The condemning eyes of an elephant illegally bagged during one of Bert’s African safaris stared down at her from the maroon-flocked wallpaper at the top of the staircase. Her shoulders slumped dispiritedly. Grass stains soiled her ivory suit, and the sheer nylons that sheathed her legs were dirty and torn. Her blond hair stuck out in every direction, and she’d long ago eaten off her peony-pink lipstick.

Unbidden, the face of the Stars’ head coach came back to her. He was the one who had picked Pooh off the casket by the scruff of her neck. Those green eyes of his had been cold and condemning as he’d handed the dog over to her. Phoebe sighed. The melee of her father’s funeral was another screwup in a life already full of them. She had wanted everyone to know she didn’t care that her father had disinherited her, but as usual, she had gone too far and everything had backfired.

She paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, wondering if her life might have been different if her mother had lived. She no longer thought very much about the showgirl mother she couldn’t remember, but as a lonely child she had woven elaborate fantasies about her, trying to conjure up in her imagination a tender, beautiful woman who would have given her all the love her father had withheld.

She wondered if Bert had ever really loved anyone. He’d had little use for women in general, and none at all for an overweight, clumsy little girl who didn’t have a high opinion of herself to begin with. For as long as she could remember, he had told her she was useless, and she now suspected that he might have been right.

At the age of thirty-three, she was unemployed and nearly broke. Arturo had died seven years ago. She had spent the first two years after his death administering the touring exhibits of his paintings, but after the collection went on permanent display in Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, she’d moved to Manhattan. The money Arturo had left her when he’d died had gradually disappeared, helping to pay the medical expenses of many of her friends who had died from AIDS. She didn’t regret a penny. For years she’d worked in a small, but exclusive, West Side gallery that specialized in the avant-garde. Just last week, her elderly employer had closed the doors for the last time, leaving her at loose ends while she looked for a new direction in her life.

The thought flickered through her mind that she was getting tired of being outrageous, but she was feeling too fragile to cope with introspection, so she finished making her way to her sister’s bedroom and knocked on the door. “Molly, it’s Phoebe. May I come in?”

There was no answer.

“Molly, may I come in?”

More seconds ticked by before Phoebe heard a muted, sullen, “I guess.”

She mentally braced herself as she turned the knob and stepped inside the bedroom that had been hers as a child. During the few weeks each year when she had lived here, the room had been cluttered with books, food scraps, and tapes of her favorite music. Now it was as pin-neat as its occupant.