everything I’ve done up to now has been praised for looking like real life, but what good is it to just draw what everyone can see anyway? The whole point of art is that it shows the looker something that they wouldn’t have seen otherwise. But you can’t make that happen. You can’t make yourself have something to say.

There are pictures that I drew when I was little, in the margins of books. It took forever for the library to get complaints about them, because they looked really good. They looked like stuff that was supposed to be there. Finally the librarian turned into fucking Nancy Drew and figured out that it was me. She just looked at who had checked out all those books. And she arranged a conference with my parents and told them that I’m an artist. I’m a fucking artist. Because my faces look like faces. It’s such a fucking low standard. Are they good faces? Are they interesting faces? Do they tell you anything or make you feel something? Do they do something?

This librarian told my parents that I’m an artist because why? Because I draw hands with five fingers each, and I know the difference between an eye in front view and an eye in profile? Big fucking deal. An artist draws a face that stops you. Fuck, an artist doesn’t even need a face. There’s a Degas in the Fitz that’s just a hand, a sculpture of a hand. How would you feel if you held your hand like that, cocked back with crooked fingers? If you put your hand like that, everything else follows: You’re angry. All he needed was a hand to fully depict anger. That’s what an artist does. He takes something completely inadequate-like a single body part if you’re Degas. And you make-what? You make something that stops people. Something that has more in it than can fit. Art is a fucking clown car. Right? It’s something with more in it than anyone else would be able to fit.