For a long time there was pain, and nothing else in the blackness.  Then came a roaring sound, and a faint greenish light, growing slowly brighter.  While the pain was still the most important thing, Lily discovered at length that she could open her eyes a little.  She was looking through a tunnel and at the other end she could see leaves and branches.  Gradually, the roaring in her ears receded.  She began to hear other noises around its edges.  A bird sang somewhere nearby, and a dog was barking in the distance. Lily groaned.  Her head hurt so bad.  She seemed to be on her back with her left leg folded under her.  Her leg hurt, too, though nothing like her head.

     Where was she?  She rolled her head to the right to get a better notion.  Terrible idea.  The world went dark around the edges again, and it was some time before the daylight started coming back.  She stared at the rough surface that swam into focus.  It was ground, she decided.  Moving her eyes without shifting her head, she ran her eyes up the surface toward the sky.  A tree.  Bushes.  She must be in some kind woods, then.  Lily didn’t know why she should be the ground in the woods next to a big tree.  She didn’t think she had intended to be on the ground, though.

     Her leg was beginning to hurt more than her head.  Lily eased it out from under herself while trying to keep her head completely still.  The blackness flickered at the edge of her vision again, but didn’t close in. She straightened her leg and was rewarded with pins and needles.  At least the pins and needles were distracting. Finding she could wiggle her fingers, she reached toward her head to find out why it throbbed.  She touched her forehead gingerly.  There was a bump as big as a dinosaur egg right in the center, and it was wet for some reason.  She looked at her hand and her fingers were red with blood.  The pain made her feel faint again.  Blackness rushed in and she closed her eyes.

     I got to be smarter about this, Lily thought.  There must be some reason why I’m flat on my back in the middle of the woods with a huge, bloody bump on my head.  Maybe a dead branch fell on me.  Maybe I wasn’t watching where I was going and a live branch attacked me.  Maybe I was abducted by slimy green aliens in a UFO for medical experiments. Maybe I was skydiving and my parachute didn’t work quite right.  She rejected the last idea: she had never wanted to go skydiving and thought she would remember having changed her mind.  The aliens seemed unlikely too, unless she had been here all day: she knew alien abductions generally took place late at night.  That left vicious branches.  Lily opened her eyes again and looked up.  The tree looked healthy enough, so the dead branch theory had to be abandoned, but just above her, she could see a large live branch attached to the trunk.  Hah! she thought to herself.  I may be down, but I’m not hurt so much that I can’t think straight.

     Lily reached over to the tree and found a handhold in the bark.  Slowly, she pulled herself upright, using the tree to steady herself in case everything started going black again.  She nearly fainted three times in the process, and was glad she had something to hold onto.  At last she was sitting up.  She leaned against the trunk, her head pounding.  A few drops of wetness slid down her nose.  Wonder if I have my handkerchief in my pocket? she thought, between throbs.  My clothes are going to look very pretty if this keeps up.  She felt in her pocket and pulled out an old bandanna, which she dabbed at her forehead, trying not to press.  Damn, that dinosaur egg was tender!

     Time to find out where I am, she thought.  All she could see from her present position were brambles, oak trees and two little balls under the bushes to her right, one white and the other yellow.  She reached up to grasp the branch that had felled her and pulled herself to her feet.  She held on until she felt less dizzy, then turned to look around. 

     A bright green lawn stretched out as far as she could see, starting just a few feet beyond her oak tree.  She could see figures walking across the grass in the distance, carrying bags of some sort.  A memory tugged at the edge of her consciousness.  She saw a cart passing the figures.  One figure stopped, pulled something out of his bag and swung it.  The memory tugged harder.  Golf!  She was at a golf course for some reason.  That explained the two balls.  But Lily doubted she was at the course to play golf herself.  The memory pounced.  She had been looking for Kit! That was it!  He was supposed to be here!  She couldn’t really recall why she had been searching for him, but she did remember she had looked and looked without finding him.  Or maybe she had found him: she was beginning to think that maybe she had.  Ted too, which didn’t make any sense.  Why would Ted have been here?  Ted didn’t play golf.  Neither did Kit, for that matter.  Maybe she had just thought she’d found Kit when she ran headlong into the tree.  Kit was a lot like trees; wooden-headed as anything.  The look was wrong, though.

     The effort of thinking made Lily’s head throb harder, and she decided that Kit probably wasn’t here and she didn’t feel like seeing him anyway, not in this condition.  She certainly wasn’t ready to happen on Ted!  Taking care of her head seemed much more important.

     Lily vaguely recalled parking on the other side of the woods, so she turned her back on the golf course.  The golf balls caught her eye again and she bent over and picked up the yellow one.  This she regretted as soon as she tried to straighten up again.  Fortunately, the tree was still there to hold onto.

     When she felt steady once more, she slipped the golf ball into her pocket and tentatively stepped away from the tree.  The dizziness threatened, but not badly enough to make her stop.  Slowly, she made her way through the trees and brush, taking advantage of as many branches as she could to steady herself.  After an eternity of stumbling through brambles and stepping over fallen limbs, the woods thinned and Lily found herself by a narrow road.  No car, though.  She wondered where she had parked.  She didn’t remember which way she had gone before hitting the tree.

     Her forehead was dripping again.  Lily rolled the bandanna into a headband and gently tied it across the wound.  The bandage made her head hurt worse, but at least it wouldn’t be as messy.

     Eenie, meenie, minie, moe,  Lily thought.  Moe happened to point left, so she took that direction.  After a few minutes’ walk down the road, she rounded a bend and spotted the car parked off to the side.  She found the keys in her pocket and opened the door, catching sight of herself in the mirror as she got in.  What a mess!  She hoped that she was able to drive to the hospital.  “And the first thing I do after I see the doctor,” she vowed, “is go home and get some clean clothes.”  She didn’t think she had anything clean left in the back of the car.

     Now that she was back in the familiar old heap, Lily felt better, but she was still pretty weak.  She sat behind the wheel a long moment, trying to decide if she was able to drive and eventually decided she could.  The car started easily.  She eased back onto the pavement and drove along the little road until she came to a bigger one.  She thought she remembered passing the little road on her way as she had come in, so she turned right.  A short ways further she came to the double entrance gate.  Now she was sure where she was.  Her head continuing to throb, she made her way along Alameda de las Pulgas to Woodside Road, and from there to Redwood Hospital.

     The emergency room was crowded, and Lily could see she would have to wait a long time before anyone would see her.  The receptionist handed her a clipboard with some forms to fill out.  “Hurt head,” she wrote on the `Nature of Emergency’ line; “Passed out.”  The rest she filled out as best she could, using her imagination on the questions she didn’t understand, to kill time.  Ordinarily, this would have amused her, but she wasn’t in top form today.  She wished she felt well enough to do the forms justice.

     When she was finished, the receptionist took took the clipboard back without comment, and Lily returned to her seat nearby.  She waited patiently for a while, and when that didn’t work waited impatiently, thumbing rapidly through the ancient magazines and throwing them down on determining they didn’t contain anything interesting.  Hospital magazines rarely did: the good ones tended to get stolen.

     Lily was starting to think she was in good enough shape to leave, and had nearly decided to, when she heard herself mentioned in the room behind the receptionist’s window.  “Falandini?” a gravely voice intoned, “That sounds familiar for some reason.  Didn’t she come in last year with severe intestinal problems?”

     “No, that was a man,” a second, higher voice said.  “I seem to recall he claimed a Falandini was responsible, though.”

     Lily couldn’t believe her ears.  They were talking about Ted, and that terrible, disastrous last party at his house.  How dare they say such awful things about her?!

     “Oh, that’s right,” the first voice went on, fainter now.  “Guess it made me flash on old Sophie.  Now there was a dangerous old bird.  Wonder if this one’s any relation?”

     Furious, Lily jumped up and dashed over to the desk, ignoring the strenuous complaints of her head.  No one was there, but the sliding window was open, so she leaned over the counter as far as she dared, trying to spot the owners of the voices.  No one was in sight.  “It wasn’t my fault that Ted had to come here!” she yelled, in case they were still in earshot.  “And you leave my aunt out of it!”

     The receptionist came running into the office. “Hey!” she said, waving her arms in alarm.  “Please stay on the other side of the counter!”

     Lily slid back off the counter and dropped to the floor.  “But didn’t you hear what they were saying ...?”

     “Falandini?” a loud voice called out from the waiting room.

     She looked around and saw a short, efficient-looking male nurse standing in a door halfway back towards the waiting room entrance.  Lily left the reception desk and approached him.

     “Come with me,” the nurse said.  His name was Arnold Barnes, R.N., as Lily saw from his badge.  She wondered if he had been one of the people she had heard, but didn’t recognize the voice.  She followed him down a hall, and the nurse motioned her into an examination room.  “Just sit on the table,” he told her.  “I’ll be back in a minute.”  Then he left the room, leaving Lily alone with her thoughts.

     The mention of Ted had upset her.  She couldn’t seem to get away from him.  Or from the aftermath of the party, for that matter.  She wished she could see Ted again without him running away.  She was sure they could work out their differences, if he would just listen to her.  Why had he had to go get married, anyway?  It was very rash of him, and not very considerate, either.  Maybe she should leave here and tell him so.

     Her train of thought was interrupted by the door opening.  “So what’s the problem today?” Nurse Barnes asked as he entered the room and glanced down at the clipboard in his hand.

     Lily was surprised he could ask, since her dinosaur egg was perfectly obvious, and he was probably reading Lily’s forms anyway.  “I hurt my head,” she said.

     “I can see that.  What I need to know is how.  A fight? Car accident? Clumsiness?”

     “The last, I think.  I ran into a tree branch and it knocked me out for a while.”

     “You really have to watch those trees.  Don’t want to meet one in dark alley if you can avoid it.”  Nurse Barnes grinned at Lily.  She didn’t respond.  “Sorry, bad joke.  I’m sure it hurts a lot.  Let me get your bandage off and we’ll have a look at it.”  He walked around Lily and gently untied the bandanna.  She winced as the cloth tugged at her wound.

     “Mm, that tree did quite a number on you, all right,” Barnes said.  “This will sting a little,” he added, dabbing at the lump with an alcohol wipe.  “I think you’ll be okay, but I’m going to have the doctor take a look at you.”  The nurse walked out, dropping the clipboard in a box on the door as he went.  “He’ll be in to see you shortly,” he said as he closed the door.

     Lily waited for the doctor.  She tried to amuse herself with more ancient magazines from a wall rack, but just didn’t have the patience to read seven-year old articles on over-the-counter relief for dandruff, or how to build a fantasy playhouse for your pet in a single weekend.  Eventually the door opened and the doctor on duty stepped in.  Her badge identified her as Dr. Lupe Rafael.  “Hello--”  She looked down at the chart.  “--Lilian.  How are we today?”

     Lily blinked at her.  Everyone was asking her odd questions.  “I don’t know about you, but my head hurts.”  She looked at Dr. Rafael’s long black hair, pulled tightly back into a ponytail.  It certainly ought to hurt.

     Dr. Rafael stared at the clipboard again.  “You must have been moving at a good clip when you hit the tree.”  She bent over Lily’s head and felt around the dinosaur egg.  “How was the bicycle?”

     “Bicycle?  What bicycle?  I was on foot!” Either the questions were getting stranger or the pain was making her delirious.

     “Really?  We don’t often see a contusion like this in a running accident.”  She took an alcohol swipe from the supply counter and cleaned some more.  “Though it does happen from time to time.”

     The doctor poked and prodded.  “Looks like a superficial wound.  I don’t believe you have a concussion, which is what we worry about in cases like yours.”

     Lily was glad to hear that she hadn’t hurt herself too badly.  Just the same, all this poking and prodding made her feel like her head had a fatal wound.

     Dr. Rafael scribbled on a prescription form.  “Here’s something to help with the pain if your head hurts too badly,” she said, handing the paper to Lily.  “And it would be a good idea not to try anything strenuous for a while.”

     “What about driving?” asked Lily.

     “Not driving would also be a good idea.  You didn’t drive yourself here, did you?”

     “No, of course not,” Lily said hastily.  The doctor’s tone seemed to promise something dire if she had.

     “Good.  You should definitely have someone to drive you home.  And you should have a friend sit up with you at night in case it IS a concussion.  The chances are everything’s fine, but there have been instances of people going to bed with a bump and not waking up again.”

     Lily gulped.  The doctor seemed satisfied.  “Well, I think we’re about done here,” she said.  “Plan to be extra careful over the next day or so, and come back if the swelling gets worse, okay?”

     “Okay,” Lily promised, and the doctor departed, leaving her to puzzle over the mysterious squiggle on the prescription.  She hadn’t thought she wanted any pills until the exam; now a little help in the pain department sounded very good.

     Nurse Barnes finished cleaning up Lily’s head and put a real bandage over it.  “Stay away from trees for a while!” he warned Lily as she ushered her out of the examining room.

     “I will,” said Lily.

     A half an hour later, Lily was in the car, a bag of medicine in hand.  She felt dizzy again, but despite the warning about driving, she was sure she could drive herself home.  Hadn’t she gotten here okay?  Besides, she didn’t really want any of her friends finding out she’d been slugged by a tree.  Calling Kit was certainly out of the question!  He might be willing to drive her home, but he’d probably drive away with the car afterwards.

     Lily looked at herself in the rear view mirror.  The bandage was a nice addition to her dirty clothes; almost a fashion statement.  Perhaps she should go out!  By degrees, the real world melted away, and she saw herself lounging in a chair by one of the cafes in Portola Plaza.  It was a fashion shoot, and a bunch of photographers were milling around.  “Lean your head back, Ms. Falandini!  Now to the right.  Look over towards Radar Tower.  Perfect!  I think that captures the essence of the bandaged look.”  Flashes of light came from all the cameras.  “Now we want you to stand with your left foot on the running board of that dangerous looking big black car.”   The photographers dashed to get into place.  “Perfect!  Now lean back with your right arm across the windshield. That’s great!”

     A loud, strident noise recalled Lily to herself.  It had been sounding for some time.  She realized she had been using the horn as a pillow.  What a silly thing to do!  She tossed her head, and immediately felt nauseous.  She looked in the mirror again.  The fact of the matter was that she really needed to clean up.  She hoped she had clean clothes in the house.  She looked around the back seat, hoping to spot something she hadn’t already worn several times.  But she couldn’t even find a decent sock to slip over her left hand.   How could she appear in public without her sock?  Home it was, then, the sooner the better.

     The drive home took about fifteen minutes.  She hoped Kit had been stopping by her house every so often to check on things.  She also hoped he hadn’t picked this particular moment to stop by.  It would be nice to see Kit, but not now.  Maybe not even soon.

     Lily pulled up to her driveway.  She was gratified to find the familiar yellow stuccoed house about the same as it always was: the front door closed, no old bicycle in the drive, no Baby Dee waiting on the front walk for Kit, and therefore, no Kit.  That was a relief!  She took the clothes bag from the back seat, got out of the car, and walked to the front door.  The pane was still broken.  She really ought to fix it.  When she got the door open, she found a few letters on the floor.  There was a bigger pile of mail on the table in the dining room.  That meant Kit had been here at least once.  She flipped through the letters and catalogs.  Just the usual junk mail.  Wait -- a postcard from her parents!  She dropped the catalog she was holding to read it.

June 22

Dear Lily,

      Thought you might be interested to know that your cousin Ellen is getting married on July 13th to a fellow she met while traveling this spring.  The wedding will be here in Orland at 7:30 P.M.  If you haven’t gotten an invitation, we want to invite you as part of the family.  Hope you can make it.  We tried phoning you several times, but you must have been away, so we are sending this card.  I know Ellen will be glad to see you even though you haven’t been close for a long time.

Love,

Mom and Dad

     Lily shuffled through the mail again.  No, she didn’t see a wedding invitation, but that didn’t surprise her.  She hadn’t spoken with Ellen for years.  In fact, they hadn’t been close since they were very young.  Lily remembered Ellen as having long, pretty red hair.  At least, originally.  Lily had given her a haircut one day, and when she was done Ellen didn’t have hair anymore.  Aunt Louisa had been very angry with Lily and so had Uncle Maury.  Lily had tried gluing Ellen’s hair back on, but that only made Louisa madder, and after that she hadn’t been allowed to play with Ellen anymore.  She had always thought it rather hard of Aunt Louisa to keep them apart, although, come to think of it, Ellen had been pretty mad at Lily, too.  Lily wondered if Ellen really wanted to see her at the wedding.  All at once, she was afraid her cousin might feel about it like Ted had.  Maybe it would be better to stay home.

     Or would it?  Home was where you got gossiped about by doctors, shunned by lovers, mugged by trees, and nervous about cars.  Home was where dinosaurs laid their eggs on your forehead.  On days like this, home could even make Orland sound attractive.  Maybe it wouldn’t be better to stay home, Lily decided, whether Ellen liked it or not.  Suddenly home was the last place she wanted to be!

     It was funny how the mind changed.  One moment Lily would be dead certain she wanted one thing and the next, just as certain she wanted something else.  She remembered having come all the way from the mountains to see Kit: now she couldn’t imagine why.  All she had was a strong urge to leave town again as soon as possible.

     She dropped her parents’ card into a pocket of her bag.  The rest of the mail wasn’t worth looking at: Lily wanted to go.  She spent the next hour or so cleaning up, though she couldn’t properly wash her hair because of the bandage.  But clean clothes helped a great deal, as did a frozen dinner which she heated up and ate.  Yet, once she was done washing and eating, she felt exhausted.  Her head hurt again.  Lily took one of her pills and lay down on the sofa, and soon found herself nodding.  A little nap surely wouldn’t hurt.  Remembering Dr. Barnes’ warning, she wondered if she would wake up again, but at the moment it hardly seemed important.  She was almost roused by a stray thought about Kit: what if he came to check on the house while she slept?  But she was too sleepy to worry about it much, and drifted off into sleep.

     The next thing Lily knew, a light was shining in her eyes.  She opened them: it was sunlight coming in the window, and from a very different direction than it had when she lay down.  She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock on the wall.  Eleven o’clock!  That couldn’t be right.  Shouldn’t it be dark out?  Lily forced herself up from the sofa and went to the window.  No, it was definitely daylight out there, and morning light, at that. She couldn’t believe she had slept.  She might not make it to the wedding if she didn’t get moving!

     Throwing on an old pair of cut-offs and a green and orange tie-dyed tee-shirt, Lily went to the kitchen to scrounge something to eat.  Little in the fridge looked good, so she ate the leftovers from dinner.   After finishing her meal, she ran around the house grabbing things for the trip.  She felt she should go prepared with some nice clothes for the wedding.  Maybe her red mini-dress would be nice.  Certainly a fresh cummerbund or two, not to mention extra socks.  She repacked her bag with the fresh clothes and gathered a few other items for the trip, including an ancient collection of Hemingway stories and a slightly newer copy of a Sturgis Antelope novel Joe had once loaned her.  She even packed some cans of soup and a couple of extra fishing flies.  Then she eyed her in-line skates.  Should she take them?  It felt like an eternity since she had been skating, and she had been dreaming of rolling down the streets ever since Markleeville.  Still, she wasn’t going to be in skating country for a while.  She sighed and decided to forget about the skates for now.

     Lily was dying get out of the house again, now that she was awake, clean and certain the house was still here and doing well under Kit’s care. She wondered again if she should see him, not really wanting to.  Still, if she didn’t, he would probably notice she had been here and wonder why she hadn’t contacted him.  What if he decided to stop paying the bills?  That could be messy.  She didn’t know when she’d be back, and would hate to have the telephone company turn off her phone.  On the other hand, she thought, I might not get out of here if I visit Kit.  He’ll probably want to chat.  He’ll probably want the car, too, and then how will I get to Orland?  She looked at the clock.  Eek!  A quarter after twelve!  No time to see him anyway.  Lily threw a sop to her conscience by hastily scribbling him a note.  Being in a practical frame of mind, she asked him to fix the window pane.

     It was time to go.  Lily picked up her travel bag and headed for the door.  On the way, she spotted the pill bottle on the floor by the sofa.  She picked up the container and slipped it in her pocket.  On impulse, she dropped the golf ball in her pocket as well.  You never know when things might come in handy, she thought.  One last look and she pulled the door shut behind her.

     Driving north along Bay Road, Lily remembered she hadn’t talked to Marika yet.  “Oh, damn!” she cried.  “I’ll never hear the end of it if she finds out I came and left without seeing her!”  But was she presentable enough?  She looked at herself in the mirror, remembering the bump for the first time since she’d woken up.  It didn’t hurt much any more.  The embarrassing egg was still there, she suspected, but with the lovely bandage concealing it, perhaps it didn’t matter.  She’d go!

     Lily passed the turn to 101 and continued up Bay Road towards the Pacific Sock Exchange.  Wouldn’t Marika be surprised at seeing Lily so soon after they had talked!  She might be disappointed to learn Lily was leaving again, of course, but there was nothing to be done about that: Lily had a wedding to go to.

     She pulled up to the curb in front of the shop, slipped a bright green sock over her left hand, jumped out of the car, and burst through the front door.  It jangled behind her.  Lily was in luck: Ruth and Marika were both in, Ruth behind the counter and Marika straightening an unruly pile of socks at the other side of the store.  Both gaped at her with their mouths open and their eyes wide.  “Stunning, aren’t I?” Lily grinned.

     Ruth was the first to recover.  “What’n the name of Hallelujah are you doing here?  Not here to work, obviously!”

     “Uh, no,” Lily admitted, “Not today, anyway.”

     “What did you do to your head, Lily?” Marika cried.  She ran over to her and stared at the bandages.

     Lily moped.  “You weren’t supposed to notice that,” she said.  “If you must know, a tree fell on my head.  Either that or it was aliens who abducted me to perform bizarre medical experiments.  Hey, look at me!  Alien abduction victim!  Details at eleven!”

     “Huh!” Ruth commented dryly.  “Knowing you, you met a pothole while out skating.”

     Lily bared her teeth at Ruth in a mock snarl.

     “Seriously, Lily, are you okay?” Marika asked.  She looked worried.

     “I think so.  I might have a concussion.”

     “Omigod!  How did it happen?  The truth, now!”

     “Oh, I was trying to surprise Kit and I ran into a tree.”  Lily dug the pill bottle and golf ball out of her pocket.  “Now I’m on drugs!” she said.

     “Oh?  What kind of drugs are you hiding in that golf ball?” asked Ruth, her eyebrows arched.  She had a puckish look on her face.

     “The kind that will help me bounce off the walls, of course.”  Lily hurled the ball to the floor.  It bounced so hard it hit the ceiling, narrowly missing the light fixture, and rebounded back toward the counter where Ruth was standing. Ruth dove out of the way as Marika, who had quick reflexes, neatly snatched the ball out of the air.  She put it in her own pocket.

     “Hey!” exclaimed Lily.

     “Hey yourself,” Marika said firmly.  “Can’t let it get away like that.  That’s a dangerous thing to have around, Lily.”

     “Sorry, I didn’t know it was loaded!” Lily grinned.  “Well, I’m sure you could use the excitement.  Bet this place has been quiet without me.”

     Ruth emerged from under the counter.  “I was just telling Marika the same thing in different words.  `The old shop sure is a lot safer without Lily here,’ I said.”

     “Oh come on, Ruth, you missed me, didn’t you?”

     “Naw.”

     “Don’t listen to her, Lily: she did too,” said Marika.  “And you’re right: it has been quiet.”

     “‘Course it has,” Ruth grumped.  “Lily brings in most of the customers these days, or ought to.  Something tells me she ain’t coming back yet.”

     “Yeah, you’re right, Ruth.  I thought I was, but I got a second-hand invitation to my cousin’s wedding back home in Orland.”

     “Well, it’s just lucky for you summer’s a slow time.  Might have to let you go if you kept taking off another time of year.”

     “Oh, Ruth,” Marika said plaintively, “You couldn’t let Lily go!”

     “You hush,” Ruth said to Marika, then turned back to Lily.  “Have any idea at all when you’ll be back?”

     “I’ll see how I feel after the wedding,” Lily pouted.  She knew Ruth was just getting her goat, and tried not to let it bother her, but it did.  Ruth was always making her feel bad about doing what she wanted.

     “Oh Lily, Ruth, stop it!” Marika sighed in exasperation.  “Why do you have to keep baiting each other?”

     “Got a business to run,” Ruth said, implacably.  “Can’t run a business if you never know when folks’re gonna show up for work.”

     “Oh, poop!” said Lily.

     Ruth’s mouth hardened into a grim line.

     “What don’t you just answer her question, Lily, dear?” Marika broke in, hastily.

     Lily unbent a little.  “Sorry, but I can’t say yet.  I promise I won’t be gone forever.  I just need to take care of some personal business.”

     “Like Kit Bean?” Marika teased.

     “No,” Lily replied shortly, feeling somewhat guilty. 

     “Ah, so you still have the big black car do you, O Evil Woman?” Marika asked.

     “Yes, I still have the car and yes, it’s fine and no, I haven’t discussed it with Kit,” Lily snapped.  She felt herself sliding off the high of seeing Marika and Ruth.  She needed to get out before she went too low, and talking about Kit just now would put her on an express elevator going down.

     “Sorry I asked.  Do you want me tell Kit that his car is okay?”

     “Yeah, tell him that.  Tell him everything is fine.  Tell him to keep paying my bills.  He’s probably got the old car running again anyway.”

     Lily glanced at the clock on the far wall.  The day was slipping away. Definitely time to leave.  “I have to go if I want to get to the wedding in time,” she said.  Abruptly, she walked over to the display table at the far end of the counter and scooped up a small pile of socks.  “Could you put these on my account, Ruth?  I’m fresh out of both cash and socks.”

     Ruth snorted, disgruntled at not having dragged a commitment out of her.  “Yeah, yeah, Lily, whatever you want,” she muttered.  She pulled open a drawer and opened a ledger book.  “I’ll put you down for eight pairs of the sale socks.  That about right?”

     “Sounds fine.  Thanks, Ruth.”  Lily grabbed the pill bottle off the counter with her free hand and jammed it in her pocket.  “Sorry to snap, Marika,” she added as she pushed on the door.

     Marika ran to Lily and hugged her as she was halfway out the door.  “It’s okay,” she told her.  “Good luck!”

     “Thanks, Rika.”  Lily gave a one armed hug in return, the other arm being occupied with the bundle of socks.

     “Send us a card, brat!” Ruth called out.

     Lily strode to the car and yanked the door open.  She tossed the socks in the back, strewing them all over the seat, jumped in, and put the key in the ignition.  The engine started with a roar.  Ruth and Marika waved from the shop door, and she waved back.  What would she do without friends like them?  It was almost worth coming home just to see them.

     Lily popped the clutch and the tires screeched. The car jerked forward and she was on the road again.