"It just had to be done, all right?" Franklin says crankily, a death look in his eyes. He has been very intense and angry since he abandoned the Trailer Park Rogues. He is playing in Jenny's band now. They are called Moonlight. He denies that he really belongs to the band, but I have caught him making up flyers, and he no longer talks to me about practicing or getting gigs.

I find my time card and punch in. The clunking sound reverberates in the quiet room. There is no other sound but some infernal squeaking and plunking as Declan restores the lute.

"So we're short a salesperson today," I say, taking my place behind the cash register.

"We'll manage. People are dying to work here," Franklin says. "I get a dozen applications a week."

"You'd better start sorting through them," I say. "It's two weeks before Christmas. We are going to be busy."

Franklin knows this, and as the realization dawns, he heads off toward the manager's office to start digging through applications.

"That was exciting," Ernest says. He picks up a Collings guitar and starts tuning it. Then he breaks into an Allman Brothers riff.

Patrick is staring hard at me. I look at him and say, "What?"

"It was a big mistake," he tells me.

"So? What do you want me to do about it?"

"Talk to him."

"Clive?"

"Franklin."

I laugh derisively, realizing that I sound a little bit demonic.

"Franklin doesn't listen to me."

"You're the only one he does listen to. If you hadn't been late, you could have stopped it," Patrick says.

The hair on the back of my neck goes up. "I'm not late. And I couldn't have stopped it. It's over now. Let's move on."

We move on. There's nothing left to do. And I can't help thinking, as I stay busy all day, selling guitar strings and picks and tambourines and lessons (a great gift idea!) to frantic shoppers, that if Dorothy and Hallie come back tomorrow, they will notice the difference, will feel the absence of Clive, will want to know what happened to him, will want some kind of explanation.

But they don't come back and aren't coming back, and neither is Clive, and I'm going to have to adjust to all these changes as if I were a grown-up.

When Hallie left, I wanted to sob on someone's shoulder, like a broken-hearted teenager. But I didn't. I kept it to myself. I said, Be a grown-up. Now I'm wondering if that was the right choice. Now I'm thinking a grown-up might acknowledge her pain and invite others into it. A grown-up might have fought harder.

But no, just no, I tell myself. The whole point of teaching is that students come into your life for a little window of time. Then they leave. They are supposed to leave. And maybe employees are supposed to leave, too. Just clock out, Leah had said.

Franklin stays hidden in his office all day. The rest of us muddle through, pretending nothing has changed.

Ho, ho, ho.

When I get to my car that night, Clive is waiting for me, leaning against my car, his arms crossed, staring at nothing. He doesn't have an instrument with him. It's just Clive, just a moderately handsome twenty-eight-year-old with nowhere to go. He watches me with a crooked smile, as if we are long-lost lovers, discovering each other after years of imposed estrangement.

"How was work?" he asks.

"Clive, I'm sorry."

He shrugs. "Maybe it's for the best."

"You think so?"

His smile fades. His anger bursts through, surfacing first in his eyes, then in his mouth, which is pinched against the vitriol he wants to spew forth.

He says, "It's bulls.h.i.t and you know it. Franklin fired me because he hates ba.s.s players. I could sue him."

"Yes, you could. Using the discrimination against ba.s.s players clause of the Const.i.tution."

"I'm glad you think it's so funny."

"I don't think it's funny. Do you need a ride?"

"Yes," he says.

I let him into my tired Honda. It's cold inside. I turn on the heater and the radio. Both are slow getting going. The radio is full of Christmas songs. It takes forever to find an agnostic station that plays the Smashing Pumpkins and Joy Division. Clive looks out the pa.s.senger window as I drive down Pico.

"Tell me where to turn," I suggest.

"Keep going," he says.

We hit the beach. He still doesn't tell me where to turn.

"Where do you live?" I ask.

"I don't want to go there."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Home with you," he says. "I just want to talk."

"Okay."

I take him to the trailer park. He doesn't seem surprised by it. Even as we get out of the car and head to my trailer, he just looks at his feet and grumbles under his breath.

"This is where I live," I say, unlocking the door to my trailer.

"Fine by me."

"You're coming in?"

"I just want a drink or something. Then I'll call a cab."

We go inside and he notices nothing. I tell him to sit down, and then I open a couple of beers for us. He sits in one of my two chairs and continues to stare at nothing in particular. I sip my beer, waiting. He holds his, staring.

Finally he says, "How can you stand it there?"

I shrug. "It's just my job."

He says, "What will I tell my students?"

"Whatever you want to."

"I like some of them, you know. I don't want to leave them."

"Then tell them to come with you."

He finally sips his beer and says, "What did you say to Hallie?"

I feel cold suddenly.

"I didn't tell her anything. She just . . . stopped coming."

"Why?"

I shrug, trying to appear casual. "Students stop coming. It's what they do."

"But you really liked her. You thought she was good."

"What was I supposed to do? Get a warrant for her arrest? She lost interest."

Clive looks sad for a moment, then stands, sighs, and sits by me on the couch. I feel every nerve in my body shut down, then come back to life, then shut down again. He is wearing a long-sleeved surfer-type T-shirt and jeans. His hair is short beyond logic, and the goatee on his chin looks like orphaned lint. His six earrings glint under the harsh overhead light. He is younger than I imagined, and I feel nothing for him except that my heart is racing and I feel dizzy.

Leah said it was okay. She didn't say it was inevitable.

He says, "Pearl, you're better than all of them put together. I've heard you play. Why do you put up with it? Why are you there?"

"I'm making a living. How else can I pay for my palatial estate?"

"You can start a band."

I laugh. "Violin players don't start bands."

"Why not? You've got violin, you've got me on ba.s.s. Those are the hardest instruments to find."

"I don't want to be in a band," I tell him, and it's true. I never really wanted to be in Franklin's band, either. I just wanted to be near him. But he wants to be near someone else. I've played that tune before.

Clive says, "Well, if you don't want to be in a band, what do you want to do?"

I shrug and admit the truth before I can stop myself. "I try not to want things."

He is taken aback by this because he is young and therefore he is all want.

"Well, that's just crazy. When you stop wanting things, you die," he says.

"Maybe not. Maybe when you stop wanting things, you figure out how to live."

I have no evidence of this, but I like the idea.

He is agitated. He shifts in his seat. He says, "What takes the place of want?"

I shrug again. "I don't know yet. I haven't been doing this for very long."

He moves away from me slightly and starts twisting his bottom lip between his fingers. Then he says, "You know what I read once?"

I sigh. I want to say, No, I don't give a s.h.i.t what you read once. But I am polite and I have not given up on the idea of sleeping with him.

"What?" I say dutifully.

"That human beings are just mimics."

"Mimics?"

"Yeah. That everything we do is just an imitation of what we've seen other people do. Like there's no original thought."

"That can't be true."

"Why not?" he asks, looking relieved. Because he doesn't want it to be true. Who would?

"Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, to name a few. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein. They broke the rules. They had original ideas."

"But this book I read says that breaking the rules is just a form of mimicking. They broke the rules because they saw someone else do it."

"I don't believe that," I say. "There has to be an original rule breaker."

I'm not actually sure, but I want to keep the argument alive. I am adding wood chips to the fire.

Clive gets excited by my resistance. He sits up straighter and says, "No, listen. In nature, there are all these organisms that imitate other things. There are bugs that look like sticks. Fish that look like rocks. Birds that look like leaves."

I nod, stifling a yawn. Yawns, I read once, are evidence of being overwhelmed rather than bored or exhausted. "Polar bears are white so that they blend into the snowy landscape. That's evolution. That's survival."

Clive says, "Mockingbirds mimic other birds. They don't have a song of their own."

"Right, but the birds they mimic have songs of their own."

He scratches his goatee. I can see all the pistons firing in his brain. Me, I'm casting glances at my watch. I need to get some sleep or I will be cranky in the morning.

"So it figures," young Clive says, "that people behave that way, too. There are people who are put on earth to mimic other people. But I don't want to do that. I want to be original."

"The mystery of fingerprints and all that."

"What does that prove?"

"Originality."

"Oh, yeah," he says.