“And I’ll bet Charlie’s not the only one, is he? All those successes you’ve been having! All that television, and the Maurice Allen script you just sold to MGM.”

“Charlie’s the only one. Honest.”

“Just shut up. I don’t want to know.”

I babbled and burbled, and protested my innocence, and when that was obviously such a crashing lie, I fell apart entirely, the months of secrecy just peeled away from me, and I sobbed and gulped and wailed. How could I refuse Max when he had suffered so much? Between wet, wheezy gasps I told her how Kathleen Hilyard came all the way from Phoenix, and how Julia and I had cried our eyes out when we heard how Nelson died, and how Kathleen had lost everything, even Nelson’s name, and all this got flummoxed up with what I felt for Terrence, and what he felt for me, and how we didn’t mean to fall in love, but we did. I was mopping my face with my hands, mascara all over my cheeks, and still she did not say a word. Not a single damned word, just let me blubber and weep till at last she turned onto Clara Bow Drive and pulled in behind the oleanders.

She left the engine running. She was not crying now, though her perfect face was streaked with mascara. Ignoring everything I had just confessed, she said, “What if you get pregnant? Have you thought about that? A little chocolate drop of a baby?” Her voice was hard as little agates that she threw at me.

“I won’t get pregnant.” I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand.

“We all say that.”

“I’m not an unsophisticated fool. Julia took me to the doctor when I was in Paris. I have a diaphragm.”

Irene laughed out loud. “And tell me, are you very careful and use it all the time?”

I hung my head. “Why can’t people just love who they love? Why can’t I be in love with Terrence?”

“Because there are things that are simply not done, no matter how much panache you have, or you think you have. I was so wrong about you. You are not a romantic. You are a goddamn fool, and you will come to sorrow, little sister.”

“If I home-wrecked my way through a dozen married men, I wouldn’t be any worse than Leon or Gordon. If I committed fraud or larceny or . . . or . . .”

“Those are acceptable human failings! Loving a Negro goes against the laws of nature.”

“That’s ridiculous. Gravity is a law of nature; love is not. He loves me,” I insisted. “I love him.”