How absurd: that she would wake up one morning, pour a cup of coffee from the carafe in the coffee maker on the countertop in a kitchen that seemed familiar and yet realize halfway through the pouring that she didn’t recognize one thing in the room. She knew the names of the appliances and what they did, and she knew the names of the colors in the floor tile and the flowers printed on the wallpaper; that is, she knew the kitchen in the way she “knew” a Vermeer painting or the Eiffel Tower. And the pantry – this couldn’t be her pantry, could it? Narrow shelves on the door held small jars filled with whole cardamom and cloves and pink peppercorns, a tube of wasabi paste, a tin of celery seed, a cellophane package of dried seaweed. Reading the labels of these items she felt the same sense of detached interest she felt when she gazed at the dishwasher and the food processor, as though she was reading the explanatory note posted beside a painting in a museum. Tarragon’s distinctive character has a special affinity for fish, poultry, and seafood. Though she understood it was likely she had arrived at this moment through ordinary means of some kind – days accumulating, leases signed, furniture moved, money earned, bulging grocery bags ferried home from a store – the last thing she remembered was driving down I-90 in Knox’s Honda hatchback. You don’t have to do this, he was saying. Followed by, do you have to put your feet up there? The shoes pressed against his dashboard were a worn pair of grey mesh running shoes. So where had this blue bathrobe come from? Why were her nails cut so short?

          She’d read about strange phenomena, but this took the cake. She was sitting on a wooden bench in the waiting room of King Street Station in Pioneer Square looking at a suitcase and a trunk. The suitcase was shiny and red with a black handle; the trunk was cheap, battered, blue. She knew it was King Street Station because she and her girlfriends used to take the bus down here after school to smoke, goof off, and flirt with sailors on leave. She and Miranda always hoped something outrageous would happen – that Nikki would run off with a guy or they’d pick a wallet from some traveler’s pocket stuffed with hundred dollar bills. So she knew exactly where she was and she had the impression that the suitcase and trunk were important, but that was about it. She stood up, turned her back on the luggage, and tried to walk away. She made it as far as the center of the marble compass at the center of the entry hall floor, but her heart thudded like mad, as though her blood was solidifying. The air in the station had all been breathed before. She returned to the bench and her heart slowed. Her history, her causes, her itinerary, were as remote and unfathomable as the drab acoustic panels of the dropped ceiling. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep on Miranda’s couch listening to Cat Stevens sing “Peace Train.”

          “That’s ridiculous.” Miranda giggled into the phone. That is, she knew the voice belonged to Miranda, her best friend since the first grade, even though she couldn’t see her. She knew herself to be Em, M, short for Melinda ever since Miranda had decided in second grade that their names were too much alike. Surely Em was a moniker more suitable for an easygoing girl like Miranda who liked kissing nice boys and watermelon lip gloss and strawberry shampoo and rainbow sherbet, whereas Melinda was moody and contemplative and nursed darker proclivities – a pet rat, masturbation, bittersweet chocolate, and the poetry of Sylvia Plath. The Franklin family’s drooling dachshund panted heavily beside her, his chin tucked beneath hers. Time shuddered inside her. The air in the room was warm and dusty and she couldn’t tell if it was sultry summer warmth or furnace-powered warmth. Was this a Saturday during the school year or one of hundreds of summer afternoons? Who was Miranda talking to? “I want butterflies,” she was saying, “And Em wants lizards. Can you do lizards?” And although Em smelled the dog’s meaty breath and Miranda’s lemony body spray, she found she couldn’t quite believe in Miranda or the living room, and the last thing she really remembered was studying the hue of the sky, the 10 o’clock twilight-blue of August, and listening for her parents’ voices in her own house.

          Or maybe this is the first thing she could remember, her earliest memory – though surely not, because she must have been eight or nine – lying in the near dark with Pluto whimpering outside her bedroom door because he wanted to bet let in, although that wasn’t allowed because of her allergies. For dinner her mom had served a spicy lamb stew over a bed of couscous, a dish she had learned to prepare in her Flavors of the Mediterranean cooking class at the junior college. Her father declared it “delicious and pretentious” and looked none too pleased about it, though he was a gloomy man. The only time Em can remember ever seeing him in truly high spirits was when Mr. Gunderson, their across the street neighbor, a mean spirited BB-gunner of birds and cats and squirrels, got his sandaled foot caught on the gas pedal and ran his Impala smack through his garage door. Her father had hopped up and down and tears of laughter ran down his face. Em could still taste the slight burn of chilies on her tongue. She decided that certain flavors were dangerous because they promised new things. She wondered if her parents would get a divorce. Several of her friends’ moms and dads had split up, and in each case the breakup was foreshadowed by the mother getting a new job or hobby. Em looked up Tunisia in the World Book. She read about 1000-year-old olive trees in the Sahil region. She read that olive trees show a marked preference for calcareous soils, flourishing best on limestone slopes and crag – which which she understood to mean it thrived in poor soil, where other things didn’t readily grow. That was a small cheering fact, for she worried that her own chance for happiness in life would be thwarted by her parents’ profound inability to achieve it.