and his barbells on a thick wool rug. His dog, an old mutt the color of caramel that answers to Sandy, pants and wags her tail in a frenzy of joy as her master runs his hands all over her paunchy body.
“You surf?” I ask, noticing a large surfboard, yellowed like a smoker’s teeth, propped up next to the armoire and another, bright turquoise, near the door.
“Yeah.”
I nod. Usually, I find surfers to be a bit of a turn-off; California clichés generally make me want to heave. In this case, I can’t even work up to a sarcastic remark. Even surfing seems cool on him. “It’s a sweet place,” I say, stuffing my hands into my pockets.
“Oh, yeah? You sound surprised.”
“Well…” I shrug. “I’d never heard of a yurt. The way you described it—I mean, its Mongolian origins and all—I was picturing some yak skins stretched across a driftwood frame.”
He laughs. I like his laugh very much. It’s throaty and resonant, sexy as hell. Is it my imagination, or is it tinged now with just a shade of nerves?
“Here.” He hands me Medea, who is back in her box, probably puffed up again and pissed off. At least we did her the favor of leaving the motorcycle at Nick’s and getting him to drive us out here. She couldn’t reasonably be asked to put up with another death-defying ride, especially after all the drinks we’ve had. It was ten miles, easily, and though they were spouting off names at me—“Empire Grade” and “Bonny Doon”—I’ve no idea where we are. You’d think I might be wary, given my habitual fixation on mass murderers, but nine hours of continual conversation have allayed those fears. If Clay Parker is in any way homicidal or rape-inclined, then my instincts are so terrible I deserve to be strangled and cannibalized.
“I’ll put Sandy out so we can let Medea get her bearings.”
“Are you sure? It’s her—” I struggle to remember its name “—yurt, after all.”
“Oh, she’s dying to get out. It’s no problem.” He slips out the door with her. The yurt walls are canvas-thin, so I can hear him saying soft, reassuring doggy things to her as they crunch around in the grass.
I coax Medea out of her big-haired, frantic state again, though she can’t stop smashing her nose against all the canine-scented furniture with a mad, panicked expression. “Yes,” I murmur, trying to make my voice as warm and reassuring as Clay’s. “We’re in dog territory, babe. Don’t worry—they don’t all bite.”
The weird thing—I mean the really weird thing—is that this afternoon-into-night-into-wee-hours with Clay has got me pursuing lines of logic I’ve never dared pursue before. Not even with Jonathan. Studying Clay’s face in the dim, reddish glow of the Saturn Café, I found myself wondering what a baby would look like with his eyes and my mouth. God, is this my baby clock talking? I spent a whole semester of Fem. Theory my sophomore year writing papers on the topic: how the patriarchy created the baby clock mythology to con women into surrendering to mommyism. At the time I was twenty-one, giddy with the right to get drunk in seedy bars and swivel my hips against this boy and that to frantic techno rhythms. What did I know about biology, except that beer gets you drunk and sex makes you—momentarily at least—something like happy? Now, eight years later, I find myself contemplating how a stranger’s eyes would look in my theoretical baby’s face over a plate of Chocolate Madness.
What do we know about each other? Hardly anything. I know he’s an atheist, owns a record store, graduated from Berkeley and was a drummer in a punk-rock band called Poe when he was fifteen. He knows I love theater, directing more than acting, that I grew up in Calistoga and went to Austin in search of cowboys. Hardly enough résumé fodder has been revealed to warrant the swapping of spit, let alone genetic material. So how can I explain these freakishly domestic fantasies streaking though my psyche like shooting stars?
“You two okay?” Both Medea and I spin round at the sound of his voice. “Still a little skittish, huh?”
“Who, her or me?”
“Both.” 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.
“Smells so good out here,” I say.
“Yeah,” 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?”
“Yeah, 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.”
“I think everything’s different in the presence of stars. Food tastes different—”
“Different, how?”
“Saltier, 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?”
“Mmm-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.
“Wait 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.
“You see? Sounds different under the stars, right?” he asks.
“I haven’t heard it any other way,” I say. “How can I be sure?”
“You’re not a Greg Brown fan?”
With your mother’s burden and your father’s stare, with your pretty dresses and your
