Back at the apartment, she opened the top drawer of a maple chest. Wrapped up inside a suitcase were her mother’s bracelets, two of them, thick gold bangles, one set with three small starshaped diamonds. Her mother’s only brother, Uncle Greg, had given them to Annie, counseling her somewhat circumspectly not to mention them to her father. She recalled how Bea, her father’s second wife, had once said to her, “Anyone married to your father, my girl, makes a fast acquaintance with hock shops…”

Annie found a loan-company office a few blocks from the League. Cringing, she pushed the two bracelets across the counter toward the unforgiving scrutiny of a yellow-skinned man. He gave her thirty-five dollars and a ticket. “But—” she began to protest. “Gold’s a drug on the market,” he said.

“The diamonds?”

“Diamonds! They’re nothing but chips.”

She went directly to May Landower’s where she found the older woman standing amid a welter of straw suitcases, blowing dust from a handful of books. The birds and the piano were gone. May was a shade drunk.

“I was right about Thursday,” she said, speaking with her usual weighty emphasis. “I’ve looked it up in my horoscope. But we must make every effort to arrive in California on a Tuesday. Any Tuesday will do. I’m a Tuesday person. You can’t guess how much I’ve accomplished! I’ve sold my piano, the car is ready. I’ve broken entirely with my life here. I feel…I feel out in space, my dear, and have a drink to celebrate, will you? No? Thank God Christmas is over! How I remember the past! But—one must look to the future. In truth, there isn’t any. I had a nosebleed this morning. A good sign!”

“I have over one hundred dollars,” Annie offered.

“Oh,” said May, with a wave of her hands, “those things take care of themselves. I really can’t be bothered with money. Fate decides.”

“I’ve never had so much,” Annie said, “all at one time.”

“I used to live like a queen!” May cried, dropping the books on the floor. “I had thirty-two pairs of shoes, Balmain dresses. How unimportant it all is! All I need is a piano, a little fragment of nature, a bird, a plant…we must rid ourselves of the passion for material things. Freedom! I shall never cease to regret that you did not meet the swami…heavenly man…”

“We are leaving in the morning?”

“I have worked it out on the chart. Ten o’clock is auspicious. You will forgive me for not coming to pick you up? But I must leave from here.”

Annie agreed to be at May’s by 9:30 for coffee—“so we won’t have to stop for a few hours until we escape the aura of this city. It extends farther than most people suspect!”