It was her first holiday away from home, and she felt nostalgic for the scratchy sound of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival overture that used to flow through the speakers on their RCA stereo cabinet—her mother listened to “pagan music” to cut loose after playing the more serious liturgical pieces for Easter Mass. She told Sherri that Rimsky-Korsakov hadn’t heard a full orchestra until he was twelve years old, and the sound of all the instruments had overwhelmed him with joy, a feeling she could hear in all of his compositions, especially the overture. “Some feelings stay with you your whole life,” Muriel had said. She was usually so practical and stern, and only waxed poetic when she spoke of music. Sherri had loved the unique time signatures of the piece, and the movement in tone from solemnity to hedonism.

Sherri would have given anything to spend five minutes back in the warm comfort of her past, enjoying a lazy Easter afternoon daydreaming on the davenport. She always remembered her parents in separate rooms—her father tinkering with an antique radio in his shop while her mother cooked scalloped potatoes and sugary baked ham. She could picture the kitchen table with a vase of daffodils, and the wicker bowl bulging with the decorated Easter eggs that smelled of vinegar.

But she was farther from home than ever. She felt her fake eyelashes coming loose from the moisture and did her best to smile. The little girls in Florence Eiseman dresses looked at her with adoration, while the boys, even the little ones, tried to peek down her top when she bent over. She tried to forget what Sam had said to her. Instead, she lost herself in that familiar music in her head.

Everyone had off that night, so the Bunnies gathered at a tall table at Papouli’s. Sherri told Carmen, Ginger, Val, and Rhonda about her trip, modifying the details to only mention Mitch, not Sam—how Mitch smiled when he said her name, and how he looked like a cross between Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood. Val lit up a cigarette and exhaled with her lower lip sticking out, pushing the smoke right into her blue mascara and feathered bangs.

“I’m not buying it. If that guy was so perfect, you never would have come back. You would have stuck on him like a tick.”

It had never occurred to Sherri that she could have chosen not to return. The resort was her home now; it was her community.

“I think he sounds amazing,” said Ginger, who was always single. She had no patience for men who bothered her with unwelcome advances. “And he’s over six feet? How come short girls like you and Rhonda always get the tall guys? All I ever see are bald spots.”