"We do." She rose slowly and flipped through the albums that Amber had borrowed from AhnRee. "Night music," she said, putting it on the stereo. Amber was smiling broadly and wiggling her toes.
"Ice cream," she said. Willow remembered that she had to work in the morning.
"Bedtime for me," she said. Amber promised to do the dishes.
"Great dinner," Art said.
She closed the porch door behind her and stepped out of her clothes, feeling the cool night air on her skin. She stretched, reaching high with her fingers, and then slid her hands appraisingly down her sides and hips. This feeling of aloneness, this new sense of herself, wasn't so bad. Whatever it was, it was real. She pulled a blue broadcloth nightshirt over her head and lay in bed, drifting away from the muffled tenor sax, out toward the trees and the summer night. The quiet lured her, not so much for itself, although it was wonderful, but for what might arise within it.
In the morning, Art's truck was gone; Amber was nowhere to be seen; and the dishes were dry, upside down in neat piles. Willow ate a bowl of cold cereal with milk and then rode into town. The first thing she did at Ann's was to make a pot of coffee. Drinking too much wine gave her a headache, but dope left her head filled with a dull cloudiness that drove her nuts. It didn't hurt, but she couldn't think. It was as if she'd watched a dumb television show all night. "Dumb, dumb, dumb," she sang. "I'm dumb, dumb, dumb-deedoo-dumb, dumb, dumb. Where's my bass man?" she asked the coffee pot. "There we go," she said as coffee began running into the Silex pot. "Dumb, dumb, deedoo."
"So it's a canary I hired?"
"Tweet. What are you doing up?"
"Couldn't sleep—smelled the coffee. We had a late delivery; see if you can get the stuff out before it gets busy."
"Tweet, tweet." Ann acted grumpy, was grumpy, especially early in the day, but there was no edge to it. The feeling was directed more at herself. Willow did what she was told without resentment, agreeing with Ann's pronouncements whenever possible. Ann wasn't around that much. The whole idea was that Willow would open the Deli and let her sleep.