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  Molly shakes her finger at me. “You better off without her, Gimpalong.”

  I sit through two more classes, I take notes dutifully, I remember to remember the main points. If the teacher calls on me, I answer. Then at three thirty, when school is officially out, I make my way to the parking lot and lean on Colleen’s Volkswagen. The one Ed bought her with money made selling weed.

  I don’t quite know what I’ll do if she shows up with Ed or somebody who wants to buy weed or even a girlfriend from detention, but when I spot her, she’s alone. She sees me, too, from kind of a long way off, and she raises one hand. So I wave back.

  “Lots of Sturm und Drang, huh?” She puts one hand up and rubs my cheek, and just like that I’m hers. I was, anyway.

  I ask, “Did you know that Donder and Blizten mean thunder and lightning?”

  “Santa’s reindeer? No fucking way!”

  “Yeah. Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen and Thunder and Lightning.”

  “When I was little, my mom told me Rudolph’s nose was red from heavy drinking.”

  I reach for her dress and pull her toward me. “So there’s jolly old Saint Nick, but his main reindeer was alcoholic?”

  She leans into me. “Is that a three-page essay on Emerson in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

  I let myself put my arms . . . well, my arm, around her. “I’m not even sure Mae West said that line, but if she did, it was in Sextette.”

  “Can we go to your house?”

  I shake my head. “Grandma’s home.”

  “Want to just make out in the backseat like people did before rock and roll all but eliminated Judeo-Christian civilization as we know it?”

  I could just do this forever. Stand by her car, feel her against me, say anything.

  I whisper, “You know, ‘Give somebody a fish and she eats once. Teach her to fish and she eats forever.’”

  “So that’s a fish in your pocket?”

  “I’m saying we should work on your paper. But instead of writing it for you, I’ll show you what to do so you can write any paper anytime.”

  She leans in a little more and puts her face against mine. “You sound like some guy on television who’s about to throw in a second ShamWow! if I order in the next ten minutes.”

  I don’t care if she really likes me or not. All I care about is that she’s doing what she’s doing. Doing it to me. Ben the loser recluse. Ben the spaz.

  “That’s the deal,” I say. “Take it or leave it.”

  She kisses me quick and hard, finds the keys in her purse, hops in her little convertible without bothering with the door, and looks up at me. “So what are you waiting for? Are you going to teach me to fish or not?”

  Colleen likes Buster’s, this cool little coffee shop in South Pasadena, which is, for the record, not just southern Pasadena but a whole other city. Pretty and green. Pricey. We’ll end up sitting outside just a block or so from a store that sells seven-hundred-dollar baby strollers. I know because Grandma and her yoga friends chipped in and bought one for someone in their morning class.

  Colleen drives us south. We stand in a little line and order from Ayanna with the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder and the pierced lip. I’ve got the money and I order what Colleen likes (caramel macchiato), but the barista looks at Colleen. It’s not flirty or anything like that; they’re birds of a feather and I’m not.

  Have I ever connected with anybody like that, ever? Amy, maybe. A little, anyway. She was in the Centrist Gallery show, too. She wants to go to film school, and she gave me her e-mail address.

  Colleen and I settle into a table under the green awning. Well, she settles; I brace myself and sink. The bracing isn’t pretty, but I’ve tried just sitting down, got all tangled up in myself, and ended up flat on my back like a turtle, wishing somebody would just turn me over and let me crawl into the desert and die.

  She takes my good hand between both of hers and rubs it briskly. “You okay, Ben? You’re cold.”

  “Just thinking about Emerson.”

  Colleen pretends to shudder. “Makes me cold all over.” She sips her drink, nods at a skate punk who checks her out as he hurtles by, then scrutinizes a couple of nannies who cruise up, speaking nonstop Spanish.

  They park their strollers, and the angel-haired toddlers hold up their perfect arms.

  Colleen points at the kids. “Lindo. Lindos niños.”

  The nannies nod and smile, then go inside.

  I tell her, “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t. I know, like, ten words. Ed’s pretty good, actually. The smugglers like it when you use their native tongue.”

  “Do you ever want kids?” I ask.

  “Get serious. Do you?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  She takes a drink from her tall glass, wipes the foam off her lip with an index finger, then licks that. “Why ‘Are you kidding?’ You don’t have C.P. where it counts; we know that. And you’ve got money to burn. You could marry somebody nice and have all the kids you want.”

  “Let’s talk about Ralph.”

  “Who?”

  “Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

  “Oh, yeah. Him. You never think about anybody talking to these, like, icons and calling them by their first names. ‘Ralph, either put on those Over-Souls or you can’t go out and play with Thoreau!’”

  Colleen has a terrific laugh. High but not screechy. Big but not booming. Robust, I guess. For a girl, anyway. Especially one who weighs about ninety-two pounds.

  I ask, “What’s the assignment, exactly?”

  “Compare Emerson’s belief system with three or four others.”

  “So it’s just research.”

  She sits back in a semi-huff. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.” She runs her hand up my arm. “I just thought if you loved me, you’d do it for me.”

  “Nice try.”

  “Love is bullshit, anyway,” she says. “But you like me, right? Like hanging out with me?”

  “I can take it or leave it.”

  She’s out of her chair, leaning over the table, kissing me, asking, “Really?”

  I wait till I can breathe again before I say, “So I’d rather take it.”

  People stare at us, or at her, maybe. Are they thinking, How can she do that to a gimp like him? Or do they just think, Get a room? The guys can’t take their eyes off Colleen: that incredible skin, the in-your-face tats, the lazy way she smokes, the bitter curve of her lips. One of them — his wife keeps barking orders: “Get some napkins,” “Get some more milk,” “Pick up one of the twins, no not that one, the other one”— probably sees her just like I do, she’s the gatekeeper to another world. Like in the ads for movies: A world of danger, intrigue, desire. A world where almost everything is a mistake.

  When he won’t stop staring, I glare at him and ask, “What?”

  He looks down, embarrassed, and I feel the rush of testosterone.

  Colleen does a pretty good imitation of De Niro in Taxi Driver. “Are you lookin’ at me?” Which makes me blush.

  There’s that laugh of hers again, big but weirdly like wind chimes, too. “You are so cute,” she says.

  Then we sit for a little while. Young parents cruise by, a homeless guy with a Santa pack of recyclables over one shoulder, another nanny or two chatting on cell phones to some humid country I only know about from coloring it green in the second grade.

  I could sit all afternoon and just be with her, but Colleen gets restless. I know we’re just about to get up when a couple of women walk by. They’re just in shorts and T-shirts and flip-flops. But their shorts are shorter, their T-shirts are tighter, and they’re put together in a way even the yoga moms aren’t. One of them — short, rice-white hair and a snake tattoo winding up one calf — stops.

  “Colleen? What are you doing here?”

  “Hey!” Colleen stands up and they hug. Then she points to me. “I’m just hanging out with my pal Constantinopo
lous, the Greek shipping tycoon. He’s got so much gold in those cargo pants, he can’t stand up, so he’s not just being rude.”

  “Ben,” I say, holding out my good hand. “Don’t pay any attention to her.”

  “Who are you guys these days?” Colleen asks.

  The tattooed one says, “Uh, I think I’m Tawny, and she’s Crystal.”

  Crystal elbows her friend. “It’s Amber, dumb ass.” Then they both laugh.

  “Want to sit?” Colleen asks.

  They shake their heads. “We gotta go.”

  We watch them — everybody watches them — get into a blue Miata convertible and zoom away. I wait and see. Colleen will either tell me or she won’t.

  “There’s something you ought to know,” she says after a very long minute or two. “I mean, it’s no big deal, but better you hear it from me than some vindictive bitch at school who wants you all to herself.”

  She doesn’t mean it, that last part, but I like to hear it. “Okay. Whenever you’re ready.”

  She takes a deep breath. “Those girls are strippers. They change their names every time they work at a new club. There’s this kind of, you know, crop rotation, so customers don’t have to look at the same boob jobs all the time.”

  “Do you know their real names?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m not sure they do anymore. The one with all the collagen used to be a Mormon. ‘Let’s hear it for the beautiful Hulga from Salt Lake City,’ right? No way. So it’s Raven or Peaches or Toffee or Dawn.”

  I just nod. This is her narrative.

  “Um, well, let’s just cut to the chase here: my mom’s a stripper, too, okay? She works downtown at this club called Girls Before Swine.”

  “I thought you said your mom was a waitress.”

  Colleen squirms. “Well, she waits for guys to stuff twenties in her thong. I probably should have told you before.”

  “So I know now. No big deal.”

  She looks at me, one eye half closed suspiciously. “‘No big deal.’ Is that it?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say. Your mom’s an exotic dancer. Mine’s a missing person. I’d rather have yours.”

  “It doesn’t matter to you?”

  “I don’t think so. Does it matter to you?”

  She takes a deep breath. “Ed hated it.”

  “No way. Ed’s an entry-level felon. What’s he doing judging —?”

  “Ed’s a chauvinist dickhead. He thinks women ought to stay home.”

  “You were his girlfriend.”

  “I was a toy, okay? He played with me.”

  “You told me you carried dope in your underpants so he wouldn’t get caught with it.”

  “So I was a toy mule. This isn’t about Ed and me; it’s about my mom.”

  “Colleen, I don’t care what your mom does for a living. I’m glad she doesn’t torture small animals for minimum wage, but except for that —”

  She blurts, “Kids made fun of me.”

  I push her coffee toward her and she takes one last sip, then makes a face. I ask, “What kids?”

  “Kids at school. When they found out, it was fucking awful.”

  I take her hand. “C’mon, you know how kids are. They’re hyenas. They harass the weak and the wounded until they collapse, and then they eat them. When I was in grade school, some jerk found out my mom ran away from home. He told everybody. First, I was one of the untouchables, anyway, because of the C.P. Then I’m so toxic my mom can’t stand me, and then after school my grandma pulls up in that Cadillac. Pity and envy are a nasty combination. If you ever have to mix them in chemistry, wear protective goggles.”

  “They called her a whore. I’m nine years old. What am I supposed to do with that except punch their lights out?”

  “I wish I’d punched everybody’s lights out instead of hiding in the Rialto.”

  “At least you know a lot about movies. What do I know except names for weed? Angola, baby bhang, Canadian black, Don Juan —”

  “Yeah, but look how nicely you alphabetize them.”

  She can’t help but laugh as she picks up my good hand, pulls it to her, and kisses it. “I missed you.”

  “Really? Then I’ll tell you what. Go with Grandma and me and probably Marcie to this concert Saturday night, and I’ll write that Emerson essay for you.”

  THIS OUGHT TO BE INTERESTING. Colleen at the Norton Simon Museum. And not just wandering around looking at paintings, but sitting down in one of the galleries and listening to chamber music. Well, at least there won’t be some tall guy outside with a muscle car and some hemp rolling papers.

  I’m ready to go: brick-colored J. Crew khakis, one of their cotton/cashmere sweaters, and some cool shoes called Planet Walkers that slip right on. Colleen picked out the sweater and likes the shoes. She said to the salesman, “My boyfriend here would really like the Planet Lurchers so he can emphasize his disability and everybody will feel sorry for him, but he’ll settle for the Walkers.”

  I liked being called her boyfriend.

  I’m leaning in the door of my grandma’s bedroom while she puts on a few diamonds. She knows some high-end jewelers downtown, the kind with a guard at the door and a space-station air-lock entrance. She owns one of those loupes, those eyepieces, and she and Mr. Biddle take turns looking through it while they diss the new, callow rich. The upstarts and Powerball winners who come in and buy the biggest thing in the display case. Grandma’s old-school. She and Mr. Biddle agree that they are from an era when the word elegant meant something.

  She’s got one photo on her dresser, and that’s of her and my grandfather. In a bad movie, right now there’d be this montage where that photo melted into one of my parents and me, and that one turned into just my parents, et cetera.

  My grandma would never be in a bad movie. My father’s dead, and that’s that; photographs would just remind her. And Mom? I guess she was kind of a basket case. I kind of remember her and I kind of don’t.

  She turns around. “How do I look?”

  My grandma likes linen and silk. She shops where everybody knows her name. They call her when new stuff comes in. The next day, she sits and sips bottled water while they show her things.

  I tell her, “You always look good.”

  “Someday, Benjamin,” she says, “you’re going to have to take care of our assets.”

  “What happened to Flatterum, Leechum, and Billumtilltheysqueal?”

  “There are family matters to be taken into consideration.”

  “Right. They’re family lawyers.”

  She puts her hand up to my face. Her skin is warm and dry. “We need to talk soon, dear.”

  “What about?”

  We both look up at the sound of the doorbell, and I say that I’ll get it.

  When I open the door, Marcie points at Colleen and says, “Look who I bumped into on your lawn. What a coincidence!”

  They both kiss me, and Marcie says how nice I look. She’s ready for a short hike, in cargo pants and crewneck, and Colleen has her B-girl look down (sideways baseball cap, tight black pants but not so tight she couldn’t bust a few moves if she wanted to, tank top with Floor Angelz on it, sneaks).

  Grandma makes her usual entrance. “Hello, everyone.”

  Colleen mutters, “Your Highness. I bring news from Paris that I hope will not distress you. It’s about the dauphin’s hernia.” But immediately she goes right up to Grandma and says, “I’m sorry about last week at that gallery. I should have come in and said good-bye, headache or no headache. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “Thank you, dear. Apology accepted.” She checks her watch. “Probably we should go. The concert is at seven, and there are no reserved seats.”

  We follow her toward the garage. Marcie and Grandma talk about roses. Marcie actually gardens. Grandma goes out with a sixty-dollar basket from Pottery Barn and her Felco forged-steel pruning shears and has the gardener hold the bush steady for her while she clips.

  Colleen whi
spers, “Where are we going again?”

  “The Norton Simon Museum. Chamber music in the north gallery.”

  “Probably not going to be a mosh pit, huh?”

  “If there is, let’s try and keep Grandma out of it. You know how she gets when she hears ‘I Wanna Be Sedated.’”

  The three of us stand on the sidewalk while the car oozes out of the garage. Marcie gets in front, Colleen and me in the back.

  Grandma gets to the end of the driveway, then waits until the street is completely empty in both directions, maybe as far as the Atlantic and the Pacific.

  I ask Colleen, “Everything okay?”

  She warns me, “Don’t check on me every two seconds. I’m fine.”

  I settle back into the leather. I shouldn’t have said anything. When I was little, Grandma used to constantly ask me how I felt, and it was a real drag. So I spend a little time wondering what Grandma wants to talk to me about “soon.” What is it that a lawyer can’t handle and I can?

  We’re somewhere on Orange Grove Boulevard, maybe halfway to the museum, when Colleen whispers, “Good thing Ed’s not back here. He’d cut Grandma’s ears off to get at those diamonds.”

  “Where is Ed, anyway? I haven’t seen him at school.”

  She shakes her head. “Boot camp. He got busted, and the cop said, ‘The army or we go up in front of a judge.’ But I really don’t care where he is. When I go to meetings, some chick is always saying how she ran into this dude from before, and the next thing she knows, she’s high again. I know what she means. I can’t be around Ed or anybody else like that. That’s why I like you. All you’re going to turn me on to is mango sorbet.”

  “Can I ask you about something else? Do you think your mom would talk to me about her work?”

  “‘Her work.’ She slithers up and down a pole and takes her clothes off.”

  “I’m thinking about making another documentary. I’ve got a new camera. Marcie talked Grandma into buying it for me. It’s really cool. Super-sharp, sound, the whole nine yards. Check this out.” I open the satchel Colleen and I bought one day at Old Navy and show her.

  She looks through the little viewfinder. “Sounds like you just want to take pictures of naked girls.”