Ice hung from the trees, shining, and then fell from their branches suddenly in great heaps. Claire sat near the window in the back of Len’s Lookout, gazing at the balsam fir and blue spruce, the Norwegian pines and the poplars, with her coat still on, her scarf still wound around her neck, not knowing that she was looking at balsam fir and blue spruce, Norwegian pines and poplars. Not knowing anything. Not even that she didn’t know. She was twenty, tall, with blue eyes and dark blond hair that went to her shoulders and another, longer rope of hair that was streaked electric blue and was woven into a thin braid with dull silver bells embroidered into it. Despite this, she looked like a farm girl—a big farm girl, her boyfriend, David, had said once, grabbing onto her naked hips, meaning it nicely—though she did not want to look like this and didn’t believe herself to look like this. Her fingernails were painted black, her toes a glimmering, morose green. The flesh on the right side of her nose was pierced and bejeweled with a fake sapphire stud.
