The day following the inquest, which Sigrid attended in what she called her family dress—the one she had in case one of the aunts or uncles should ever come to California—Annie received a package from Ben Greenhouse. It contained, along with a note, a handsome string of large amber beads. She’d never owned anything so substantial. The note read: “Ann, I haven’t much to say except that you pleased me, even if not in the traditional way. I hope this string of amber matches something in your mind. I’m tucked back inside my life again, and for a while it won’t seem too bad. Be a good girl, not a halfhearted trollop. Your friend…”

That day, Joe’s body in a pine coffin was loaded onto the school bus, the dark-haired girl in the driver’s seat, combing her hair with her fingers, a cigarette end smoking in a bottle cap at her feet. The policeman, Bob, had come along to help. Even with two other men from the undertaking parlor, it was hard to maneuver the box into the bus. They broke the back of one of the seats. “That’ll have to be paid for,” said the girl driver flatly. Sigrid got in, her white pocketbook clutched in her hands. She was staring at the coffin as the bus started off.

When she returned, after two days, she remarked that every time the bus stopped, a line of cars behind the bus stopped too. It had made them laugh, her and the girl. She’d stopped in at the Greek’s, who wanted her and Annie to come back; business was good, a lot of plants going up around L.A. and out in the valley, and he needed some good waitresses. “He said you had class,” Sigrid reported snidely to Annie. Then she’d gone on a bat, she said, and drunk up half of Hollywood, and did Annie remember that fat crazy Finn used to come in and play Finlandia all the time? Well, she and he, they’d made a night of it, all drinking and sobbing but no funny business. He drank too much for that. It might have eased her mind, Sigrid said, a little roll in the hay, but the liquor was almost as good and she felt better now. “Jesus! I just don’t want to think about that gluey way he looked on the sand, and I’m not going to. They say when you kill yourself, your soul haunts the place you did it in. You won’t catch me on that beach ever!”

Annie had found the apartment oppressive during Sigrid’s absence. All she was doing was biding time. Time for what? She’d had enough of the place. The golden purse of tips Ernie had promised had hardly materialized although she was making more money than she ever had, enough to buy lipsticks from the drugstore, and beach sandals, and things she’d never thought she’d have. She longed to leave the sleepy, sun-washed village with overpreserved, middle-aged rich folk driving their expensive cars through the main street and up into the hills to their fraudulent houses and stale pool water.