She plagued her agents for months, until they finally got her an offer for a low-budget film called The Kitchen Sink, starring Robert Munch, who was best known for the series Mr. Blue, in which he played the janitor in a women-only apartment building. More recently, he had portrayed a bishop in the miniseries Read My Lips.

The Kitchen Sink was a mistaken-identity comedy about a pair of undercover cops—Munch and Suzanne—who endure a series of mishaps while investigating a prostitute ring, end up in jail, and then get married. Since the film was shooting just outside of Palm Springs, Suzanne decided to stay with her grandparents, who lived in a two-bedroom house in the desert. The house had a flag in the front and a pool in the back, both of which lent it a kind of protection, a strange bracket.

Her grandfather, whom she adored, had gotten pretty senile. Suzanne was never sure if he quite knew who she was, but, whoever she was, he was always glad to see her. He spent most of his time sleeping or watching Mexican TV, though he spoke almost no Spanish. Her grandmother, though, was as Right There as she could be without making people wish she was somewhere else. She had three Yorkies—Jigger, Peanut, and Howdie—and when she wasn’t doing her mosaics or microwaving Franco-American food, she was talking to her dogs. “Didn’t she, Jigger?” she would croon. “Wouldn’t I, Peanut?” “Isn’t that right, Howdie?”

On the morning of her first day of shooting, Suzanne’s alarm rang at five. She went into the bathroom and, without turning on the light, started her bath. Then she climbed back into bed for a brief reprieve, trying to be grateful she was finally working again.

She lay there, half awake, thinking about the wrap party of her first movie. She had hugged her dresser, Rosie, a forty-five-year-old woman with a thick Cockney accent, and said, “I’ll miss you so much. Give me your address and phone number.” Rosie had replied, “Luv, what’s more’n likely’s we’ll never see each other again.” Ten years had passed since then, and so far Rosie was right.