Downtown in the rain where the buskers sang love songs to the mannequins in the windows, I saw her behind the cash register, counting out newborn coins. The dogs danced around me, barking.

On nights when she could pretend not to be herself, she would sit in the crowded room and be amazed at the things that were not hers. Turkey wings with all the feathers, an armadillo carapace, a painted turtle shell, a cicada moult, photographs of strangers. These empty things that someone must have wanted or needed, to look at and care for, to dust every week, and show off to guests. There might be some odd magic in them she thought, like in the tarot cards. Her future and fortune was in there looking right back at her though she could never see it. The teller with the sign in her window surrounded by ropes of flashing neon, tried to sell her a past that was not hers, but it cost too dearly. She pulled the drapes, climbed into the canopy bed with the heavy patchwork quilt, and slept with the dog pressed to the back of her knees. The dog that was never hers.