From Something Shining Midafternoon. Her canyon. Her house a carriage house kind of, set back with a lot of glass and wood stained red. Tea brews and the scent of Lapsang spins from the open door with Leonard Cohen's first album, the perfect scent and voice for any good year in the sixties. She places chairs erratically around the grass yard and a few of us sit down to discuss the daily news, a new generation of drugs. Sunday afternoon. She's a woman whose boyfriends become best friends. She still wears a dark kimono, her hair flat black held in a brightly colored lanyard. She serves up wan vegetable cakes and pale cookies from Canyon Health. The sun Won't budge, just another extended afternoon: too much light. Too much time. Too much talk waiting for the sun to move on. Too much water coursing under the bridge, too many streams. Heat from the Valley washing over us. The tea we sip frosts our shades.
		Excerpted from Something Shining by Dan Halpern. Copyright © 2000 by Dan Halpern. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Photo credit © Mary Cross