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White Christmas? You know, all song-y and matching Christmas outfits and finishing each other's sentences--"

"No," lisBETH snapped, looking at me like I was the biggest moron she'd ever had the displeasure of being genetically linked to.

I mean, I was joking, but only sort of kind of.

Maybe lisBETH noticed my sort of kind of crushed face, because she added, "I hate that movie. It's nothing personal. Musicals just... What is it you say, CC? They 'bug.'" She laughed at her own joke. Then her aura changed to Nancy. "Do you think you could be troubled to detach yourself from the couch already? Danny needs help setting the dining room table."

I considered pointing out the inherent sexism in lisBETH demanding my girl touch to the table fixin's when a Frank-version Head of Family could easily have accomplished the same task. Maybe he'd put the salad forks on the wrong side, but cut the guy some slack, he'd probably never been a Girl Scout and forced to learn the art of table-setting for the sake of a gender-biased merit badge. Instead I told lisBETH, "Sure thing. And why don't you take over my place on the couch for a few. Frank wants to have a serious talk with you. He wants to know what's really going on between you and your beau, but he's too chicken to ask you to your face." I turned to Frank. "You're welcome," I said.

If I'd traveled down the college girl path, I so would have been a psych major (minor in feminazi studies).

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One final girl touch called on my way to the dining room. I stopped in front of lisBETH and snapped open the top two buttons of her blouse. It's like this little skill set exchange we have going on. We don't get all song-y and whatever, but I do teach her how to make her outfits more slutty and baldy-enticing, and she does stop by LU_CH_ONE_TE on occasion to run the numbers on my tips and help me figure out my living expenses budget--less the money I have to pay lisBETH back for the culinary class I ditched, unless I change my mind and reenroll, in which case, I'm back in the black with the lisBETH account. "Ask Frank about his lady friend while he's interrogating you," I whispered in her ear.

"Ask Danny about Aaron," she whispered back in my ear. "I can't get anything out of him on the topic."

"There's my Dollface," Danny said when I joined him at the dining table.

"Don't call me that; it's sexist." Actually, I think it's a nice nickname, but I want to stay on top of the subtle social cues that tell Danny I'm an adult, not some dumb kid sister who needs rules.

Danny teased, "But you look so purdy with your Morticia Addams black dress and the Jesus pin with the blinking lights that says 'Wish Me Happy Birthday!' on it. How can I not call you 'Dollface'?" He handed me a container of fancy silver forks, knives, and spoons. "Could you please set the silverware around the plates?"

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"Surely," I said. "Could you please not leave your dirty socks on the bathroom floor, and if you borrow one of my CDs, could you please put it back in proper alphabetical order rather than just any old where? Also, there are like nutrition bars that can be used as breakfast sources of protein and iron instead of soft-boiled eggs. Just letting you know."

I set the silverware around the plates while Danny trailed me placing the wine- and water glasses above the plates.

Danny said, "I'm sure I could tackle those issues if you could manage to write down my messages before deleting them from the house phone voice mail, and golly, if you could unlearn how to stomp around the house wearing your combat boots so you wake me up at three in the morning, and throw in not leaving the windows wide open when you leave for work so I come home to a subzero climate apartment, that would be peachy-keen-swell."

"Done," I said. Then added, "Commandant."

"Appreciated," he said. "Dollface."

I thought living with Danny would be so easy and then it wasn't but maybe now it will be.

Pure warm love invites the admission of secrets, especially after a defrost. I told Danny, "Luis and I are finito. It was just a physical thing--and the statute of limitations ran out on my desire for anything less than true love. And the secret to why my electric toothbrush is always so much cleaner than yours is, I take it apart

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and clean it with a Q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol." Danny and I are both mental about dental hygiene, which documentary filmmakers should take note of for the insta-CC-Danny connection segment of the TV version of our bio-fam story.

"At last! I knew I'd break you and eventually you'd divulge the toothbrush secret. Oh, and, uh, don't know whether this news flash has penetrated through your and lisBETH's not-so-secret communiqué fortress, but Aaron's new boyfriend has let the L-word slip. Don't know how I feel about that."

"Yes, you do--or should I tell you? Or I can call your sister in here to do it along with me?"

"The denial is so much easier, Dollface. What do you say you and me go back to freezing each other out?"

"No, thanks. That would be too much work, and I am all about the slacker vibe these days. But when you're ready for me to tell you how you feel about Aaron, and congratulations by the way on finally discovering the jealousy factor, you just let me know. Don't wait till it's too late."

Danny flicked my Jesus pin. "God help me."

Danny had a point about the chill. As we shared a taxi home together after dinner later that night, I shivered like a California girl while the first flakes of winter snow teased the city. I rested my tired head on Danny's shoulder and thought about what a tease plane rides are. Whether to Omsk, Siberia, or back home to San Francisco,

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plane rides somehow offer the hope of a completely new, original adventure, or at the very least the hope that you could meet an amazing, cool person who will change your life, even though that only happens in movies or to serial lotharios like Frank, but what's it matter anyway because you're so very content being a single gal. In real life you get a snoring businessman with long legs who blocks your way to the bathroom (that's probably how Frank met his lady friend), you get crappy movies, but at the end you do get a destination. And I couldn't wait to leave for my destination the next morning, to meet Frances Alberta, to see my friends and family and hot dentist back home, to chill like a Johnny Mold in the San Francisco fog. Would my self-actualization be as readily apparent as my new B cup, or would I have to announce it (them) to everyone?

Except, when we stepped out of the taxi, Danny and I were greeted by a true night-before-the-day-before-Christmas-Eve miracle waiting in front of our apartment building.

Shrimp.

And no way would I be stepping onto that plane tomorrow. Not with pure love staring me in the face and asking, "Miss me?"

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***

TWENTY-SIX

Self-actualization proves useless when confusion reigns supreme.

This shall be the first lesson imparted at Miss Cyd Charisse's Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie commune. Class, this pioneer schoolroom has been specially chartered to ease the path of your denial. In this little one-room shack of a schoolhouse with a window view out onto the wide open prairie, you can accept true love back into your life without needing to question how the hell--oops, heck--it came to find you again.

The second lesson is that if a Shrimp arrives carrying a refrigerated bag of pork pot stickers from Clement Street in San Francisco even though he's a vegetarian--that's just how compassionate he is, caring more about your need for pork than about the pig's need to not be turned into pork--well, you accept that on blind faith, and do not question the health hygiene issues involved

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in the cross-country transportation of meat products. Clement Street pot stickers are hard to come by on the prairie. Those dumplings are gold, the currency declaring that Shrimp knows what you want better than you know yourself.

When you ask why he is here, what happened in New Zealand, do not be annoyed with his vague responses. You can read between the mumbles. Shrimp followed his parents to New Zealand, where they were going to become organic farmers, but his parents neglected to clear the immigration and visa hurdles that would have allowed for a permanent relocation there. Kiwis are uptight about hippy parents with marijuana-trafficking legal entanglements in their pasts. Oops. Be compassionate. Be a cupcake. You've made some less than smart decisions yourself. Lots of folks have wanted to deport you. Don't judge.

Why did Shrimp find you at your schoolhouse? Why now?

Who cares!

Focus on the important things. Look at his tight little surfer body, way leaner than you remember, by way of either stress or kiwi diet, you don't know, but surely you'd like to experiment on the differential of his body's equation. Stare deep inside the deep blue of his eyes on his deeply tanned face, newly hardened by antipodean sun but overcast by bad choice haze; admire his new preppy-cut dirty blond hair with a wind-whipped, sun-kissed golden patch spiking up through the middle but slanted to the side, like a

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Mohawk modeled on the Leaning Tower of I Love You More Than Ever. Transitioning back to that make-believe commune of making out will clearly be a bigger priority than all those damn--oops, darn--questions.

Believe the dream. Even self-actualized schoolmarms sometimes look out their open schoolhouse windows, into the nothingness, only to find somethingness floating their way. This apparition is not just possibility. It is actuality. Ghosts don't need to properly explain why they choose to appear out of nowhere. That's why they're ghosts. Demand too much of them and they will disappear again, stealing your actuality and all the possible kisses they might have brought along with them.

Class, Shrimp is lost and you can help find him. He needs you. That's the only lesson you need to know.

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***

TWENTY-SEVEN

We interrupt the return of true love for an emergency broadcast

parental freak-out.

"CYD CHARISSE, DID I HEAR YOU PROPERLY--YOU WON'T BE COMING HOME AT ALL FOR CHRISTMAS? HOW COULD YOU WAIT THIS LONG TO CALL ME WITH THIS INFORMATION? FERNANDO WAS JUST ABOUT TO LEAVE FOR THE AIRPORT TO PICK YOU UP! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T GET ON THE PLANE HOME TO SAN FRANCISCO THIS MORNING?"

Well, Mom, would you believe a blizzard struck Lower Manhattan around dawn this morning--planes were okay to depart from JFK and Newark, but what help's that if no cab could make it to my apartment building to take me to the airport? No kidding, the mayor declared a snow state of emergency from Wall Street up to Fourteenth Street. Totally

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freak snowstorm--if it had only diverted a few blocks north, I'd have been fine, winging my way home this very minute. Swear.

I braced myself, then said the word quietly, almost in a whisper: "Shrimp."

"SHRIMP!" My mother's voice was not almost a scream--it was more like a deafening screech. "You've GOT to be kidding me. He's there NOW?" I could totally picture Nancy clenching her teeth and balling up her fists in frustration. The vision was almost comforting--just like old times.

"Yeah, he showed up unexpectedly last night. He's had a hard time, Mom. I can't leave him alone now."

In exchange for Danny's reluctant acquiescence to my request for Shrimp to stay at the apartment while Danny was away on vacation, I promised I wouldn't lie to my parents about the reason I'd bailed on going home for Christmas. Initially Danny said no way could Shrimp stay, and neither could I for that matter, but rather than throw a tantrum disputing Danny's unreasonable edict, I stated the simple fact that I'm old enough and responsible enough to make this decision for myself, independent of the Commandant's rules. Danny sighed like a Nancy and said, "But if you don't go home, your parents will be mad at me." And I corrected him: "No, they'll be mad at me." Danny shrugged his agreement. Trumped.

As he left the apartment for the airport this morning, Danny did ask me to promise to think it through carefully before jumping

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back in with Shrimp, but I could give no such pledge. True love waits on no false promises.

"I thought Shrimp was in New Zealand," Nancy said.

"He returned to San Francisco last week. But there's a new baby at his brother's house, so he felt weird about getting in the way there, even though his new niece is amazing and one day she will be number one female surf champion of the world. His parents took off to stay with friends in Humboldt County, and Shrimp didn't know where else to go. He had a free airplane ticket because he'd agreed to get bumped on the flight back from Auckland, so he came to New York on a whim. He was gonna stay with some surfer friend from Ocean Beach who now lives in Brooklyn, but he came to look for me first and he brought me pot stickers from Clement Street and--"

When I had called Autumn this morning to tell her I wouldn't be sharing the plane ride home with her after all, she'd said, "Shrimp has a friend from Ocean Beach who now lives in Brooklyn? Riiiight." Then, "Be careful," she'd advised. "Don't worry," I said, "I'm back on the pill."

"I meant with your heart," she said. "For that boy to show up out of the blue means he is probably seriously lost, and looking to you to find his way for him. You work on your way, please?"

"I can't believe you're going down this road again," Nancy interrupted. I couldn't believe she knew without me telling her that

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I was in fact going down this road again--not just considering it. "After everything you two have been through. After you'd finally made the decision to move on with your lives." Epic San Andreas fault 7.0 Richter scale Nancy-sigh. "I can't believe we're back to this same place again. But you know what? I don't have the energy to argue this one. I can't tell you what to do, but I will tell you I'm very disappointed in you. I'm disappointed with Shrimp for manipulating your romantic idealism by springing up in Manhattan with no warning. Dad and Ash and Josh and Fernando and Sugar Pie will also be very disappointed not to share Christmas with you. And the baby ..."

Frances Alberta is my new favorite sibling, because her crying in the background of my phone call with our mother distracted Nancy's epic disappointment trying to burst my Shrimp glow-bubble.

Shrimp does not manipulate. He's not capable of it. He's Shrimp. Applying any form of the word "manipulation" in relation to him is a complete oxymoron--he's the most mellow person in the world. "Manipulation" would harsh him into being an oxy-depleted moron, and he would have none of that.

Sid-dad got on the phone in Nancy's place. "Cupcake, what's this I hear about you not making it on the plane home this morning?" "Ask her why!" Nancy shrieked in the background as she tended to the baby. But Nancy didn't wait for me to tell my dad

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before spewing, "Shrimp decided to show up in New York yesterday ON A WHIM."

Onawhim. Would make cool band name. Would also make compelling tryst of Scrabble letters.

Sid-dad took his time before responding to the news my mother hadn't given me a chance to deliver myself. I wasn't sure whether he was directing his comment to me or to Nancy when he said, "Well, she is eighteen. What can you expect?"

Turns out I'm capable of shrieking like my mother. "That's patronizing!" I snapped.

Calmly, Sid-dad answered, "But true."

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***

TWENTY-EIGHT

Shrimp is a liar.

I've got his passport in my hand to prove it. "Your real name is Philip! Or is this passport a fake?" I paused to suck in a deep breath, and to ponder every supposed truth I've ever known about the universe. This couldn't be right. "You told me your real name was Shrimp. You even showed me a birth certificate that definitively stated your legal name was Shrimp."

Shrimp took the passport from my hand and tossed it against my bedroom wall. "Actually, the birth certificate was the fake. My brother had it made for me as a joke birthday present one year. The birth certificate was supposed to be used as ID because I don't have a driver's license. Wallace wanted me to show the birth certificate to get the shrimp birthday special discount to go along with the gift certificate he gave me, good for dinner for two at Red Lobster."

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"That's just mean."

"No kidding. Like I'd eat at Red Lobster?" (Said the boy who proposed marriage to me at Outback Steakhouse.)

"Wait a minute. Your real name is Philip, and you don't have a legal driver's license, either? But you drove your brother's car around everywhere when you lived in San Francisco."

"Yeah. So?" Shrimp nuzzled his head inside my neck from behind me, then pulled the blanket up higher over our bodies. "Its burr-ito in New York. Did you know about this?" His body spooned into mine, I felt no cold draft.

No Jell-O shots had been necessary to bring us back to the ecstasy where we'd left off. We've lost and found each other too many times to bother with the Will We or Won't We mating dance. We know we will. We did. It's, like, predetermined. We waited about as long as it took for Danny to leave the apartment this morning, for him to walk down the five flights of stairs, and for me to see him from our front window down at the street curb, hailing a taxi and being whisked away to the airport.

God, it felt holy-fantastic-great to mind-soul-body merge with Shrimp again. Like all was right with true love and our place within it. Praise Jesus for Christmas miracles!

"Why didn't you write me or call me from New Zealand?" I asked him.

"I was respecting your explicit directions. You told me not to

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contact you at all when I left. You said it would be too painful. Clean break. Your idea. Remember?"

I hate when guys take everything a girl says literally.

Shrimp added, "I noticed you didn't contact me either? So the clean break was an equal opportunity one, don't you agree?"

We'd both agree that we wouldn't dare the real question hovering over our clean break: "Have you been with anyone else?" Neither of us was ready for that answer. Hover elsewhere, question.

I pitched the soft serve inquiry instead. "Phil, what do you want from life now?"

Shrimp pressed tighter into me, and I almost rescinded the philosophical entreaty merely on the grounds of his left hand exploring the right territory. The new fullness of me matched the new leanness of him, like a yin/yang balance reflecting the changes in our lives as a result of what had happened in our lives since our News--York and Zealand.

Shrimp's slow hand definitely appreciated my growth spurt. As his hand surfed my curves, he talked to me, warming me further. He'd never been one for talking in the past. "For right now I want to be here with you. For later, I don't know. Maybe get my GED. Seems like the only job worth having that I can get without a high school diploma is working either for my brother or as a truck driver. Not that I really want a job or a career, but I guess eventually I'm gonna have to sell my soul to make the cash to travel again."

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"What about your art?"

"I love creating art, but it's like you never know when inspiration will strike. I don't want to be obligated to it. I want the canvasses or the sculptures or whatever it is to happen when it wants to happen, and not happen because a car needs insurance or rent has to be paid. I want to live free of all that."

"That's what you want to do? Travel?"

"Seems like a decent and honorable goal to me, spiritually fulfilling and personally satisfying and whatever--the essence of what life's about, I guess? There are beaches I dream about in Vietnam and Kuala Lumpur and Norway and Cyprus, where the surfing is supposedly like--"

I turned over to look at him, to separate our bodies from their tight soul clasp. It's like I had tried to forget what his face looked like so I wouldn't hurt from missing it, and now I wanted to drown in the beauty of it. I placed my index and middle fingers on his full red lips. "Shhh," I whispered.

Seriously, he'd just told me more about himself in the last two minutes than in like the last two years of our knowing each other. It was overwhelming.

Shrimp instigated a silence of kisses, but I strangely couldn't focus on the taste of his mouth. I was reconsidering this new Phil creature whom I'd never known. My head flipped through mental

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images of Phil ten years in the future, long burnt out on surfing, never having bothered to get the GED even though that Cyd Charisse girl who'd been the love of his life back when he was a Shrimp had told him not to drop out of high school, had told him he'd eventually regret that decision. Years after her prophetically brilliant observation, Phil's regret finds him with a new life working as a truck driver, with a not-CC wife and kids in Modesto. Truck driver Phil makes regular pit stops at his favorite refuge along the 1-5, where he'd be all, "Evenin', Polly, I'll have my usual" to the waitress. And Polly would be all perky and like, "Vegetarian quesadilla comin' right up," giggle giggle, because Polly couldn't wait to deliver Phil-not-Shrimp the blue plate special as his reward for steering clear of the strip clubs while on the road and choosing the side trips to Hooters instead--not like the old wife would mind. Wife came from a long line of Hooters waitresses; in fact that's where she met Phil, and he promised on their wedding day while they stood before the Elvis impersonator chaplain at the Reno Chapel of Love with her eight-and-a-half-months-pregnant belly sticking out that he would never love Hooters other than hers, and she believed him. Girls will believe anything when they're blinded by love.

"Where'd you go?" Shrimp asked me, his face pensive and no longer attached to mine.

I had no response. I no longer understood my relationship to truth.

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Shrimp answered for me. He whispered, "I still love you."

I whispered his old standard back: "Ditto."

Manipulation does not spout "I love you." It's not possible. Manipulation does worry that the sentiment, however sincerely felt, might not have been truly earned.

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***

TWENTY-NINE

My mother is evil. She drops these little comments that seem

stupid or insignificant when she's sighing them, yet somehow they have the power to get under my skin. "I hope you know what you're doing letting Shrimp back into your life just when yours seemed to be getting on track...." Nag, nag, nag. Really, what does she know?

Except, sigh, I sort of see her point. Annoying, annoying, annoying.

Theoretically I assumed that if Shrimp and I were together in New York, I would be bursting out of my skin wanting to share this city with him. We'd go ice skating in Central Park, explore art galleries in Williamsburg, eat our way from Chinatown to Astoria, slam with the punks at dive clubs in Alphabet City. And of course we'd fit in the requisite time in my bedroom, hiding out from the

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world, lost in each other. The reality was, I loved that Shrimp came to Manhattan and found me, but I felt powerless about how that choice was made. He just showed up. I had no say in the when and the whim of how our lives once again intersected. My heart burned all these months for wanting him to share my new life, but with him suddenly here live and in the flesh, giving no indication as to whether he planned to settle in or pick up and leave for the next killer curl somewhere else in the world, I really didn't know what I was doing with Shrimp. Should I relax and enjoy it for the moment, or expect our reunion to evolve into a new relationship like before, only now we were grown-up and living on our own, accountable for our own choices--and mistakes?

Life seems to sort itself out for me at LU_CH_ONE_TE, so I figured I'd better dip Shrimp into the well there, test him in my new environment and see how he fit in with that part of my new life. Experimenting with how a San Francisco surfer boy adapted to my Manhattan Project could yield important findings.

"What are you doing here, Myself?" Johnny Mold asked when I arrived for a Christmas Eve day shift, Shrimp in tow. "You're supposed to be in San Francisco."

The joint jumped with people, shoppers with all their cheery holiday bullshit gift bags, the yoga mommies and their infinite realms of strollers, and a hella strong gathering of Chelsea boys. Clearly Johnny needed me, regardless of whether he expected me.

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"Then why am I here, Mold?" I stepped behind the counter, intending to show off my pride and joy to Shrimp. But my path to La Marzocco was blocked by a hulking figure standing at the machine, with a pitcher of foam milk in his hand, readying to pour the milk over a pull of fresh espresso. His Hunky Tallness had long, wavy black hair, a chiseled face with big green eyes and long black eyelashes under heavy black eyebrows, a roman nose, and morning why-bother stubble surrounding his mouth. He looked either like the Aramis man or the hero dude of questionable sexuality pictured on the covers of Harlequin romances, except one who wore prayer beads around his wrist and a yellow shirt picturing a happy big-belly red Buddha. All I could say to him was, "Who the fuck are you?"

"Such language!" He laugh-smiled. The Jolly Harlequin Giant looked toward Johnny Mold. "This is the barista you write to me about who bring the buzz back to this place?" He had some weird foreign accent, like maybe Italian, and in his warm eyes and wide grin I knew he was one of those genial, good karma people whom everybody instantly loves. I hate people like that.

Johnny Mold said, "Cyd Charisse, meet Dante. Dante, CC."

NO WAY. Universe is a shambles, crumbling at my feet.

"Why?" I stated, directing my comment to Johnny. That stupid handsome legendary espresso man is the reason I spent the first six weeks of my new life stranded in a fifth-floor walk-up apartment! And why, oh why, does that espresso pull in his hand smell SO GOOD!

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Johnny said, "I hired him to fill in during your supposed vacation. I've been trying to lure Dante here from La Traviata for the last year, but he didn't agree until now. There's, like, buzz about the buzz of this place, you know? Dante's been in Corsica for the last couple months, but he wanted to spend the holidays in Manhattan, and this time he finally said yes to my invitation."

Lure. Dante. Here.

I suspected the straight-edge celibate of having a not-so-straight crush, but I knew better than to acknowledge the possibility that Johnny could be more interested in a person than, say, his Game Boy, or his band. Instead I grabbed Johnny by his Mikado/Penzance hand and dragged him to the bathroom. We had to shove aside a good half dozen people to get past the line for Dante. Word of the great espresso man's return to Manhattan must have spread quickly.

Inside the bathroom I hissed at Johnny, "I thought you were going to close this place during the holidays."

"I was. But there are like lots of Jewish and Chinese people who need food and caffeine before they go to the movies on Christmas day, and lots of business people who have to stick around for end-of-year business accounting or something like that. Why shouldn't this place be the one to serve the people who don't go away for the holidays? Half the restaurants in this neighborhood close the week between Christmas and New Year's. I figured the opportunity was ripe for us to grab some of their business then."

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"You're not supposed to have ambition! I count on you for that!"

"Excuse me, but you weren't supposed to come here and know how to use the espresso machine, to fix up the furniture and arrange it like all invitingly for customers, to recruit book clubs to have meetings here, to threaten a movie night. Now I have to stay on top of employee schedules and supply orders and--"

"Dante's not replacing me, is he? You swear he'll leave after New Year's?"

"Dante's a barista-wanderer. He roams from café to café, city to city. It's like a whole philosophy and lifestyle for him. I couldn't get him to stay even if I wanted him to stay."

"Do you want him to stay?" Nudge-nudge.

"Don't be coy, Myself. I have no interest in Dante other than in continuing to build this business, because now that my grandpa Johnny the First has seen the hint of profit in the accounting books, he apparently wants to see more. Dying old man's wish, whatever. This pressure's gonna kill me, I tell ya. I haven't been to band practice in weeks."

Now it was Johnny's turn to drag me, this time leading me out of the bathroom and back toward the front counter. "Who's that guy?" Johnny asked me, pointing at Shrimp, who had joined Dante at La Marzocco and taken on junior pilot responsibilities, writing down customers' orders to help move the line more efficiently. Had I been delusional, questioning how Shrimp would adapt into this

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atmosphere? Shrimp's brother owns an independent coffee chain business in San Francisco--Shrimp lives and breathes Java almost as much as surfing or painting. He's natural selection here.

I answered Johnny, "He's my ..." boyfriend --not quite, "he's my ..." true love --too much backstory required to explain, "he's my ..." lover --too grown-up. "He's my Shrimp," I finally said.

Shrimp said something to Dante, causing Dante to laugh and slap Shrimp on the back. He's my Shrimp who's so not getting any if he doesn't cool off the brewing friendship with the Dante inferno.

Johnny patted my shoulder. "Good lure," he said. "You oughta do some shifts with Dante. You could learn a lot from him." I shoved Johnny's shoulder. Hard. "That hurt!" Johnny whined.

What truly hurt was that Shrimp possibly fit into this environment more than I do. By the close of business that day he was on a first-name basis with half the customers, and he had a pile of business cards from people who wanted to hire him for odd jobs. Even Johnny fell under Shrimp's spell. Shrimp drew a set of dragon sketches for Johnny so good that Johnny had to leave work early to deliver the sketches to the tattoo parlor needle man for immediate slayage onto the remaining open skin space at the back of his neck. Worse, the afternoon Shrimp spent assisting Dante at the machine, chatting and sipping shot after shot, had revealed that Shrimp and Dante were almost related, like barista -sympaticos. Conversation

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about their travels had unearthed the connection that Dante knew Shrimp's brother, Wallace. Dante and Wallace met when they were both backpacking around Indonesia. They shared a mutual passion for coffee and they traveled together for a while, in search of the perfect Indonesian blend. Then Wallace fell in love with a Balinese girl and Dante found the dharma, and eventually the two friends lost touch with each other, but connection is connection, man, it's deep, which must by why fate had delivered Wallace's brother to Dante's Manhattan temp job. Small world.

This was my world. "Go ahead!" I said, when Shrimp asked me if I'd mind if he and Dante took off for a couple hours to get dinner together, because I was so totally not threatened by their connection, I could even subdue my burning desire to sterilize La Marzocco from Dante's fingerprints the moment Dante and Shrimp walked out the door. "I'm fine to cover the evening shift here." Myself's turf.

Left alone again at La Marzocco, I pondered how even when things seem like a mess for Shrimp, they fall into place for him anyway. A week ago Shrimp was broke and alone, getting bumped off a flight from New Zealand after the parents he followed there--and for whom he gave up his true love--got bumped off the island; he had nothing and no one to go home to. Now he'd found himself at the center of the world, his old girlfriend swiftly reinstated into his

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life and into his pants, a jar full of tips tipping his wallet into a positive balance, and the legendary espresso man Dante buying him dinner. Merry freaking Christmas.

Myself decided to celebrate the impending holiday by giving a little gift to all the sculpted Chelsea boys and taut body alpha mommies who arrived that evening on the hunt for Dante. I replaced the Equal containers with real sugar and poured whole milk into the containers marked skim. 'Tis the season to be jolly--and fat.

I am evil and I love me.

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***

THIRTY

Evil personally called to me on Christmas morning. Evil whispered:

"True love is too good to be true. Don't believe. Let go now, before it's too late."

I hear you, Evil, I really do.

Breaking up would surely be hard to do on Christmas morning, but I would manage. I always do. Evil offered to lend a helping hand should I falter.

Just because a days a holiday doesn't mean a break from the naturally selected order of the world. Reality had awoken me out of Evil's whisper-slumber, shouting to me that THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT INTEND FOR THIS THING WITH SHRIMP TO WORK OUT. IT HASN'T IN THE PAST, SO WHY SHOULD IT NOW? ACCEPT THAT TRUTH, AND MERRY FREAKING CHRISTMAS AND GOD BLESS YOU, ONE AND ALL.

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Alone together for the first time in our new incarnations as independent adult-types, with no parents or school or other distractions demanding our attentions away from each other, I awoke Christmas morning knowing that the blessed time with Shrimp most likely operated on a holiday schedule. After New Year's, Danny would return to the apartment, and Shrimp's lease on staying at our apartment would terminate. Shrimp and I would be back to the same place that broke us up last time--we want each other, but beyond that, we want different lives. He yearns to travel the world. I yearn to travel the world that is the island of Manhattan. I prefer hanging out in a cool job. He prefers not to be tied down. I strive to discover the meaning of actualization. He strives to experience killer curls. Stalemate.

"Mate," I was gonna say when I located where Shrimp had gone after slipping out of bed early this morning, not knowing I would fall back asleep to Evil and awake to Reality, "this situation is stale. Let's stop fooling ourselves, for good. We've had this reunion we both longed for, but let's end this while it's still good."

The San Francisco boy did not care about New York winter chill, because Shrimp stood in my living room on Christmas morning, nekkid but for a pair of Santa-themed boxer shorts covering his lower middle, and a furry red Santa hat covering his upper head. When Shrimp-Santa saw me come into the room, he kicked the play button on the stereo. He preempted the breakup song I was

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about to dedicate to him by turning on "Waiting" by SF boy Chris Isaak, from a favorite album of our San Francisco days that Shrimp and I listened to back at Wallace's house at Ocean Beach, when Shrimp would come in from surfing and I'd be waiting for him, to towel him dry and then share a special San Francisco treat with him--an Its-It bar, two oatmeal cookies with vanilla ice cream sandwiched in between, dipped in chocolate.

Shrimp couldn't produce a genuine Its-It in New York, but he did a damn fine Ocean Beach replay scene. While Chris sang about here I stand with my heart in my hands and I offer love to you, Shrimp pulled me into his arms for a slow dance. Shrimp whispered into my ear along with Chris's croon, telling me about here I stand with my world gone wrong and I wonder what to do. I nestled my head onto Shrimp's shoulder as Shrimp elevated his whisper to sing along with the record, aloud, about oh how I've missed you, I wanted to kiss you, I dreamt that I held you and lost you again.

Inside our dance, over Shrimp's shoulder and under Chris's song, I saw the result of Shrimp's morning's work. The living room table had vases of fresh flowers on either side, with a Christmas breakfast display sandwiched in between: steaming scrambled eggs, fresh fruit salad, home fries, and a stack of Pop-Tarts.

Fuck off, Evil.

After breakfast, after the belches and the kisses, followed by

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more belches and kisses, Shrimp pulled his gift from underneath the sofa where he'd stored it, unwrapped.

"A sketchbook?" I asked, confused. Shrimp knows I have no artistic talent, nor the desire to try my hand at artistic talent that does not involve trying to make rosetta latte art with steamed milk and espresso swirls.

"Open it," Shrimp said.

I opened the sketchbook to see that it was indeed about me and my art--just not drawn by me. As I flipped the pages, I saw me after me after me, pictures Shrimp had drawn with colored pencils during his time in New Zealand, using photographs of me as models--or just memory of me to hue the lines. There I stood on the Staten Island Ferry floating by the Statue of Liberty, waving to the camera memory of Shrimp's sketch hand. Gray fog enveloped black-clad me on the sandy dunes of Ocean Beach. Café me had a cappuccino mug in one hand, a Nestlé Crunch bar in the other. Half 'n' half me pictured a face split down the middle--half my face, my formerly long hair drawn in green, and the other half the real Cyd Charisse but drawn in black, with the razor sharp bobbed flapper hairstyle of her green-dress dance from Singin' in the Rain.

"When I was in New Zealand and missing you, this sketchbook was how I kept you with me. I imagined you in place of being with you."

I felt bad because I had no present for him in return, had given

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no thought whatsoever to finding him a Christmas gift since his unexpected arrival. "I'm sorry I have nothing for you," I said. Evil lurks within my soul. Do you understand that, Phil? I intended to send you packing this morning.

But Shrimp said, "You give me you. That's all I want."

I wanted to shove him for saying the perfect thing after the perfect present after the perfect breakfast, but I didn't. I burst into tears instead.

Shrimp did a walkabout around the living room during my cry, which I appreciated, as a huggy-kissy follow-up moment would have wrecked the scene. He touched the various framed photographs while he walked, Danny and Aaron at their old café; Max and Yvette Mimieux in Max's garden; a close-up of Johnny Mold's Harry Potter tattoos on his lower back; me with lisBETH, Danny, and Frank grimacing at the tofurkey lisBETH prepared this past Thanksgiving during her brief flirtation with vegetarianism. "Don't cry," Shrimp said. "Just look at the life you've grown here, all these people who care for you." I sputtered, "But everything always works out so easily for you, Shrimp. I'm just a goof-off." But Shrimp was not playing with me. He said, "Things work out for you because you work hard to make them happen." He did not mumble the sentiment.

Later, comatose on my tears, his Pop-Tarts, and a Chris Isaak croon hangover, we devoted the afternoon to quality couch potato

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time, my head on Shrimp's lap, who sat watching football like a proper boy, but with the sound turned off at commercials. During the breaks Shrimp gave me the best present of all--he told me about Himself. He'd gotten into meditation while in the Land of the Kiwis. Meditation helped counteract the feeling Shrimp had that the world could be a pretty hateful and overwhelming place when he wasn't lost inside waves or art; it had helped center his mind, so he could see that it was time to return home and deal with the real world again. He said maybe it had been a mistake for him to follow his parents to New Zealand, but he'd wanted that time with them. He wanted to feel like he could trust them, like they could be there for him after having deposited him to live with his brother for most of his high school years while they traipsed across the world. He said he suspected before he left that it probably wouldn't work out, but he felt like he had to try--for them and for him. Now he didn't have to wonder anymore. Now he knew he was on his own.

As Christmas night broke into Boxing Day early morning, I said, "I can't remember you ever telling me so much about yourself at once."

Shrimp said, "I can't remember you ever listening so much at once."

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***

THIRTY-ONE

Warning label: THE SURGEON GENERAL CC HAS

DETERMINED THAT DANTE'S ESPRESSO CREATIONS SINGEING THE LIPS, CHURNING THROUGH THE MOUTH, AND GLIDING DOWN THE THROAT MAY CAUSE FULL BODY CONVULSIONS, AND NOT JUST THE CAFFEINATED JOLT KIND. Salut!

I admit it. Dante is the supreme god of baristas. Watching Dante brew is like what I imagine it would be like to hear Pavarotti in his prime sing from La Traviata, or to watch Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel. There's a reason the guy has an international following and can pick his gigs at any café around the world. He's a master. He earns the title.

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Like Frank-dad, Dante likes to lecture. Unlike Frank-dad, Dante actually seems to know what he's talking about. Lesson number one: Espresso-making is both an art and a science--and should never be treated as just a job. Lesson number two: Always remember the four fundamental Ms necessary for a good cup: miscela (the blend), macinatura (the grind), macchina (the espresso machine), mano (the skill of the machine operator). Lesson number three: The four Ms result in the optimal espresso pull, which should be full-bodied and almost syrupy, so rich it requires no sugar or other flavorings, and topped with a thick layer of crema.

Dante advised I should have not been surprised by the lack of good espresso to be found in New York City--it's all about the water. The water here has the necessary purity and flavor to significantly contribute to the quality of the area's outstanding bagels and pizza dough, and to make a decent espresso possible, but the water is reportedly deficient in calcium, which gives body to espresso. If I want to taste perfection, I need to go to Naples, where the volcanic soil from Mount Vesuvius provides the world's most superior water source for espresso.

Dante reeducates as well as lectures. "Bella, La Marzocco is not the 'Cadillac of machines.'" It's an excellent machine, agreed-- though it's a Toyota Camry, always reliable and it will last forever, but art? No. The best espresso machines have long unpronounceable Italian names that sound like symphonies when articulated out

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of Dante's mouth. I'd have to go to Italy to see them, because they're surely not going to be found in this land of coffee philistines--and signorina, those machines are Lamborghinis.

I am but a mere barista novice, according to Dante. My instincts are good, but I have molto to learn. But he sees my potenziale. Dante sees Shrimp's potential too--but advises that Shrimp is like him, someone who will be a barista to support the wandering lifestyle, as opposed to Shrimp's vero amore (me), who will wander around only until she finds a barista lifestyle to support.

Gurus are so full of themselves with the spiegazione, but with espresso that tasty, what do I care? Keep bringing on that enlightenment.

My Shrimp-love-haze-fog streams so thick I don't sweat Dante's superior abilities. I'm young. I'll get better and better. I totally ace Dante's art and science of espresso-making with the pure love I dose in. And I have my own true love--reinstated, if admittedly indeterminate, but who cares? The here and now is good, good, good. What's Dante got? Caffeinated nerves of steel and a passport.

Also, I am a way better polka dancer than Dante.

"You're stepping on my feet!" I said to Dante after the record skipped from our dance-jumping. I slipped out of Dante's arms and added a penny onto the needle arm of the old portable record player borrowed from Max's apartment. The penny addition helped--the

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Lawrence Welk record from Danny's one dollah LP collection mellowed to basic scratches instead of skips.

Last year on New Year's Eve, after a "just friends" period following our first breakup, Shrimp and I reunited and it felt so good. This year, after yet another breakup and reunion, we had no interest in the Times Square ball-dropping or the champagne. Instead we got drunk on caffeine with Johnny and Dante, played Parcheesi with them, and finished up the celebrating with a round of Lawrence Welk polka dancing. The glamour never stops here in Manhattan.

"I am a fantastic dancer!" Dante disputed. "Ask Johnny!"

Johnny shrugged over the sci-fi/fantasy paperback novel gripping his attention. "Dante's pretty good," he mumbled. The poor boy looked spent from our New Year's Eve celebration at LU_CH_ONE_TE, but the hard-core straight-edge punk won't acknowledge he has a hard time staying awake past ten in the evening--which may offer some spiegazione as to why none of his bands survive.

"Bella just wants to save herself for Shrimp's last dance," Dante said.

Vero. Shrimp felt too far away even from a few feet away. I settled for sigh-staring at his beautiful backside standing at the front window, as Shrimp spray-painted the missing LU_CH_ONE_TE letters with the missing N, E and T, graffiti-style.

The D-Man down in KW was not experiencing the same lover

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bliss as his sister CC. I knew trouble had found Danny in Key West when I saw his name flash on my cell phone just as I was about to polka Shrimp home and ring in the New Year with him properly.

I answered, "Danny boy, you gave up the Village on New Year's Eve, so shouldn't you be acting like the Village People down in Key West and not calling your younger sister at one in the morning?"

"CC," Danny slobbered from his end of the call. "Help me! I'm lost!"

"Where are you? Should I call the police?"

"No, I'm in my hotel room. Perfectly safe."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The empty Veuve Clicquot bottle beside my bed might be part of the problem?"

I so wanted to lay some rules down on my drunken brother, but I decided to go the compassionate route instead. "Regret finally fucking caught up with you?" I asked him.

"YES!" he sputtered, sounding near tears. Then his lips let rip, almost like my caffeinated-polkanated state had roared through the cell phone airwaves and into his inebriated bloodstream. "Ceece, do you understand? Aaron and I got together in high school, we never dated anyone else. I was in a committed relationship from the time I was eighteen. I never got that time of dating other people and finding myself or whatever it is you're supposed to do in your twenties. And then the business went under and everything was a mess

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and I needed change. I needed to experience new things, new people, independent of Aaron. I let him go. But now I'm getting my shit together again and I want him back, and I don't know what to do. I royally fucked up. I don't deserve him, but I want him back anyway. It's not just that I won't ever do better than Aaron--I know I won't, knew that even when I broke up with him. It's that now I'd never want to have anyone other than Aaron again. And this other guy he's seeing is talking moving in together; he's practically ready to register them at Macy's! Aaron hates Macy's! Anyone who truly loves him knows that Aaron is partial to Bloomies! Stop laughing, that's not an insignificant detail. Ceece, they're making me physically sick! I can't fake this 'just friends' thing with Aaron any longer. What am I supposed to do, sage little sister?"

"Earn him back," I said. "And call me back when you're sober so I can repeat that advice so's you'll actually remember it."

If Danny could earn Aaron back, surely I could believe that my holiday vacation love haze with Shrimp had the hope for a happy ending rather than the old stalemate.

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***

THIRTY-TWO

Yvette Mimieux has been outed as a diva. Diva fault number one:

She's very ornery about sitting in one place for long periods of time to pose for Shrimp's cereal still-life paintings of her. Diva fault number two: She hates to fly on airplanes.

Max's sentence for Yvette's diva crimes: Yvette should stay home for the month of January instead of accompanying Max for his annual winter visit with his elderly mother in Sun City, Arizona. Her stay at home would be made possible by Shrimp, who should cat-sit while Max is gone, thus giving Shrimp enough time to convince Yvette to sit still long enough for Shrimp to complete a whole series of cereal paintings in her honor.

Max held Yvette on his lap, crouching over to kissy-face her as he told her, "Yvette, you minx, you'd better comply since Shrimp is sparing you the airplane trauma and sparing you a month with my

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mother, who hates you and kicks you when she doesn't think I'm looking. Remember Mommy Dearest, Yvette?" Max turned Yvette so she faced a framed photograph of Max's mother. Yvette miaule 'd her displeasure and jumped off Max's lap, scurrying to her favorite hiding place underneath the piano.

Shrimp peeked out from behind his easel (belated Christmas present from me), where he sat on Max's piano bench completing the final touches on Yvette's portrait. The artwork consisted of oat and bran cereal glued onto a canvass in cat form, then painted over in Yvette's colors and face, like cerealsy brilliant impressionism as only Shrimp could bring it. Shrimp said, "I don't remember agreeing to this situation?"

Max and I both proclaimed, "Of course you agree!"

The whole situation could be like killing two birds with one Shrimp, which Yvette, who hates birds more than Max's mother hates her, could surely appreciate. The cat-sitting gig would allow Shrimp to stay in NYC longer, once Danny returned home and kept me to my promise that Shrimp would only stay at our apartment while Danny was away for the holidays, and it would give Yvette a reprieve from her annual visit with Mommy Dearest. Everybody would win.

But Shrimp wavered. "I don't know," he said.

"I'll leave you two lovebirds alone for a few minutes to discuss," Max said. He headed to his bedroom, squealing "Chirp, chirp!" to us before he slammed the bedroom door closed.

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I sat down on the piano bench next to Shrimp, cozying up to his side and resting my head on his shoulder. "Pretty please?" I pouted. "Don't do that; it's icky," Shrimp said. Honeymoon's over?

I dropped the pout and called it straight. "I want you to stay. Do you want you to stay?"

Last night in the dark we both whispered "yes" to the hovered "Has there been anyone else?" question that finally pushed itself out of the closet. We both answered "no" to the follow-up clean break question--"Does it really make a difference?" I don't know which mattered more--our ease of honesty with each other, or that the honest answer honestly didn't matter. Fair is fair. Trust is trust.

Instead of answering the stay or go question, Shrimp picked pieces of cereal off the canvass. He held up a Cheerio painted ginger, from a spot formerly on Yvette's portrait face. After about a minute of intense Cheerio contemplation, Shrimp announced, "I want to stay." He sealed the deal with a kiss on my neck.

Book us that honeymoon suite, Max!

"What made you decide?" I asked.

"Cereal mandalas."

"Huh?"

"I'm going to take this painting apart and do it over. Like a sand mandala."

"Huh--times two?"

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Shrimp said, "I'm inspired by the sand mandala philosophy right now, want to apply it to the cereal art. Remember when I went out with Dante to the Tibetan Buddhist place near Union Square? Well, some monks had a sand mandala on exhibition there. What happens is, teams of monks use metal funnels to place grains of dyed sand into these incredibly intricate patterns that are formed into geometric designs symbolic of the universe. You have to see it; you'd be awed. Dante said the mandala represents an imaginary palace that is contemplated during meditation. The monks'll spend days creating a single mandala, and then they have like a spiritual ceremony to celebrate it, and then--you can't believe this part-- WHOOSH, they destroy the masterwork. It's meant to be about the transient nature of existence. Dante said the destruction of the mandala serves to remind one of the impermanence of life. I imagine it's like surfing--wiping out over and over as a metaphor for the meaning of life. Heavy shit. Or sand, as the case may be."

Not bad for a high school dropout, I'd say. To Shrimp I said, "So the fact of me had nothing to do with your decision to stay?"

Shrimp laughed, kinda. "Of course it had to do with you. Everything's about you. Obviously." Says the boy who presented me the sketchbook devoted to Myself. Make up your mind, buddy! "You think I actually understood Dante's sermons on transcendental transience or whatever?"

My mind was made up. My loverboy was as smart and deep as

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he is beautiful. "I totally think you do. I think you're intrigued to know more. I think that's pretty fucking cool."

"I think you know me better than me."

"That's why I'm me who loves you even though everything's obviously all about me." I pinched his side gently, kinda.

"Ow," he muttered.

"Look around this apartment, Shrimp," I said, admiring the movie star magazine photographs, the flags, the art deco furniture, the hot-pink lamps with the velvet tassels hanging down from the lamp shades. Inspiration, everywhere. "You belong here."

Shrimp pulled me closer to him. "No, you belong here. But I will make good use of the time here." He pulled a stack of business cards from his pants pocket. "I've got all these people who want to hire me for odd jobs. So when I'm not painting Yvette or hanging with you or going off on some meditational daze, at least I can be building up the cash situation until I figure out the next move."

Thank you, Max, thank you for the month. I know Shrimp and I will figure out the next move by then, and it will be a move in together. I believe!

Max came back into the living room. "Documents have been drawn up and printed on the computer in my bedroom. Now, Cyd Charisse, if you'll just sign here, you're agreeing to take custody of Yvette Mimieux if my plane crashes...."

Assuming Danny's plane home doesn't crash, now all I had to

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do was break it to the Danny diva--the one person who doesn't love Shrimp like everyone loves Dante--that Shrimp would be sticking around longer than expected. Like, maybe permanently without danger of the impermanent nature of transcendental mediation, or meditation, or something.

Bottom line, that's all about me, me, me: This diva win, win, wins!

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***

THIRTY-THREE

Hallelujah. As predicted, Danny's vacation was a complete disaster!

What I could not have predicted was how hard-to-get Aaron would play it. Good on him. He's making Danny earn it.

Danny cannot recount the tale to me enough, but I love the story, I don't mind. At six in the morning in Danny's rented kitchen space, I barely had the energy to sit upright at the cupcake decorating preparation table, much less engage Danny in conversation myself.

Even before caffeination Danny could fire into the story full steam ahead and at the same time go about the business of massive cupcake production. "So I got off the phone with you on New Year's Eve and went down to the beach, thinking I'd have a walk or maybe just pass out on the sand. But there was Aaron and what's-his-name, strolling along the surf, hand in hand. Pass me that oven

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mitt, will you, Dollface? Look at this, yet another exquisite batch of red velvet. Go, us. This process goes so much more efficiently with your help here." I passed Danny the oven mitt and breathed in the aroma of the freshly baked cupcakes. Mmmmm. Waking up. "So I watch Aaron and that other creature for a while; then I panic when I see them stop their stroll. Because the boyfriend was getting down on bended knee, and all of a sudden I had a very bad feeling that was not just about the champagne in my stomach wanting to heave up!"

"Where was Jerry Lewis?" I always remember to ask.

"He has a real name, you know. But what's that matter, because I have no idea where he'd gone. He'd already gotten sick of me and my mooning over Aaron by that point in the vacation, and he went out clubbing with some people he'd met at the hotel bar."

"Good. I love the part where he permanently exits the picture. He used too much hair gel."

"I know! I never wanted to put my hands around his head when we were kissing! No, Ceece, hold the parchment paper like this, wrap a little tighter--right. You just made what's called a cornet to pipe the filling into this tray of cupcakes. Good job, my most excellent apprentice. So where was I? I know. I'm walking on the beach and I see Aaron and you-know-who ... ,"--here Danny and I both stuck our fingers down our throats and emitted a bleh sound--"and what's gag-me doing but proposing to Aaron! And I'd

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just had enough. I marched right into that proposal and told Aaron, 'You can't marry that moron, because you belong to me!'"

My coffee kicked in. "And Aaron said he doesn't belong to anyone, he's his own person!"

"Right, and gag-me was like, 'Excuse me, Danny, why are you present every time I'm trying to have a moment with my boyfriend?' and I was like, 'Excuse me, but Aaron's not your true love. I am Aaron's true love.'"

I thumped my fist to my chest and swooned, "And Aaron was like, 'Danny, you're my true love? Still? Really?'"

"Exactly! Aaron forgot all about gag-me sitting right there on bended knee, under the moonlight and on the beach, proposing to him on New Year's Eve in full cliché mode, with a ring from Tiffany and everything! I mean, how lame is that? I don't know what circles gag-me runs in, but in mine and Aaron's, there is no such thing as a gay engagement ring."

Aaron did not forget how to take care of his true love. Once Blip left the scene, Aaron rubbed Danny's back during Danny's postdeclaration of love Veuve Clicquot heave, then held his hand as they laid on the beach for the post-spew, pre-sunset pass-out nap that Danny needed.

But we don't like to discuss the barfing part of the story in front of the cupcakes. "How expensive do you think the ring was? Seriously, how many carats?" I sampled a taste of the frosting that

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the chest-thumping swoon had caused me to gob on my apron. Outstanding. I've finally mastered making the praline frosting myself, without Danny's help.

Danny said, "Doesn't matter, because Aaron thought the engagement ring was ridiculous too. And, Aaron chose me." Danny danced a jig in front of the oven. He really ought to feel more compassion for poor Blip's loss, but apparently Blip proposes to every boyfriend he has (that ring has allegedly seen more action than Cinderella's slipper), so I hope the karma gods will look the other way for Danny dancing a jig celebrating his own joy at the expense of Blip's heartbreak.

I reminded Danny, "Well, not exactly."

"Drink more coffee, sister. Aaron did choose me. Only he said we had to take it slow this time. No commitments. No spending the night or other indoor sports, as Aaron's treasured Judy Blume would say--at least not as of yet. We'll go on proper dates. Get to know each other all over again. Start fresh."

"Aaron wants romance! Aaron wants you to unlearn how to take him for granted!"

Danny grinned at me. "Aaron's getting romance." Since they returned from vacation, Aaron's getting fresh flowers delivered to his apartment doorstep every morning, he's getting Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross baby-making songs dedicated to him on the R & B satellite radio station for the whole world to hear, he's

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getting Danny wide awake and holding his hand at the ballet--and at the movies, on the subway, strolling through Washington Square Park. He's getting Danny-love loud and proud.

Aaron's also getting a Commandant who shouldn't be passing judgment on romance clichés, since he himself has turned into positive mush. "Shrimp's staying an extra month in Manhattan, Dollface? Hurrah! Maybe this time he'll grunt more than two words to me and actually let me get to know him."

Danny grinned so wide I knew the time was ripe for a fresh Shrimp pitch. "Shrimp is all about the romance too," I told Danny. "He's picking me up after breakfast time and taking me for a walk to his favorite place he found in Central Park. The Cali surf boy has never seen so much snow before in his life. We're going to have a picnic in the snow and then Shrimp wants to sketch me standing on the red-yellow bridge, with the white frost and iced-out pond behind me. Doesn't he look scrumptious with that tanned face wearing that harsh Siberia winter hat with the flaps over the ears?"

Danny ignored my Shrimp pitch. He passed me a cupcake decorated like Cartman from South Park, then sang along with the stereo, rendering a verse of "Kyle's Mom Is a Bitch" by bellowing aloud about how "She's a big, fat, fucking bitch!" When Danny finished his rousing chorus, I scolded him like I was Kyle's mom, just without the histrionics. "You're skipping the Shrimp entree. I want you to tell me you like him."

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"I like him. I don't know him. I've been back from vacation two weeks and he hasn't bothered to spend a minute of time interacting with me other than to compliment me on the cupcake artwork when he comes to pick you up for your playtime between your morning job here and your barista job later in the day. Sounds like Shrimp connected with Johnny and Dante instantly. He's even apartment-sitting for that old crank, Max. So what's wrong with me?"

I don't know what Shrimp's problem with Danny is. Alone with me, Shrimp couldn't be more attentive. But ask him to join me and Danny for our weekly special Dynasty viewings from the episodes we recorded from the classic soap channel, and Shrimp sits next to me, his arms crossed, not saying a word, staring straight ahead at the TV like he couldn't be more bored. He doesn't draw or join in on the nonstop cackle-chatter Danny and I share. Ask Shrimp to show Danny his Yvette paintings or his new sketchbook of the uptown places--the Cloisters, Harlem, Saint John's cathedral--that Shrimp and I have been exploring because we're on a quest to find truth in the rumor that there's life not just above Fourteenth Street but above Central Park, too, and Shrimp mumbles "Maybe later."

I had no answer for Danny's question, so I lobbed a different question his way. "Danny, are you going to teach me how to make the naughty cupcakes or not?"

"Are you kidding? I grew up in Connecticut. I might show the artistry to my kid sister, but teach her how to craft the

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lasciviousness? No, you'll have to figure it out yourself. The ingredients are right over there." He pointed to the naughty cupcake-decorating table, heaped with bowls of pink frosting, chocolate sprinkles, and whipped cream. "I'm just not that cool. It would be too weird."

"Then you lured me here under false pretenses. You said you'd teach me."

"You wanted to be lured." From the stand below the baking table, Danny pulled out a tray of vanilla cupcakes with erotic icing designs. He teased, "So do you want to be the person to divert delivery of this batch from the gay Jeopardy! tournament in Chelsea to Daddy and lisBETH instead?"

"You know what's weird?" I said, thinking about how when I moved here last summer, we were all single, but things change, we've evolved. The NY bio-fam all rung in the New Year with significant others. "We've all got somebody."

Danny teased again, "We should enjoy it now, because given our histories, and especially Daddy's, surely that will change." He sing-songed again, "Bye-bye, love." He picked up the Cartman cupcake and turned it over onto a plate, destroying the artwork. Poor misunderstood Cartman.

"I know," I said, feeling the happy mood of our morning kitchen space routine turning to knotted stomach anticipation--of what, I didn't know. "There are like mandalas all about it."

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***

THIRTY-FOUR

Truth or dare.

"CC, when are you going to give up your scattershot jobs and give in to a proper culinary school curriculum already?" Silence.

Still being on the outs with Truth, and never one to turn down a Dare, I had no choice but to accept lisBETH's challenge. She dared me to help her inaugurate her New Year's resolution to try a yoga class.

"I like your little man," lisBETH whispered to me as she bent over in Down Dog position. Shrimp oddly can't ignore Danny enough, yet he easily accepted lisBETH's odd-job offer. After a week in her apartment installing new blinds and repainting her living room, Shrimp's rather taken with her. He wants to paint a canvass of lisBETH and Myself standing back-to-back. He'll call

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it Hostile Takeover. That Shrimp had the very idea to create the painting is a good sign, I believe--it means he's considering staying in NYC even after Max returns. That lisBETH would never agree to pose for such a painting is a Reality not factored into the idea.

LisBETH's idea for us to take a yoga class together could have used some Hot Nude Yoga brand of inspiration. A class with hot naked guys, even if they were off limits to us, would have to be more interesting than the Upper East Side Yoga for Uptight Stressmonger Wenches that lisBETH had dragged us to. I did appreciate that even though lisBETH and I share little besides DNA, we were both total yoga spazzes. Our genetically disposed terrible balance had us fumbling and falling through half the postures, though we were outstanding successes at not suppressing our giggles.

"SHHH!" hissed the yoga mommy behind us.

I ignored the Frowning Pretzel. "Shrimp likes you, too," I whispered to lisBETH. "When am I gonna meet your man?" LisBETH and Frank have a romance conspiracy going on; neither will cough up details of how their vacations with their love interests went, other than to say "Fine" and then change the subject.

LisBETH whispered, "Soon enough. I'm not ready yet to introduce him to my family pathology."

If I were a thick-eyebrowed, big-haired, shoulder-padded character on an eighties soap, my suspicious mind would have me

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poised to start a diva catfight here, or at least tantrum-throw my yoga mat in my sister's face: So. LisBETH. (The BETH part spewed extra dramatically.) Are you telling me you haven't yet told your boyfriend about the illegitimate love child-sister who unexpectedly charged into your life, because you're embarrassed by your father's long-ago indiscretion? But I am only an eighties soap character in cupcake-baking time Dynasty reenactment episodes with Danny. (He plays good guy/gay guy Steven Carrington and I play Steven's spoiled princess sister Fallon, the sometimes good girl, sometimes bad girl.) The real world, real time CC wondered if she hadn't met Frank's lady friend for the same reason she hadn't met lisBETH's beau--they could accept her in private family time, but full disclosure with new significant others? Not there yet.

Or maybe my mind stretched into paranoia along with the lotus pose that brought with it dreamy visions of Carringtons and their Denver oil money, which only seemed to buy them grief and truly horrible outfits to go along with their fantastically horrible dialogue.

In lulling voice the instructor at the front of the class said, "Concentrate on the quiet. Remember your deep breathing. Focus your center."

Speak English?

Obstruction of the Quiet (yet another excellent band name)

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lost the instructor her contemplative focus. "What's that beep?" she asked. She looked directly at me from the front of the room. "I know someone didn't bring a cell phone into this class!" Her not-so-lulling tone suggested I was a kindergartner in her class and not a fully-evolving eighteen-year-old spreading her effulgent yoga wings.

I unspread my arms and returned them to my side to pull my cell phone out of my pants pocket. A text message flashed on the screen from Shrimp, and my heart rate shot up even higher than the level my pre-yoga espresso shot had accomplished. Shrimp does not approve of the cell phone, says his one major goal in life is to be accessible to mind and body but not to technology. Luckily, he does believe in the power of the haiku, and he's not above hijacking Johnny Mold's cell to text a daily love poem to me. I hoped Shrimp's latest installment would be a haiku'd announcement of his intention to ground a stick into the Big Apple; at the very least, I hoped it would be as sigh-worthy as the previous day's haiku:

Cyd charisse dances

Cc espresso prances--

City does not sleep.

But the latest installment did not herald Shrimp's adoration. The haiku was a first--about Himself, instead of love for Myself.

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Snow falls on flap ears

How long before the wave break?

Shrimp out of water.

"That's a first," lisBETH said as we placed our shoes back on our feet in the lobby area of the yoga studio. "I didn't know it was possible to be kicked out of a yoga class. Thank you for hastening our departure out of that misery. Check yoga off the New Year's resolution list."

"I think I'm gonna hurl," I said, whether from the release of toxins in my body that yoga supposedly encourages (Lesson: Don't caffeinate before yoga-nating), or from anxiety about Shrimp's haiku, I didn't know.

Not true. January drew to a close and the haiku had let me know--Shrimp was ready to reopen his other habit besides art. He needed the surf. I wanted him to stay. Here we go, Reality, you jerk-off.

"Me too," lisBETH said.

Despite my hurl urge, I said, "Chocolate would help." Sometimes two negatives can equal a positive. "Good idea."

A shared slice of chocolate cake at an Upper East Side café helped my mind avoid the message of Shrimp's haiku, and allowed

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lisBETH and me to finally celebrate the success of our coproduction.

"Well done on suggesting the joint vacation in Key West to Danny," I told her.

"CC, I applaud your dare campaign to Aaron of 'If-you're-really-just-Just Friends-then-why- wouldn't -you-go-on-vacation-with-Danny.' You may have a future in the propagation of propaganda."

"Thanks. I think?"

"Please thank Shrimp for the paint color samples he left for me to consider if I decide to repaint my bedroom. He's very talented, your Shrimp. If he ever wanted a stable job to support his art, I could see him having a future in graphic design with his talent. Does he plan to go to college?"

"Hardly. He still needs to get a GED."

"You're kidding me--Shrimp's a dropout? He seems so bright and motivated."

"One has nothing to do with the other. And he's only motivated when he's into some thing or some one. He ignored me when I asked him to design some business cards and brochures for Danny's business."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"What do you mean?"

"Shrimp's threatened by Danny. You looked so traumatized when I asked Shrimp for some help at my apartment, but you

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shouldn't have been startled that he and I got along so well. We have more in common than you think. Shrimp and I share a certain jealousy of you and Danny."

The cake in my mouth could not wait to be swallowed before my lips demanded, "Excuse me?" Neither yoga nor Shrimp's haiku could accomplish what lisBETH had just done--dim my appetite, and make me lose my adherence to don't-speak-with-your-mouth-full-of-chocolate manners.

LisBETH said, "Do you realize how you and Danny act with each other? You finish each other's sentences. You laugh at the same jokes, love the same old movies, watch the same campy TV shows, listen to the same music--from horrible records bought on the street! You even talk alike. And now you work together." If we ever decided to let her play Dynasty, lisBETH would definitely be gender-bend-cast in the role of Adam Carrington, the coarse, scheming, and very much misunderstood brother of Steven and Fallon. "When you got that ridiculous haircut, I offered to send you to the salon at Bergdorf to get it fixed; Danny went out and bought a can of blue hair spray to make his look like yours for Thanksgiving Day pictures. He's thirty!" I considered interrupting lisBETH's rant to inform her of my newest hairstyle idea--a short flapper-style bob cut that I'd get streaked in the spectrum of rainbow flag colors, inspired by Aaron's contention that I am possibly the gayest straight girl in all the West Village, but I didn't want lisBETH to have a coronary imagining if

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Danny might try a similar 'do. She warbled on, "You'd think it was you who was raised alongside Danny, not me, given the way you and he get along. Watching you two has been hard enough for me to adapt to as a sibling from the outside looking in, when it seems like previously I was the one on the inside. So I can only imagine how it must feel for Shrimp, loving you, but watching you treat Danny like he's your partner, not Shrimp." LisBETH paused to take a dainty sip from her ristretto (most hard-core espresso shot you can get-- respect). She swallowed, shrugged, and added, "But not to worry, I'm getting used to it. Shrimp will too."

What, did her caffeine come with a truth serum?

I shoved the cake plate away. Count on lisBETH to pull off the impossible--harsh my enjoyment of chocolate.

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***

THIRTY-FIVE

We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Johnny Mold and Myself.

"You're late," Johnny said upon my arrival at LUNCHEONETTE. He did not look up from the erotic comic book he read at the cash register.

"Why do you care?" I placed the apron over my head and turned on La Marzocco to get it primed for my ministrations. "My hours here are supposed to be on the Whenever, Wherever philosophy."

"Moving past the whole ridiculousness of philosophizing one's life schedule by pop song titles, I'm just saying I think people should respect the idea of punctuality. You said you'd be here at three. It's almost four."

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From behind him I nestled my head into his tattooed neck. "You missed me, right?"

He swatted me off. "Kind of."

I pointed at his magazine. "No woman has knockers that big naturally, even in naughty alterna-realms. It's not physically possible."

"Doesn't mean they're not satisfying to look at."

"Does that mean you go for girls?"

"I go for you to help the people lined up for espresso shots. It's not nice to keep people waiting for caffeine."

"You mean keep you waiting? If you bothered to look up from your comic book, you might notice there's no line at the counter."

"You're right." All Shrimp has to do is look at me to make me go warm all over, but Johnny knows the words to get me hot. "Skim latte, please. Make it a double."

"Skim? You watching the pounds so you can prey on one of those big-knocker babes cavorting through your dream landscape?"

Johnny finally looked up from the book, turned around, and pressed his index finger to his lip-ringed mouth. "Silence is as golden as punctuality. Suggestion." His eyes returned to comic book babe.

In my fantasy comic book alternate universe, I will be Super Barista Goddess Girl. Bob Mackie or one of those equally horrific eighties fashion designers will have made a custom-designed superhero uniform for me, maybe a gold lame apron-dress, conveniently

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cut out to reveal as much hip, stomach, and leg flesh as possible. Shrimp will be the comic book artist and he will want to bump me up from my hard-won B cup to a double D, and I will object on the grounds of gratuitous oversexualization of a caffeine icon dedicated to serving the public interest of stimulating hyperactivity via coffee rather than crack. I'll be secretly pleased when the final bound artwork reveals Shrimp ignored my feminist stance. Oh, and stance, Super Barista Goddess Girl is lookin' hot with those long legs and gold lame stiletto books. *Cracks whip.*

When I handed him his latte, Johnny said, "The punctuality thing was actually going somewhere. I gotta head upstate more regularly to see my grandpa. He's not doing so well. I need to know if I can count on you to cover this place when I have to be gone? January is a doldrums business month, and I don't like to go when this place is barely surviving, but Johnny the First comes first."

"Understood, and of course you can count on me. I can work the schedule out with my other job with Danny."

"Message for ya. Shrimp dropped by on his way to his meditation class. He said to tell you not to wait for him tonight if he's late getting to your brother's boyfriend's restaurant to meet you all for dinner. Somebody your sister works with called Shrimp about painting her apartment too, so he's going over there to check out the place and give her an estimate. And he said you know how long

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women can go on with paint color samples, so don't be surprised if he doesn't make it at all." Riiight.

Johnny could easily replace Shrimp as my alterna-realm soul mate. He'd at least arrive to dinner on time. He'd at least arrive at all.

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***

THIRTY-SIX

Return to Dynasty: CC's Trip Down Johnny Way, brought to you by a late night TV-cable-access-dream-state-nightmare.

INT. LUNCHEONETTE--EVENING

CC

No, you don't understand, Johnny. I must have you!

JOHNNY

CC, that's your multiple personality disorder crazy-talking. You think as Fallon that you want to kiss me, but your true self, Myself, has a true love. I won't do it. I won't let you revert to bad girl ways! I won't kiss you! Shrimp is my friend!

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CC/FALLON

Who's Shrimp?

CC/FALLON gropes JOHNNY at an inappropriate groin point, her hand subtly shielded by a fake plant so as not to offend Bible Belt viewers who might have inadvertently flipped the channel to her poorly lit attempt at seduction.

JOHNNY

(squirming with heavy breathing, clearly falling under her spell)

I'm a straight-edge celibate. Not only would I never let you cheat on Shrimp, I would never cheat on my own values. That's what makes me true punk instead of mere goth. Got it?

CC

(pressing closer, her mouth almost touching his)

Mold, don't you get it? Let me give your values an analogy. That's a fancy word for a fake but similar situation. The analogy is this: You may think you're a straight-edge celibate, but in my imagination you're a devil's food cake with mocha buttercream frosting, and I am a lactose intolerant diabetic, and it's like I can't resist you. I must have a piece! I know you don't

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belong to me, I know I have no right, I know the whole world order could collapse from one taste of you, but you're just too delicious. I only want a little sample, and I promise I'll send you right back to asexual world after I've tried a piece ...

JOHNNY grabs her into his arms and they share a passionate kiss, or as deep a mouth twirl as his lip rings and tongue stud will allow before CC must separate Herself from him.

CC

So that was okay. But, dude, stop kidding yourself. You cloak yourself in asexuality not because you don't want to be labeled straight or gay, but because you're really just undecided.

JOHNNY

How do you always know me better than myself, Myself?

CC

(now cloaked by FALLON-evil, pulling a Swiss Army knife from her waitress uniform)

I've had it with indecision.... Shrimp either decides

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we are in this, and by we I mean he accepts my brother along with all the other people in my life, or I'll have to go fishin' elsewhere.

JOHNNY

(looking toward the script supervisor on the other side of the camera)

Line? I think she went off script?

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***

THIRTY-SEVEN

My movie star namesake sister has betrayed me. Yvette Mimieux

chose her side, and that side is nestled beside Shrimp wherever he may be in Max's apartment, whether he's sitting on the piano bench painting at his easel, making coffee in the kitchen, or staring at the Wall of Sadness. I think she even follows him into the bathroom. I wonder if Yvette sneaks peeks at the sketchbook he left on the bathtub ledge and resents that Shrimp has forsaken artistic study of her in favor of the written word. His sketchbook is experiencing a spiritual conversion, now being used during his increasingly frequent visits to Tibet House and Buddhist temples in the city to jot notes more than to draw images of Yvette and me in the city. If Yvette did sneak peeks, was she pleased by Shrimp's sketchbook musings, or concerned that given his lack of spelling and punctuation skills, maybe he should save his talent for images rather than words?

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The four nobel truths spoken by the Buddha after his enlitenment: the fundamental truths govern our lives in samsara and provide the means for releese.

1) In life their is suffering

2. suffering is from attachment (desire/craving).

Three--attachment can be overcomme

4) Their is a path for achieiving this; the path is the Dharma. the teachings of the Buddha.

Who knew my boy shared an interest in actualization? And

how could I stay mad with a true love on such a path? What kinda shrewish Super Barista Goddess Girl would that make me?

It's not like Shrimp promised to come to dinner with Danny, Aaron, and me. He'd said "Maybe." I hate technicalities like that.

I hate that neither of us will say how in this or not we are--too scared to ruin our January love nest hiatus in Max's apartment.

Yvette didn't appear concerned that Shrimp should be holding me close in the middle of the night after I'd woken up from my nightmare, petting her while she lay next to him on the living room carpet in Max's apartment. My head turned to her as I lay flat on my back, and I shot her the evil eye from my position on Shrimp's other side. Yvette spared me a hiss in return; she purred her supremacy inside Shrimp's hand instead. Diva.

Shrimp murmured, "Should I be worried that you cried out

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Johnny's name in your sleep?" Hair falling to the sides of his face, blond stubble surrounding his cherry lips, he looked almost painfully beautiful in the light of the dozens of candles he'd placed around the carpet sanctuary he'd created for our night's sleep because my body hurt from the yoga class.

I answered, "Should I be worried that you're a Shrimp out of water who dodges my brother at every opportunity?"

"You answer my question first."

"You shouldn't be worried about me and Johnny Mold. He's my friend. I admit I'm curious about him, but not in a way like I want to experience him physically. More like I want to know what he wants to experience. Make sense?"

"Not at all."

The nightmare, along with the fallout from the previous day's particularly high caffeine count, not to mention my achy post-yoga-disaster back, ensured I wouldn't be falling asleep again anytime soon. Now had to be as good a time as any to dig the middle-of-the-night conversation with Shrimp deeper, to end the stalemate of our indecisions by bringing our issues to the fore--or the floor, as the case may be. "I think there's an expectation that when you're our age, you should date lots of people, and I hope Johnny will part with his Game Boy and comic books and sci-fi novels long enough to find that out. But do I want to fool around with him? Of course not. In my heart right now all I want is you." I so came close to

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singing Shrimp a cheesy power ballad lyric like, "You fill me up, you're all I need to get by, oh baby, you and me, into in-fin-i-ty."

"Good, because Johnny spell-checks my haikus, and I don't want to think of him as competition."

I waited, expecting Shrimp to declare his desire to stay--and to be with me, and only me.

I waited.

Send love back my way.

Winter's apartment will end.

Anytime now, shrimp.

Nothin'.

Shrimp is a way better haiku writer than I am.

The moonlight-candlelight brightened my resolve to get to the heart of the matter. "Do you think of Danny as competition?"

Shrimp said, "There's a Buddhist saying Dante told me: 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.' Dante said this means that you must not look for Buddha outside of yourself. Make sense?"

"Not at all. You're saying you want to kill my brother?" Right now I wanted to go to Corsica, find Dante, and kill him. (Cue The Godfather theme song.)

"I want to work on myself and not be threatened by Danny. Or your worship of him."

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"Meaning you ignore him so you won't have to think about him?"

"Something like that. Divert my karma elsewhere."

I wanted to point out that I suspected Shrimp had misinterpreted Dante's Buddhist saying, which to my mind was not about diverting karma but about looking inward for truth rather than harping on the idea of a god leading you to what you had to find within yourself. Instead I asked Shrimp, "Why does your karma need to be diverted?"

Shrimp gave Yvette a series of rubs before answering, like he was using her to buy time before deciding how to answer. But even though his hand chose Yvette instead of mine at his side, just waiting for his stroke, at least he answered the truth. "Last year when I asked you to marry me, you chose Danny. And I don't trust that you won't again."

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***

THIRTY-EIGHT

"Whassa matta, Dollface?"

I looked up from the cupcake trays awaiting my frosting ministrations, too tired to be irritated that now was so not the time for Danny's sorry Don Corleone impression. Danny's concerned face at least diverted my attention from visions of how Shrimp's face looked when I'd stormed out of Max's apartment early this morning after our monster fight--hateful.

Danny tried again. "Wanna talk about it? Did you get any sleep last night? You look like hell."

"No. And no. And thanks."

If I talked, I feared I would capitulate into full-scale rage, which my karma did not need--any more than Shrimp's face needed the new, uncharacteristic spectrum of anger that had colored his foggy

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surfer beauty into all-out darkness as dawn rose through the garden windows of Max's apartment this morning.

I rechanneled my energy into the job at hand. I visualized each iced cupcake I dipped into the bowl of chocolate sprinkle splendor as being christened with a peace and tranquility that would be passed on to its future consumer. As the Buddha taught, and as cut out from a pamphlet and glued down inside Shrimp's sketchbook: Overcome the angry by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth.

Truth and I are no longer on the outs. We now outright despise one another.

Shrimp + Truth = these revelations:

(1) Shrimp gives--I'm right. If Shrimp chooses not to get along with Danny, it must mean he wants to leave. We don't need to make a mutual decision about what to do once Max returns to his apartment. Shrimp has decided. He wants to go home to San Francisco. New York is too cold, too much energy. Shrimp needs quiet, focus, and ocean. The Hudson feeding into the Atlantic doesn't count.

(2) Without bothering with the small detail of consulting me directly, Shrimp decided that if he had asked me to go home to San Francisco with him, make a Pacific life there with

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him, he knew I would choose Manhattan. I would choose Danny. So Shrimps not asking.

(3) Shrimp thought he chose the quest to Manhattan to find me, but now he's not sure we should be together always; my life here flourishes just fine without him. Maybe why he came to Manhattan was not for me at all, but to connect with the spiritual teachings that could lead Shrimp down a fresh path. He has questions about this new path. I could obstruct his answers.

(4) Excuse me, but the girl who loves him most in the world could obstruct him how? Buddha teaching number 251: There is no fire like lust; there is no grip like hatred; there is no net like delusion; there is no river like craving.

(4) (a) Shrimp didn't misinterpret Dante's Buddhist saying about if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. I don't know what I'm talking about.

(4)(a)(i) Interpret this, CC: As any Buddhist could tell you, neither the future nor the past are real; only the moment is real.

(4)(a)(ii) My interpretation: This moment sucks.

(4)(b) How dare I suggest Shrimp is using the spiritual path as an excuse not to deal with his issues--like anger at

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his parents' craziness, or resentment that the life he chose in New Zealand with them did not work out.

(4) (b) (i) This moment also sucks.

(5) Fair is not fair and trust is not trust. (Shrimp said this, not the Buddha, or stupid Dante.) Shrimp lied when he said he'd been with someone else in NZ. All Shrimp did in NZ was surf, meditate, pine for me, and watch his parents' plans for their new lives Down Under fall apart. And what had I done? Jumped right into bed with Luis. Yeah, that bothered the hell out of him. I chose the clean break--not Shrimp.

I then chose to storm out of the apartment in a rage, shouting at Shrimp that I couldn't care less if he returned to SF, and what did he care if I chose Danny anyway? Shrimp had chosen for both of us--chosen not to like Danny, chosen to return home without any concern about what that would mean for us, chosen to act like he's okay with the past choices we'd made together, when in fact he wasn't. My parting words before the BAM door slam: "YOU'RE A FAKE, PHIL!"

So ended the middle-of-the-night-into-early-morning fight-- suckilicious to the highest power.

Danny powered on the stereo to fill the void of my morning silence. From the speakers Freddie Mercury wanted to know if this was the real life, or was it just fantasy?

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Finally my mouth could produce words. "No Queen at seven in the morning, okay, Danny? I can't deal."

"Wow, she's not even in the mood for Queen. That's a first for you, Ceece." Danny zapped the stereo remote. "Bohemian Rhapsody" faded away, replaced by the power ballad pop song about she who was not a girl but not yet a woman. Hah-hah, brother-baker-man.

"Danny," I said. "Philosophical question. Do you think I am like one of those girl singers who is so desperate for love that she creates love where none exists?"

"You mean like a classic case study pop princess who gets married too young to a real a-hole and convinces herself it's love when in fact it's just her escaping a lifetime of people who've used her body and talent to sell off her soul?"

"Exactly."

"No, I don't think you're that."

"Do you think Shrimp and I will be like you and Aaron--able to start fresh, find hope with each other?"

"I honestly don't know Shrimp well enough to make that judgment. I mean, anyone who watches him with you could tell he's totally in love with you. But what he wants for your future together? I'd like to know as much as you."

The stereo should have been playing a gospel song of prayer, since the answer to mine was delivered when the kitchen door

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opened--and this was real life, this was not fantasy. Shrimp stood at the doorway wearing his flap-ears hat dusted with fresh morning snow, shivering, but with a face shining back in love--or at least with hope rather than hate.

He looked at Danny instead of at me. "Got a job for me this morning?"

I resisted the urge to run into his arms and slobber him with kisses and murmurs of "Sorry, sorry, sorry, let me warm you up." I knew Shrimp was not here to be with me. Shrimp's way of saying sorry was to show me he would invest time with a questionable suspect, not because he genuinely wanted to hang out with Danny, but to try to get used to him. It was like me with bio-dad Frank. Well, maybe Shrimp was kinda here for me.

Relief.

Danny didn't need the situation spelled out to him to understand. He said, "Take your coat off and sit down here by me. I've got a bag of Oreos needing to be crushed, and I think you're just the man for the job. I'll pour you a coffee and have breakfast delivered for you if you'll promise to get as hyped as CC does after her caffeine kicks in, and regale me with stories of your life. Feel free to make shit up."

Shrimp mumbled, "Deal. But no soft-boiled eggs for me." He glanced at me. "I like mine over easy."

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***

THIRTY-NINE

Everyone's happy.

I'm suspicious.

Max is thrilled to be reunited with Yvette Mimieux--and to no longer be in the custody of his mother, or her retirement community in Sun City, Arizona. He's so happy to have returned to cold, grumpy New York City that he's extended the welcome on Shrimp's lease in his apartment. So since Shrimp and I still haven't figured out what we're going to do about our living situation, for the time being, Shrimp's cool to crash on Max's couch, and Max is cool to have him there. According to Max, he could tolerate anyone after a month with his mother. And as we all know, Shrimp digs anyone, with the possible exception of my brother--but even they're happy to tolerate one another lately.

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Danny is happy because even though he's getting on well enough with Shrimp (in the awkward-but-not-hostile "Dude, sup?" guy-shoulder-nudge-followed-by-complete-indifference interaction kind of way) to have also extended an invitation for Shrimp to stay in our apartment now that Max is home, Shrimp declined. Danny's doesn't think Shrimp and I are ready for the moving-in step.

I'm happy Shrimp declined to crash with us because while we'd have the apartment pretty much to ourselves, what with Danny's double happiness at finally gaining admittance back into the land of indoor sports at Aaron's (hee!), I agree with my brother. I don't want to get into a real living arrangement with Shrimp unless we're ready to decide if we're really ready to live together. Not just if-- but where.

I think I could be happy to live in New York or San Francisco, so long as Shrimp was there. Right? So should I try to convince Shrimp to stay in NY, or, fair is fair, should I consider whether my life here has been a cool diversion, but all roads lead back to San Francisco, where he prefers to be, and where Shrimp and I could start a new life together in the heart-luring city where we first started out?

For now, we've settled on being happy to have worked through the monster fight and resolved the back-end issues. We have agreed that the "clean break" might originally have been my call, but Shrimp answered it by not contacting me while he was in New

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Zealand. Yet, trust really is trust--if we are in this together, and we have agreed that we are, for now, at least within the sense of the mutually agreed upon Buddhist interpretation that neither the future nor the past but only the present moment is real, I acknowledge that I'm sorry about the Luis thing. I'm not sorry that it happened, but I am sorry it hurt Shrimp. And Luis is over, done , finito.

As to the if and where Shrimp and I still need to resolve--we'll get there. Just not yet.

What I wanted to know now was, "How come all these Buddhist monks look so happy?"

Because I am the Best Girlfriend Ever, I finally made good on my promise to join Shrimp for a meditation class at the Buddhist temple where he's been spending a lot of his time.

If that meditation session wasn't the longest hour of my life, I don't know what.

While the class practitioners had sat on their pillows in the prayer room emptying their minds, visualizing the Buddha, and dedicating merit for the benefit of all sentient beings, I hadn't been able to keep my eyes closed. I was too mesmerized by the bald-headed, orange and red robe-attired monks at the head of the room, who had the strangest looks of giddy peace on their faces that I'd ever seen. Like they were beyond actualization and had glided into their own realms of happiness--some weird, pure kind that I reason has to be completely phony.

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Shrimp answered, "I guess the monks look so happy because they've dedicated their lives to working toward an end to suffering?"

"They're happy about suffering? That's pretty effed up."

"They're not happy about suffering. They're finding peace from trying to relieve it."

Shrimp and I held hands as we wandered out of the meditation room and into the temple's main area. The peaceful room smelled of incense, and it was lined with colorful prayer flags, Buddha statues and portraits, and paintings of Buddhist monasteries in Tibet and Nepal. A few nuns and monks passed by us, and made prayer-bow gestures at their chests when they recognized Shrimp.

"You've kind of found a place here, huh?" I asked him, squeezing his hand, so proud and awed how he has the ability to make himself part of a community--whether it's a community of artists, surfers, caffeine addicts, or Buddhist--wherever he goes.

"Sort of," Shrimp said. "I mean, I know the Buddhist path is one I want to go down. And I like this temple. But I like many different Buddhist temples I've visited. What I need next is a teacher."

"I'll teach you," I teased. What a laugh. During the hour of meditation silence Shrimp and I had just experienced together, I'd personally experienced sheer torture trying not to: (1) die of hysterics watching the happy monks think about nothing; (2) visualize my baby sister Frances Alberta as a Buddha baby who miraculously could sing every lyric of "Come Fly with Me" before she was even

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old enough to crawl; and (3) think about me, me, me and Shrimp, Shrimp, Shrimp when I was supposed to be emptying my mind for the altruistic intent of praying for an end to everyone else's problems.

Whereas. Shrimp had sat still for the hour, eyes closed, his face etched in total concentration, his hair spiked up, my lust for him through the roof. My dharma punk, my dirty hippie, my Philip-Shrimp.

My loverman who knows his girl's limitations. "You might not be the best candidate for meditation," Shrimp acknowledged. "But I love you for trying."

This room we stood in, this togetherness we shared--I knew we were standing in a happy bubble. But make no mistake. Bubbles burst.

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***

FORTY

Impermanence vs. Indecision.

I'll take indecision, please.

My life as a barista-waitress is over, for now. LUNCHEONETTE is shuttering its windows for good. Johnny the First is going into hospice upstate, and Johnny Mold is headed there to share the last days of his granddad's life with the old man who raised him. Once his grandpa passes, the building and the business will be put up for sale, but Johnny Mold doesn't have the energy right now to deal with operating or selling this joint that's only just now breaking even.

So, this much has been decided for me: Hello, full-time cupcake business, good-bye to my calling as a barista. That is, assuming I stay in Manhattan.

Since our apartment building's rooftop would be too cold for a February gathering, Johnny Mold invited us to use LUNCHEONETTE

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to throw a party--and to give the place a proper send-off. With champagne, cupcakes, music, and Danny and Aaron's friends gathered, the occasion was as much an excuse to celebrate Aaron's birthday as it was an opportunity to celebrate the rebirth of Danny and Aaron's true love.

It's funny how at parties it's the odd men out who find one another. Being the only "out" heterosexual males in attendance, Shrimp and Frank-dad bonded as party buddies even faster than I'd once initially bonded with Shrimp's mom the first time I got to know her. But at that long-ago party on the rooftop of Shrimp's brother's house back in Ocean Beach, Shrimp's mom had offered up a spliff by way of breaking the ice between us. Here, Frank offered up his patented wise counsel.

I was too amused watching Shrimp get a lecture on spirituality from Frank of all people that I had no compassionate thought to rescue him. I stood at La Marzocco (bye, baby, I love you--you'll always be a Cadillac rather than a Camry to me, no matter what Dante says), pulling shots for our party guests, at a comfortable enough distance to hear Shrimp and Frank's conversation, but not so uncomfortably close as to join in.

Frank: "One of my longtime clients--we handled the advertising work for his bagel stores--was a Jewish man, a leading member of his synagogue,

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very active in fundraising for Jewish causes. We retired around the same time, and I recently had lunch with him and found out he's become a Buddhist. At age seventy! His daughter married a Buddhist, and the man became intrigued by the sangha where the ceremony was held, and he began visiting the temple regularly. He said he had a recognition feeling at this temple, that basically the teachings he sat in on there explained what he always believed but didn't know he believed--until he found this place."

Shrimp: "That's exactly it. It's like I don't know a lot about it, but I feel like something is there that's right, and that's enough for me. I get this sense of belonging when I visit a Buddhist temple. Like it's basic instinct to be there."

Frank: "That's what my friend said. Maybe the generation gap on religion isn't so wide."

Shrimp: "But, dude, that's the amazing part, Buddhism's not really about religion. It's a religion that's not really a religion at all, but like a cooler way of

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thinking about existence--you know, to stop the struggle to prove your existence to the world, and focus on just like being a compassionate person who will use existence for the benefit of other beings." Shrimp pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pants pocket and read aloud the words he'd written on it. "Number 183--To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to cleanse one's mind-- this is the teaching of the Buddhas."

Frank: "Impressive study, young man. My advice is to continue to ask questions. Ask many questions." Profound!

Shrimp shot me a sly smile, but I couldn't giggle, not with the look of profound sadness on Johnny's face. He sat at the counter in front of me, sipping a latte, but with no Game Boy or paperback novel he bought for a quarter on the street clutched in his hand.

"You know I will be here to help when you get back from upstate, right?" I asked him. I reached across the counter and patted his Mikado/Penzance hand. "Auf Wiedersehen, Fickakopf, for now." My assurance to my friend dabbled in not-truth. I haven't decided whether I really will still be here in NYC when Johnny gets back, but for the sake of repeating back to him Johnny's favorite

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parting words in German to customers he didn't like--"Good-bye, fuckhead"--I hoped I could be forgiven.

"I know you will," Johnny said, sounding comforted. (I suck.) His eyes drooped. Eight at night and he could barely stay awake, or bother to foreign-word-curse me out in return. "I'm so tired and I've hardly done anything."

"Grief is very tiring," advised lisBETH, sitting next to him. "After my mother died, I could barely make it out of bed for the next month, much less to the grocery store or to work."

My grief is that I want to see it, but I don't--how Shrimp and I are going to make us work this time around. Shrimp has decided. He wants to go back to San Francisco. He could stay with his brother or his parents, save up the money to travel, find a teacher.

When I asked Shrimp if he wanted me to move back home along with him, his reply? "If that's what you want to do."

I am just not sure either way.

In the hypothetical land of an actual decision, I don't stick around to help Johnny deal with death and the business and all that important stuff your friends are supposed to be around for. In hypothetical land, I decide to return to the SF-land where the people whose permanence worries me reside. My choice wouldn't only be about Shrimp. I'd go because I worry about Sid-dad's life span given his retirement age and tubby belly and the fact that he doesn't pay attention to the doctor who tells him to cut his

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cholesterol and get some exercise. I'd go to tick out the remaining time with Sugar Pie, who was the reason I even met Shrimp in the first place (thanks again, juvenile court). She's legitimately old, even though her seventysomething self doesn't look a day over sixty-something, and she's in legitimately dangerous health; she goes to dialysis three times a week because she only has one working kidney, and that one isn't working so good. I worry most for her because last year Sugar Pie became a bride for the first time when she married her true love Fernando and just on the basis of all the late-in-life happiness, I suspect some evil irony god will decide it's legitimately time for the reality of Sugar Pie's age and health to trump the bliss of her true love.

I worry that even though it feels like I am supposed to be in Manhattan, feels like I made the right choice, I love San Francisco, too. And first and foremost, shouldn't I want to be where my true love wants to live? Shrimp and I have already broken up twice. If we repeat the last breakup and part because we want to live in separate places even though we still love each other--well, isn't the rule: Three strikes and you're out?

True love is for real but that's not to say it's decided to stay.

Fear of impermanence sucks almost as much as the fact of it.

Poor Frank, sucked into a gay-son drama to go along with his love-child trauma. The sound of the champagne glass from Danny and Aaron's friends, demanding a soul kiss between the reunited

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pair, directed Frank to shift his standing position next to Shrimp, a subtle move that put Frank's back to Danny and Aaron, and effectively blocked any subtle escape Shrimp might have taken from conversation with Frank. The move trapped Shrimp--and kept Frank from witnessing Danny and Aaron's kiss.

Not-So-Subtle in Your Subtlety would make a great band name.

Which reminded me. "Johnny," I said, "once you get back from upstate and when you're ready, you should talk to Aaron about joining his band. His buddies have been jamming together for years, but they broke up a while ago. They're talking about reforming and going back to their old name--My Dead Gay Son." The band's old incarnation was named in honor of Danny and Aaron's favorite movie from when they were in high school; in the movie there are two homophobic football players who get accidentally offed in a compromising position, and their dads feign support at their funeral, crying about how they love their dead gay sons. Watching Frank with his back turned to Danny and Aaron, I finally understood with my own eyes why Danny and Aaron relate to this line. Frank genuinely wants to be supportive, but he's uncomfortable with them even after all this time--particularly when they tip his support to the brink of bearing witness to their physical relationship, which his personal generation gap can't quite grasp.

I do give Frank credit. He tries. He's here.

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Johnny said, "I might be into trying a new band now that Mold has gone the way of Milli Vanilli. Any idea who would be My Dead Gay Son, Part Deux's musical influences?"

"Aaron's old band was like a laid-back band of whatever. They covered the Sex Pistols, Billie Holiday, Led Zeppelin, the Carpenters, The Clash, Backstreet Boys. The usual suspects."

My cell phone chimed in with its South Park ringtone, flashing a Humboldt County area code. "Yo, Phil," I called out. Shrimp looked in my direction, and I tossed the phone to him.

Did Shrimp appreciate my rescuing him from Frank as much as I will appreciate being rescued from his parents if we move back home? Because at this moment I was appreciating the twenty-five hundred miles separating us from them. I don't trust Iris and Billy. Now that they're settled into their friends' guest house up in Humboldt County (translation: They're gatekeepers for the friends' marijuana harvest in exchange for a place to live), Iris and Billy are trying to lure Shrimp back to them with talk of the awesome surfing along the rugged northern California coastline, and dangling bait about a nearby Buddhist monastery where Shrimp could become a volunteer cook in exchange for housing and spiritual guidance.

I object. They want to reel him back in because it serves their best interest to have his amazingness near to them rather than serving Shrimp's best interest to do his own thing free of

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them; they'd surely throw him back to picking up his life again after they moved on to whatever it is they'll move on to next. The probability that they'll leave him stranded again is less than hypothetical--it's a certainty. They've been doing it to him for the duration of his existence--and his brother's, and the half sister from Iris's first marriage, whom she abandoned to take up with Billy.

Shrimp went outside to take the call, leaving Frank with nowhere to turn, in this crowd of young people made up mostly of gay boys, but to his daughters. He sat down at the counter next to lisBETH. Since I had them both trapped, I gave up the objectionable question I'd been meaning to spring their way for a while. "Frank and lisBETH, how come I haven't met your significant others?"

LisBETH answered like lisBETH--brutally honestly. "You haven't met mine because he's not turning out to be a keeper. He's a good man, but you know what? He's boring. Also, he doesn't want to be a father, and I'm ready to have a baby. I always thought I should wait for a good man to come along before having a child, and now that one's come along, I think I've decided I'd just as soon do it on my own rather than be in a relationship with someone I like a little but will never love. I haven't cut the cord with him yet, but it's coming--and I don't care for the melodrama of introducing him to my family when I have no intention of him becoming part

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of it. However, you ask a good question, so Daddy, I turn it over to you. Why haven't we met your lady friend?"

Frank stammered, "Well ... uh ... she's very Catholic, you know..."

I was primed to lay into him, but lisBETH beat me to it. "For God's sake, Daddy, you had a child outside your marriage. She's standing here right now, she's part of our lives. Be honest about your past for once in your life--at least if you want a future with this woman."

Damn, didn't expect that one! Sister, I will never BETH you again.

A few karaoke songs and the birthday song later (sung as a Gregorian chant by Danny and friends--highly entertaining), I realized as I cut Aaron's birthday cake that I hadn't seen Shrimp at the party since he went outside LUNCHEONETTE to take the call from his parents.

And all of a sudden I had a very bad feeling about impermanence, along with a recurrent need to abandon yet another of Danny's birthday parties. I also had a very bad feeling about Shrimp's mom's love for buying cheap last-minute flights on the Internet. On a whim.

I handed the cake-slicing knife over to Lisbeth, and raced down the block, back to my apartment. I knew it! On my bed, next to Gingerbread, next to my cell phone, lay a CD-- San Francisco Days

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by Chris Isaak, with a Post-it note placed on top, in Shrimps handwriting.

Gone surfing--left koast. I 'll be waiting for u. I luv u.

Budding Buddhist be damned. Shrimp's gonna make me rescue him after all. Decided.

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***

FORTY-ONE

Trust my dad to have answers to the important questions.

According to Sid-dad, the big bang theory is the dominant scientific theory regarding the origin of the universe. This theory holds that the universe was created billions of years ago from some cosmic explosion that randomly hurled matter in all directions. Sid-dad says the big bang theory not only clarifies the original source of existence, it also explains the dynamic I bring to my San Francisco family's home.

I am not only Sid-dad's Cupcake. I am also his Chaos.

Chaos and her father enjoyed watching Ash and Josh jump on my parents' bed at two a.m. on a school night as the hyper-munchkin-sibs performed an outstanding sing-dance-shout number called "CYD CHARISSE'S PIECES IS HOME! CYD CHARISSE'S PIECES IS HOME!" My mother, however, holding a crying baby Frances

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Alberta, failed to find the artistic merit. Nancy sat in her rocking chair with the baby on her shoulder, her classic lemon-sucking face fixated on me--her real problem child. Nancy's tired expression and her tired Ritz-Carlton stolen hotel robe failed to subdue her blonde-model classic good looks, or her figure, which no thirty-eight-year-old mother of four should manage to maintain. As I stood over her shoulder cooing at Frances, I struggled to distinguish whether Nancy's face managed to display not just annoyance over my surprise visit, but maybe some semblance of pleasure at seeing me live and in the flesh too. Even if I hadn't called ahead to announce my homecoming.

I stole a move from the Shrimp playbook. I just showed up. Logic: If I didn't give Nancy a heads-up that I was coming home in pursuit of Shrimp, she couldn't try to talk me out of it. See how nicely we've evolved into getting along?

Sid-dad didn't mind the sneak attack. When I barged into his study early this evening, he looked up from reading his newspaper and said, "Ah, the Cupcake finally bakes a visit home." He put down his newspaper like he'd been waiting for me all along, then got up to grab me into a suffocating bear hug. My mother, on the other hand, followed the trail of Ash's and Josh's squeals at my unexpected arrival into Dad's study, looked taken aback when she first saw me, but did not run over to touch me. Instead her eyes appraised me up and down, then her mouth announced, "You've

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gained weight. And what have you done to your hair? If you're going to get blue streaks and a hairstyle of lopsided angles, at least touch up the roots and keep the ends trimmed."

I was too intoxicated from the San Francisco air, foggy and moody and brisk, to be anything less than mellow in response. "Nice to see you, too, Mom." I had asked the airport taxi driver to take me home the long way, up Great Highway. And the long way's views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the mighty Pacific, with the shivering city of skyscrapers and Victorian houses perched over it, had me delirious with excitement to be home and to see my family--although not so much looking forward to dealing with my mother on the Shrimp issue.

My mother had been too preoccupied with the baby and putting Ash and Josh to bed (the first time), and with hunting me down in my bedroom, demanding to know whether I knew anything about the mysterious disappearances of her Italian thigh-high boots and her pink Chanel suit with the matching Chanel handbag, for us to have alone time to discuss the reason for my visit. And when I'd finally appeared to my parents' summons for a talk in their bedroom after all the chaos I'd brought to the house allegedly died down, chaos returned in the form of Ash and Josh busting out of their own bedrooms and bursting into performance on our parents' bed, and waking Frances out of her sleep.

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As Chaos, as in my careers as a barista-waitress and as a cupcake-baker, my work ethic never fails to amaze. Thank you, thank you very much.

A pillow hurdled into the air and nearly collided with an antique lamp, causing my mother to finally snap. "STOP IT, ASHLEY AND JOSHUA! WE GET IT, YOUR SISTER IS HOME!" Sid-dad took the baby from her and into his arms for soothing, not as oblivious as Nancy that her shouting only agitated Frances more. For a woman who gave birth four times, I swear my mother knows nothing about children. If she did, she'd know Ash and Josh were wide awake in the middle of the night from the sugar infusion Double Rainbow (SF's real treat) ice cream sundaes I took them out for after dinner, not from the frozen yogurts we told Nancy we got, or from the simple excitement over my return home.

The kids dropped down onto the bed after our mother's screech, but their silence only lasted seconds, broken with cries of "PHONE!" and "AWWWW, CYD CHARISSE'S PIECES CELL RINGS FUCKING CURSE WORDS, MOM!" My mother looked at me and pointed in the direction of the door leading to the hallway. "OUT!" she yelled. To me, not the kids.

Ash attached her hand to mine as I stepped outside my parents' bedroom to take the call flashing the name "Maxim."

"You have boobies," she whispered to me.

"Aren't they cool?" I whispered back. I sat down against the

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hallway wall. Ash plopped herself into my lap, but a third grader in the ninetieth percentile weight range was too much for my tired legs so I shoved her off. She snuggled into my side instead. She smelled like the Pixy Stix she hides under her bed.

I answered my phone. "I know, I'm sorry, Max. I should have come to say good-bye before I left Manhattan this morning, but it was all pretty last-minute."

"Yvette is not pleased with you," Max sniffed. "She was looking forward to having you over to watch a movie with us tonight."

"Max, it's five in the morning New York time. What's really on your mind?"

"Nothing ... just ... good luck. With Shrimp. I'll light a candle for you."

"Thanks, Max." Shrimp and I are not dead yet.

Clearly any serious thought I harbored about transplanting myself in San Francisco with Shrimp needed to take Max into serious account. Max may have survived the last twenty years without much human companionship in his NY apartment, but he's like used to me now. Max will not last without me there. I may be Chaos, but I am also indispensable.

Josh ventured into the hallway and plopped himself down at my other side. He smelled like a boy who said he'd taken a shower before bed but lied. "I told Mom I'd only go back to sleep if you'll

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read to me from Harry Potter first." The sixth grader never outgrows wanting to read any grades of Harry.

"And what did Mom say?" I asked.

"That she doesn't negotiate with terrorists."

Shrimp is my true love, but Josh was my first little man. I only dissolve at the sight of his princely face. "Get back into bed, pick a spooky Azkaban chapter, and I'll be in your room in five minutes." I turned to Ash. "What's it gonna take to get you into bed, terrorist?"

"Promise to play Hack the Barbies with me tomorrow."

Grim-faced, I said, "Terms accepted." Fun!

I listened to a voice mail from Danny before hyperkid bed-turndown time. "Hey, Dollface, Aaron and I want to thank you and Lisbeth for the Valentine's Day present. I'm sure we'll put that gift certificate for Hot Nude Yoga to good use. I'll even wager you that Aaron and I will be able to make it through the whole class without getting asked to leave, unlike some conspiring sisters we know. And just so you know, I'm giving you a week's unpaid vacation from cupcake bondage. You are not relieved of your job and you are commanded to return home. Which would be here in Manhattan. Love from the commandant." Beep.

But, Commandant, I thought, my home is as much my old San Francisco family and friends as it is my new New York family and friends. Somehow the twain must meet, and if it's Shrimp who splits that difference--then shouldn't I choose that home where he wants

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to be, earn my place beside him like you earned yours back with Aaron?

When I returned to my parents' bedroom from Ash and Josh servitude, Nancy sat in her rocking chair nursing Frances. I sat down on the bed next to Sid-dad, who had finally found a moment to finish reading his newspaper. I plucked it from his hand.

"Do you love having me home or what?" I asked them.

Sid-dad said, "Somehow I have a feeling your visit isn't about an altruistic, long overdue visit with your family."

Nancy muttered, "Somehow I have a feeling That Boy is involved here?"

Uh-oh, back to "That Boy." Situation in need of damage control. Idea delivered to me in the form of Frances Alberta, who looked like a total Buddha baby, happy and calm and chubby. "Shrimp's becoming a Buddhist," I told Sid and Nancy. What parent wouldn't approve of a Buddhist?

"Super," Nancy said. My looks may come from Frank's side, but I definitely get the sarcasm from her genes.

"Is he back in San Francisco seeking enlightenment?" Sid-dad asked, but without my mother's cynical tone.

"If he was, and I decided to stay here with him to do that-- what would you say?"

Nancy sighed instead of said. Sid-dad answered for them. "We'd say we think you're too young to make that choice. You know we'd love you living back home, but not at the cost of leading your

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own life. Where's that independent spirit we know and love?"

"It's true love," I said.

Nancy barged in with, "It's truly a mistake to follow a boy who is struggling to find his way and will only leave again." I wondered if her assessment wasn't just about her long-running mission to sabotage my life, but was based on the chaos Frank delivered to her own life when she'd been close to my age.

Ash's loud cry from her bedroom brought Sid-dad to his feet. "Ashley's not adapting so well to not being the baby in the family anymore. We get the crying bed routine every night since Frances was born." He stared down at me, all short and adorable and bald, like Frances. "I'll assume this potential move of yours is an ongoing dialogue, not a done deal, and open for more discussion later?" He kissed the top of my head and left the room to tend to Ash.

I asked my mother, "If Shrimp's struggling, shouldn't I be there to struggle alongside with him? Grow with him?"

"Are you actually asking for my approval to follow Shrimp wherever he may go?"

I wasn't sure what I'd meant, but I said, "Guess so." Did I really just ask for my mother's approval?

"Then the honest answer is, No, I don't approve. But I know you will do what you want to do regardless of what I say, and regardless of whether it's the right thing to do. I also know that

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somehow you'll still be fine." Two years ago her comment would have immediately sparked a yelling fight between us; now I could understand it as less of an ornery statement and maybe more an acknowledgment of trust or something. Of course, Nancy followed it up by sighing the Nancy Classic, yet she almost seemed content, too, rocking in her chair while she stroked Frances's head. "I'm too tired to debate the Shrimp issue right now. Talk to me about something else while Frances feeds--this can take awhile. Tell me about your life in Manhattan, something about those periods of time when you're not hanging up on your mother's phone calls. What have you learned?"

Well, Mom, it's like this. The morning-after pill has to be taken within seventy-two hours of unprotected intercourse in order to be effective. Art installations can be found on Walls of Sadness as well as at the Met. If you're headed uptown from the Village, the C train is less crowded than the 1 train, but you have to wait for fucking ever for it to come.

I said, "For one thing, that I'm more like Frank than I think I'd like to be. Why couldn't I have turned out like Dad?" I held up a framed photograph of Sid-dad holding my hand in front of this beautiful Pacific Heights house, taken when I was five, the day Nancy and I arrived here to become his family. Frank would never choose a home on the basis of true love. Maybe he'd never have that

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opportunity either. Whereas Sid-dad made that opportunity for himself, made a home for Nancy to choose.

It only took her ten hours since my arrival home, but at last Nancy threw a genuine smile my way. "You are like Dad."

"How do you figure?"

"You have his heart."

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***

FORTY-TWO

Sleep? Who needed sleep with friends to see, boys to retrieve, and dumplings to eat?

I felt like I'd barely fallen asleep when the ring of my cell phone woke me up at seven in the morning. "Hello" hadn't been uttered by my lips before Helen's voice barked, "Princess, if you want to see me and Autumn, your ass better be at our old dim sum place on Clement Street in an hour. I have Lamaze class and Autumn has Econ at City College at ten."

During the tail end of our senior slump last year, we three used to spend hours hanging out at the dim sum place, eating dumplings and drinking bubble teas, laughing and talking. Now we were all about time management. At least we could still keep up the tradition of enjoying the real San Francisco treat together--

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major consumption of pork products first thing in the morning.

Forget about of loverboy Phil. I could move back to San Francisco solely on the basis of the food on Clement Street, my favorite SF street of Asian restaurants and Irish pubs, and more important, a street on which you can find almost any Hello Kitty product imaginable (except for the pornographic ones--you have to go to Castro Street for those). Breathing in the cold SF air while fog literally sliced through my body as I stumbled the City's streets awoke me even better than the fresh Peet's coffee in my hand. There is no fog-eucalyptus-ocean-coffee-dumpling air as luscious as San Francisco's, anywhere. Period. The heavy fog helped evaporate my fear that this City, as it likes to capitalize itself, feels too small to contain me now.

Helen greeted me in front of our former hangout on Clement Street. "Your messed-up angles of blue-black hair look even scarier in person than on a camera phone." This from the girl who had copper dye in the shape of a hand on top of her shaved crew-cut head when I first met her.

"Your belly looks like it's about to pop, which is just as scary," I responded. Helen was a little chunky before, but that was her doughnut addiction talkin'. Her massive belly and radiant face now promised a new being that looked like it was ready to drop into the world any minute.

Autumn said, "Where's the hostile love for me, who didn't

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get knocked up or sprung from Manhattan out of the blue?" She appeared the same, all multi-ethnic fabulous, but with a new, relaxed vibe to go along with her old dazzling smile. Group hug and shit. My girls.

We ordered at the counter and brought our feast to our old table in the back, cornered against the wall where we could watch the never-ending line of mostly Chinese customers (which was how you knew the place's food quality was ace), who shouted their orders in Mandarin and Cantonese to the counter ladies while enormous circular trays of steaming fresh dumplings and chicken and pork buns were brought out from the kitchen at regular intervals. At our favorite perch in our favorite ambience-less dim sum joint, our trays heaped with pot stickers (pan-fried pork dumplings), har gow (shrimp bonnets), fun kor (steamed rice-paper-wrapped dumplings filled with pork, water chestnuts, and peanuts), and--Phil, so sad you're a vegetarian and missing out on your namesake dumplings--tender, sweet, chive-flavored shrimps wrapped inside a delicate rice noodle. Hsieh hsieh ni, Clement Street de hsiao long bao, duo bao zhong! Thank you, Clement Street dumplings, and blessings upon you!

Fog city with friends

Succulent dumpling goodness--

I would stay for shrimp

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I asked Helen, "So your mom's recovered from that breakdown she nearly had when you told her she was going to be a grandma?" Since my mother doesn't hide her displeasure at the prospect of becoming a mother-in-law figure, I wanted to know how Helen's mom--whose sweet and sour disposition could give my mother a run for her Prozac--was dealing with the transition in her daughter's life.

Helen said, "Recovered and then some. She's all into baby projects now. She just finished clearing out the family room and turning it into a baby room. She's setting up the crib this morning, her faithful Eamon puppy at her side. She was so massively pissed when I got pregnant, yet she was the one who marched me and Eamon down to city hall to get married. She hardly said a word to him for like the first month he lived with us, except to come into our bedroom and yell at him for blasting music too loud--even though it was me controlling the volume. Then two of her waiters at the restaurant came down with the flu on the same day, and she trudged upstairs to ask my help, and I was like 'I've got morning sickness, Mama, ask Eamon' and she was like 'No, YOU ask Eamon' but Eamon himself was already downstairs helping out. Do you know Eamon is the most popular waiter in the restaurant now? Aside from being the most capable and charming person there who also sings Irish ditties to customers as he serves them noodles, the just plain oddity of my fair, red-haired Irish soccer boy working

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in a Chinese family restaurant in the Richmond seems to rake in tips for him. I LOVE IT!" Helen rubbed her belly. "It's kicking. Wanna feel?"

Autumn and I both reached over to touch Helen's moving belly. Kick, kick. Cool, cool! Weird, weird!

HELEN'S GOING TO BE A MOM! HOW THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN? I mean, I know how it happened, but that doesn't mean seeing the late-third-trimester prospect stretched out before me wasn't shocking anyway. Her stomach reminded me how last year at Shrimp's brother's wedding Wallace had been all groom nervous and happy, teasing me that soon it could be me and Shrimp sharing such a union. And I'd thought-- No way. Marriage and baby-making, that's for old people.

Helen is the same age as me and Autumn.

Autumn said, "Helen, promise us you won't become one of those new mothers who can only talk about when the baby makes a poo? Those mommies hang out during the day at my coffeehouse job, and that's all they talk about."

"I promise," Helen said, nodding solemnly.

"Don't promise," I told Helen. "Cuz I guarantee it will happen to you. I've been working the East Coast café version of Autumn's job, and trust me, it's not just a West Coast phenomenon. It's a universal mommy thing. Obsession with poo, and sleeping patterns, and ..."

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"Ohmygod, enough talk about babies," Autumn interrupted. "Let's talk about a real babe." She whipped out her camera phone and flashed us a photo of a surfer chick with short spiky strawberry blond hair, kinda butch build, in her wet suit, and one massive Autumn-size smile on her freckled face. "That's April, my new lady," Autumn announced. She looked directly at me. "I am walking the walk. I am in school, working, and in the first throes of new love. So glad I came home."

"April and Autumn? Has to be true love, it's too cute not to be. Good for you," I said. Then I slipped in: "Think I should move home to be with Shrimp?"

"NO!" My girls answered.

Little known fact: Superheroes on rescue missions are often the loneliest people in the world. "Why?" I said.

Autumn chimed in, "If Shrimp wants to live in San Francisco, then it's because he doesn't know where else he wants to be. He wants the safe and familiar. He wants the old waves, the old life."

Helen backed her up. "You know we love Shrimp, and we would love to have you close by again, but you should only move back to San Francisco if this is really where you want to be. Otherwise, it won't last. You must already know that."

I love how my friends give me credit for being smarter than I actually am.

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Autumn said, "There may have been some Shrimp surveillance."

"Excuse me?" I asked.

Autumn continued, "My lady hangs out with the Ocean Beach surfer crowd. She told us about Shrimp coming back. Helen and I may have gone over there to hunt him down and check out the situation."

"May have or did?" I asked.

"Did," Helen said, nodding.

"And?" I asked.

Autumn said, "We went purely on a fact-finding mission on your behalf. Wanted to find out why he left New York so suddenly, what he planned to do now. We got nothing out of him, other than a flyer for some meditation retreat up north he said he wanted to try. He is deep into thinking mode, not talking mode."

Helen handed me the flyer, advertising an upcoming Buddhist weekend retreat in Humboldt County, where his parents are living. "Turn it over," she said.

I turned over the flyer and saw a new Shrimp masterwork drawing, etched in crayons. It pictured him and me, sitting on a backyard deck patio with prayer flags hanging from an overhead line. Strips of fog wisped through the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. In the foreground I stood at a patio table wearing an apron, and Shrimp stood at the grill wearing a wet suit. Two children sat in high chairs: perfect hybrid-babies with my dark hair (Mohawked) and his cherry lips (pursed). What was most notable

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about the picture was that, unlike the pages and pages of sketchbook art he's devoted to rendering me in since we first got together, he hadn't drawn me this time in movie star or comic book fantasy projection. He looked like a regular Ocean Beach surfer dad, minus the golden boy beauty halo I would have drawn over him, and I looked like a regular Ocean Beach bohemian mom chick, with long hair in a solid black color. In Shrimp's back-of-a-flyer snapshot drawing of our potential future life together, we just looked like us. But older. And chill. In love. A family. No more, no less.

What have I been agonizing over? This choice should be so easy. I want that picture. Shrimp wants that picture. We should do it--wherever and whatever it takes.

Watching Helen and Autumn watch their watches, I knew my gift from my girls was the proof of the flyer, but not the luxury of time to analyze the art in a girlfriend forum. Helen stood up and took a business card out of her purse, handing it to me. "The art-work's yours to figure out how you want to answer it. You know we support you no matter what you choose. Just choose carefully, 'kay? And for chrissakes go see my auntie at the salon on this card. She's just down the street. Tell her I sent you and she'll give you a good price to get your hair fixed."

Autumn stood up and pointed at Helen. "What she said." They both kissed me on the cheek and left.

WHAT HAPPENED TO US? We were once rebels! Proudly

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insolent teenagers! Helen used to draw a comic book series about an action hero called Ball Hunter who chased golf balls along with other *cough* misadventures, and she used these alluring comics as bait to lure over-twenty-one boys into buying her beers when her underage self was hanging out in local pubs. (She's now married to one of those conquests!) Autumn used to get high with other girls' surfer boyfriends and then use these boys (and some of the girls, too) for sexual experimentation while she came to terms with her own sexuality. I got kicked out of boarding school after the boy there who got me pregnant was busted for selling E out of his dorm room, and when I returned home to finish out high school, it wasn't long before my parents had me on lockdown in Alcatraz due to my exemplary bad attitude problem and the matter of an unauthorized sleepover at Shrimp's.

Now Helen is happily pregnant and married, Autumn is competently juggling school and job and girlfriend, and I, who was once banished to Alcatraz, am considering a permanent, peaceful move back into its realm. I don't know whether to be scared or pleased.

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***

FORTY-THREE

A fertility potion must be woven into the San Francisco fog, what with all the procreation running rampant here lately.

All this procreation, and all I can think about is death.

"Promise me you won't die," I demanded of Sugar Pie.

"Anyone ever tell you that you need a restraint device for your mouth?" Fernando asked me from the driver's seat of my father's Mercedes.

From the back seat I grimaced at the big broody Nicaraguan through his rearview mirror observation of me. I answered, "Yes. You. On practically every drive you ever gave me to or from school or work or the beach or whatever while I was growing up. But listen up, señor. I've known your wife longer than you have-- need I remind you I introduced you to her? And I know she

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appreciates the demand as an expression of my devotion to her rather than as a death wish for her."

Seated next to Fernando, in the front passenger seat, Sugar Pie allowed, "The young lady is right." She turned to face me. "As for promises, we all know I can't promise I'm not going anywhere anytime soon." This young lady has always admired Sugar's use of double negatives. "I'm"--(*cough, indistinguishable number, cough*)--"years old with one remaining kidney that's failing. I plan to enjoy every day that comes to me as I get it, and the good Lord willing, I'll pass on in my sleep with Fernando at my side, but beyond that, I have no wish or expectation for when or how it will happen. Could be tomorrow, could be next year, could be on the dialysis chair, could be sitting in a car with you like right now." To let her husband know she bore no ill will about my death comment, Sugar Pie opened a box of See's candy. "Now baby, I'm going to offer you to take a piece, but as you can see, there aren't many left, so I'm hoping you'll be a polite young lady and say no. I know you wouldn't want to take an old lady's last piece of chocolate." She held out the box to me. "Cyd Charisse, would you like a piece of candy?"

I shook my head. "No, thank you, Sugar." Must be true love between us for me to turn down a chocolate. Hypothetically I never imagined a universe in which this scenario could play out, so now seemed like the appropriate time to play out another hypothetical

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with Sugar Pie. "It seems a shame that you finally moved out of the old folks' home and in with Fernando at the apartment at the side of our house, and then I'm not around to hang out with you more. Do you think I should move back home?" I didn't add the "with Shrimp" part, for the sake of blind judgment and all.

"Follow your heart." Sugar Pie has always been a mind reader.

"What if my heart's in conflict with my mind?"

"Mind!" Fernando shook his index finger at me from the rearview mirror. "Use your mind more, already. What's that I heard about you never bothering with culinary school?"

Sugar Pie added, "You've told me about all these gentlemen in your life in New York--but what about friends your own age, girls, like Helen and Autumn?"

I told them, "First, I did try a culinary class. School is not for me. And, I did make one friend, this girl who works at a nail shop in the neighborhood. But then I guess I came on too strong or something, must be cuz I don't have that restraint lock placed on my mouth yet, since what seemed like it started out as a cool friendship just went nowhere."

At the same time Fernando and Sugar Pie both said, "Did you try again?"

Their evolution into coupledom sync-talk is truly off-the-charts impressive. I liked that when I looked at them through the car mirrors, the reflection of contentedness on their faces was not a

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false mirage. They're another year older, and they looked it--but another year happier, and they looked that also.

As the car approached our destination in Ocean Beach, Sugar Pie told me, "The cards have confidence you could make a successful go of it wherever you chose to live."

"But what do you think, Sugar?" I asked.

"I am the cards," Sugar Pie intoned as Fernando stopped the car to drop me off. "How have you not figured that out yet?"

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***

FORTY-FOUR

Maybe I should have caffeinated more heavily before showing up at Java the Hut, the coffeehouse owned by Shrimp's brother, Wallace, aka Java. Along with looking forward to dosing up, I'd been looking forward to revisiting the sight of my first barista gig, where Shrimp and I used to work together, but instead the sight of a Dumpster in front of the café, and the sounds of workmen with saws and drills working inside, greeted me. The old café was in total disarray--that is, if total disarray meant totally closed for coffee business.

As I peered through the window, Wallace stepped outside, next to the surfboard rack, to light a cigarette. It wasn't the first time I'd ever seen Wallace smoke, but it was for sure the first time I'd ever seen that surf rack with no boards parked inside the metal grates. Java the Hut's hard-core urban surfer paradise at the end of

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the continental U.S., where the Pacific roared away just across Great Highway, had turned into surfer ghost town. Stupid impermanence denying me yummy visions of hot-bodied boys wearing wet suits and chugging lattes.

Wallace grinned when he noticed me. "I had a feeling you'd be dropping by here soon." Ohmygod, why did he have to smile at me like that, with those full red lips and seductive white teeth that should be way darker, given the amount of coffee he drinks? Java's getting older, true--and more gorgeous, if that's possible. Gone was his long brown hair, replaced by a buzz cut that only highlighted the sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones on his smooth rosy-tan face, and his deep-set sea eyes that look just like what's-his-name's--yeah, Phil's,--"CC, are you listening? You tranced out?"

"Huh?"

My body tensed in anticipation of Java moving in for the California surfer dude hug-shoulder nudge thing with me. Any touch from him would be too temptingly close. So like the loyal girlfriend I am to his errant brother, I fake-sneezed as Wallace approached me, successfully warding off any attempt at hugging. Wallace backed off a couple inches and said, "I was saying I knew once Shrimp appeared home with no warning, spouting all kinds of spiritual dogma, then left almost as quickly to return to the embrace of Iris and Billy, that you'd probably follow behind not much later.

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There's one boy just begging to be found." Wallace glanced down at his waterproof surfer watch. "And here you are, right on schedule. You look good--New York agrees with you. Wanna come inside and see some pictures of Kelea? Please excuse the mess while we remodel."

I had plenty of time for inspection of the latest round of procreation, since Fernando had to drop Sugar Pie off at the dialysis center before returning to pick me up, so I stepped inside, despite the danger I felt at wanting to pull Java into a supply closet and do with him in there like I used to do with his brother. But Java's a solid family man, and I am long over my jailbait stage. It was just a hypothetical wanton desire. I have 'em all the time.

Java's like this perfect reflection of who I imagine Shrimp will be several years down the road--devoted partner, devoted to his business and to his community, a real man who still looks really good in a wet suit. Keep imagining, CC. It's such a happy place. Shrimp will be devoted to me all right, devoted of body, soul, and art--so long as that devotion allows him the freedom to not have possessions or be bound to any one place.

Wallace said, "Delia's at home with the baby right now. She'll be sorry she missed you. Looks like Kelea got mommy's red hair. She's beautiful, yes? Not like I'm biased or anything." I thumbed through a photo album of Wallace and Delia with their new baby, named after the Maui surf chiefess in Hawaiian mythology.

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This baby could be my baby's cousin ... someday, I thought. I decided that when Shrimp and I reached the stage of cousin-making for Kelea, Helen and Autumn would be aunties, and Fernando and Sugar Pie would be godparents, and my mother would make up some name our kids should call her like "LaLa," because she'd die before answering to "Nana." Come to think of it, Shrimp drew our family right, our babies probably would have my hair and his lips, and whoa, hopefully that would be long after I got more livin' on my own accomplished.

I turned to a picture of Iris and Billy with their baby granddaughter. "Kelea's as gorgeous as her name. Are Iris and Billy enjoying being grandparents?"

Wallace smirked. He built the Java the Hut business with no help from them--they'd pretty much flung him out in the world on his own by the time he was sixteen. "Let's just say if the new grandparents were not offered a place to live in our new house with our new baby when they returned from New Zealand, there's a reason. They're Iris and Billy, you know? They're into the cute, cuddly moments, but when the real business of baby-tending comes into play, they've got a joint to light up, a nature hike to explore, a global political demonstration to attend."

"Any idea how long Shrimp intends to stay with them up in Humboldt?"

"Well, since Iris and Billy have chosen to live in a caretaker's

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house with no phone--tell me the logic there--and Shrimp refuses to carry a cell phone, the answer to that would be no. I asked him to stay. I could use his help with the remodel, and he's welcome to live with us as long as he wants, even if Iris and Billy's living privileges with me and Dee have expired. But Shrimp mumbled something about big questions he needs time and ocean to figure out, and then he headed up north. He gave me no idea how long he's intending to stay up there, but I can tell you where to find him."

"Yes, please."

Wallace drew a map on a paper napkin. "I'm writing down directions to Iris and Billy's, but if you want to dodge a visit with them, try this beach first. If I know my brah, he'll be hitting the waves there around noontime any day he can. I'm writing down a message for Shrimp on the back of this napkin. Something that might help him with those big questions. Read it on your way up and see what you think." The map Wallace sketched, zigzag lines of barren coastal highway leading to unmarked parking spots leading down to an isolated beach nook, looked like a treasure hunt mission to find our lost surfer boy. "And, Cyd Charisse?"

"Yes?"

"You know you can't save him, right? Shrimp has to find himself." I thought I didn't believe in aha moments anymore, but just like that, I was snapped out of the Land of Indecision. I am Chaos. I am a hellion. I am not a cupcake.

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I am sick of everyone looking out for my and Shrimp's supposed best interests. That's our job. Aha, and so there!

Shrimp and I will not go back to the old stalemate that broke us apart last year. If I have to move home to lock him into a future--whether it's finding a Buddhist teacher or getting his GED and finding some direction in life--I will, so long as he wants me by his side. Why shouldn't we get in on the procreation action too? I'm not saying I plan to find Shrimp and propose babies and marriage, but can I propose we create a life together here? Hella yeah.

Life is too short not to compromise on something as easy as a city, if I want my true love served up to me on a permanent basis.

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***

FORTY-FIVE

Buddha teaching number 208: Therefore, follow the Noble One, who is steadfast, wise, learned, dutiful, and devout. One should follow only such a man, who is truly good and discerning, even as the moon follows the path of the stars.

The noble man to seek out, according to Wallace's treasure map, ran the general store in an off-the-beaten-trail little town in Humboldt County. All I wanted from this man was fresh caffeination and the day's secret surf code, which seemed my due after the five-hour drive north from San Francisco, but the ZZ Top doppelganger man hedged.

ZZ handed me a cup of coffee so strong I almost lost my balance from the heavy smell. He said, "Whatcha so curious for? Folks passing through here know not to ask questions." This one store on this stretch of one-lane highway had more than one person inside

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to nod agreement to ZZ's statement. For a ramshackle shack in the middle of northern California nowhere, it felt possible that every town resident--all ten of them, all looking like refugees off the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Stoner Outlaw list--was in attendance to back up ZZ and make sure CC did not find her man.

You'd think I'd asked for da Vinci's fucking code rather than made a simple request for how to find the hallowed surf spot. According to Wallace's directions, morning surfers set out a daily beacon each day on top of the unmarked hill above the obscure beach to let the afternoon surfers know the wave quality. The beacon--some days it might be a Harley flag dug onto the hill, some days it might be a stop sign nailed into a tree--also served to tip off would-be adventurers as to whether the fuzz happens to be bored that day and might be found harassing the lone surfers on the renegade beach that was officially closed to the public by the state because of safety concerns.

Through the open door to the bathroom behind ZZ's stand at the shack's cash register, I eyeballed the premium toothbrush resting on the sink counter and sensed my in. I whispered, "If you tell me where to find the beacon, I'll tell you the secret for getting your electric toothbrush perfectly clean. I also know stuff about the big bang theory, in case you're interested."

On the down low, ZZ muttered, "Meet me at the back behind the '58 Chevy truck. Make sure no one sees you."

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And so the noble ZZ man learned the CC on the DL, and revealed the path to reach the Shrimp.

I parked the car in a ditch behind a forest of trees off the highway, under the redwood tree with the Bazooka gum box dangling from a branch (good waves, no cop interest), and set out on my trek down the steep cliff. I think I've decided I am a New Yorker at heart, but it was impossible not to be awed by the sight of the mighty Pacific, surrounded by forest and mountain, as I stumbled down the cliff scattered with mist and fern. The secret path offered no simple jaunt for a city girl--it was more like a path for serious hikers who carried all those complicated rock-climbing gizmos that often go along with the cool clothing at mountaineer gear stores.

A city girl on a quest for her man would not be dissuaded by the fact of her inability to rappel such a terrain. I reached the bottom promptly at noon, surprised to find myself still alive--but delighted to find myself alone at a slice of California ocean paradise of spray, sand, and surf. Make that almost alone. In the distance, near to a beach cove, I glimpsed Shrimp.

Simple and soulful in his solitude, he sat on the sand, wearing a wet suit and waxing his board. Love sigh.

I wanted to run to him, fling myself into his arms, but I also wanted to savor watching him in his element.

His element. Not mine.

Shrimp finished waxing his board and stood up, walking toward

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the sea, but still I paused. Now was my opportunity to approach him, before he immersed himself in the water, but his movement at, not inside, the ocean, stopped the motion of my feet in his direction. He placed his board on the sand and stood tall against the sea, reverent, his beautiful blond hair spiked high, glimmering in the sun. He reached his arms up from his sides, almost like a victory pose, then brought them down as he leaned over, as if he were taking a bow.

I may have been kicked out of yoga class, but I've been a surfer's girlfriend long enough to recognize the sun salutation yoga pose that an actualizing surfer offers up to the sea before communing with her.

The Pacific goddess owns him like I never will.

A slight gasp, maybe it was a wince, I don't know, alerted Shrimp to my presence. He turned around from his sea stance and caught me standing several yards behind him, at the base of the cliff.

"Hey," he said, like he'd been expecting me all along.

"Hey," I said.

He picked up his board and walked over to me. He kissed me soft and sweet, first on my cheek, then on my lips. But his hands, holding on to his board, with prayer beads now wrapped around his wrists, made no movement to touch my body. Up close, I saw new words painted on the tip of the board, on the reverse side of where he'd painted a skull years earlier. Happy indeed we live, we who

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possess nothing. Feeders on joy we shall be, like the Radiant Gods.

Stalemate while I paused to rethink my moment of truth with my true love.

I had our reunion moment all planned out. I intended to say: "Shrimp, love of my life, if you need to be by the sea, I will stay in San Francisco with you, even if New York seems more suited to me. It was rather lame of you to take off without any notice and make me come find you, but I needed the adventure. You always give me what I need. You are all I could ever want in a soul mate. And if you feel like you want to move home to San Francisco, then my answer is clear: I choose you. Wherever you are is where I want to be." Shrimp would then pull me into his arms for a deep kiss, there'd be a non-lame Beach Boys soundtrack song playing from a nearby boom box, and we'd fall to the ground in the passion of our embrace as waves broke over us in this total cinematic moment of true love, The End, forever and ever, baby baby baby.

The actual words I said were: "Shrimp, Phil, whoever you are-- I love you. But I don't belong here. I belong in New York. If you want to be there with me, I will be waiting for you." Betrayed by my own lips.

Sun salutation, you and I are no longer friends.

A Nancy sigh escaped my lips as I reached into my pocket and handed Shrimp the napkin with Wallace's message scrawled to Shrimp--a napkin I hadn't been sure I would have the courage to

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deliver until I saw the sun salutation that kissed my fate with Shrimp.

I'd crayoned my own haiku at the side of Wallace's message, and that was what Shrimp read first:

Kathmandu café

Everest climbing season

Dante will school shrimp

"Say wha?" Shrimp wanted to know.

Doing the right thing is completely overrated, and yet the concept seduced me. "Dante contacted Wallace, trying to track you down. Dante's got some gig at a café in Kathmandu. It's the season for tourists who travel there en route to Mount Everest, and Dante of course is the stupid barista man of choice for climbing season in Nepal. Dante says he wants to show you the Buddhist monasteries, introduce you to the monks who are his friends there. Nepal is the epicenter of the spiritual action you seek, apparently, and Dante wants you to join him there. You're, like, looking for a teacher, but I think you already found him. And I think someone as cool and talented as you should have that, pursue it, see where it leads. If you read through Wallace's message, he says he's got plenty of work for you the next couple weeks to earn your fare to Kathmandu, if you want to go."

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I am a New York hypergrrl for sure, but the California free love free spirit in me will not be denied. No one's more surprised than me.

The sunstruck smile on Shrimp's face let me know his answer. "There it is," he said. "The dharma path."

I arrived here determined not to let Shrimp go like last time, but now I realized I'd made the right decision the first time, when he proposed marriage and I said no because I wanted us both to be free to pursue our dreams.

Maybe I am smarter than I think.

I want Shrimp to follow a path he's running to, not away from. I expected to cling to him, to fight for us not to repeat the old stalemate, but now I genuinely wanted him to go to Nepal. I won't be the girl to obstruct his answers.

I have my path, and he should have his. If our paths are meant to intertwine, they will. The permanent intersection just hasn't happened--yet. If we force it, we lose it forever.

I always thought at the end of the road, I would find him. Now I know--Shrimp will find me.

I'm already who and where I want to be. Myself.

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***

FORTY-SIX

For old times' sake we said good-bye in the backseat of Shrimp's

brother's hand-me-down Pinto parked near the top hill near the hallowed surf spot. Our lovemaking encompassed the soul-kissing-touching-talking-until-the-sun-set-over-the-Pacific variety The midafternoon nap inside his arms, with the sun cascading through the window as we lay enveloped in ocean breeze and in each other, more than compensated for the nakedness our bodies did not share, what with the Pacific cold and the sand all over my little man's little car.

"So how's it gonna be this time?" he asked me before I left. We stood against the ancient Geo Metro car I'd driven up north that used to be mine and that my parents still hadn't given away. Shrimp pressed against me, and I held him tight, rocking, kissing his neck and running my fingers through his hair. I didn't want to stop touching him. Ever. I momentarily considered pitching Shrimp on

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the idea that we get a reverse Siamese twin operation that could join us together forever, instead of separate us back into two independent beings.

"No clean break," I whispered in his ear.

"Then what break?" he whispered back.

Last time, we made the right choice, but executed it the wrong way. This time around, we couldn't make that same mistake. I said, "No break at all. Cuz there is like technology around now that makes it possible for us to see and talk to each other every day even if we're on opposite sides of the world. We're gonna make that technology our bitch."

"Bitchin'," Shrimp murmured. Then, in response to the fog setting in overhead and chilling the air, sending goose bumps across our arms, he added, "Burr-ito."

"Enchilada and tamale," I answered.

"Tostada and guacamole."

"Me amo Shrimp."

"My name's 'Camarón' en español."

"My name's still Cyd Charisse in other languages, I believe."

"Just promise not to call me Phil ever again?"

"Promise. I still amo Camarón"

"Ditto."

I could only break my body apart from his after we shared a vow that we were not breaking up at all, but rather diverting to a

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temporary holding pattern, spiritually together but geographically apart. We promised a proper airport good-bye a few days later when I returned to Manhattan, complete with longing kisses and tears, and plans to reunite in New York after Shrimp's time in Nepal. Promises had other plans in mind.

My attempt to extract a Don't Die promise from Sugar Pie was requested of the wrong person. When I returned to San Francisco from seeing Shrimp, a message waited for me from Danny. I needed to return home to New York immediately.

Max had moved on to the big commune in the sky. He died of a heart attack the night after I arrived in San Francisco. A lifestyle of junk food, smoking, and not visiting the doctor regularly since his partner's death, had finally caught up with him.

Sid-dad didn't want me to be alone after I'd lost a friend--the first friend I've ever lost to death. He offered to accompany me back to New York. I told Sid-dad, "I'll be okay, you don't have to come, I have Danny." He said, "You need your father." I said, "You're right. Thank you."

As our plane traveled back east, Sid-dad snoozed next to me and I rested my head against his arm. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry because maybe Max's timing was his sick way of giving me a last gift: grief for him distracted the heartache I otherwise would have felt for finding myself on an eastbound plane, again, after having let Shrimp go, again. Our young friendship--the one

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I shared with Max--had been cut too short. Max and I had never gotten around to watching his Ann Miller movie collection together, he'd never seen my barista mastery skills, owing to his desire to never leave his apartment unless absolutely necessary, and I'd yet to see Max in action when he crank-called his upstairs neighbors and played obscene noises from his laptop.

Even if Max was a grouch, I decided that he'd see it as no dishonor to his memory if I celebrated the bright side of his passing. Max lived twenty years essentially alone in his apartment after his partner died, and he was eager to ride out eternity with his true love. So when I think of Max, I will picture him up in heaven, reunited with Tony and their friends, building new walls of not-sadness. They're having garden parties with Ava Gardner and Lana Turner, drinking proper British tea, eating beets from a can, ramen noodles, and lots and lots of cupcakes. They're learning the real answers to the universe's crucial mysteries: Who was driving the car that killed Grace Kelly--Princess Grace or Princess Stephanie? How did Marilyn Monroe really die--and why? Did Sid Vicious off Nancy Spungen at the Chelsea Hotel--or did the drug dealer who visited them that night really do it? Liberace ... WHY?

Yvette Mimieux greeted me when Sid-dad and I arrived home at Max's to retrieve her. She miaule 'd, So maybe you've lost a friend and your true love has flown the coop once again, but you've gained a movie star namesake sister. You promised.

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***

FORTY-SEVEN

A cappuccino bought me my life.

The espresso pull tasted too watery, and the newbie barista still can't get a good head of foam on milk--skim or whole--so I didn't bother actually paying for the drink. Instead I stuffed a dollar tip down the baristas shirt, for effort. He's here, he's trying. He's Johnny Mold, our first employee, who hopefully won't consider my dollar-down-the-shirt tip as grounds for a future sexual harassment lawsuit.

Johnny said, "Toon vor es," to my tippage.

Myself may also be called Cupcake, Chaos, Little Hellion, CC, Ceece, Dollface, etc. (but I'm not yet called "Etc."--to my knowledge), but even in Armenian I didn't think I cared to be called an ass. Lisbeth beat me to my own defense. "Toon esh es," she responded to Johnny. She then handed him her Armenian phrase

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book to go along with her piece of advice. "Maybe you could learn some words that don't involve offending someone?" At the rate their friendship has ignited since Aaron's birthday party, Johnny the Armenian jackass, and not Frank, will be accompanying Lisbeth to Armenia to adopt a baby next month.

Lisbeth's going to be a mom! More important, I'm going to be an aunt!

Johnny Mold may have lost his grandpa, but like Lisbeth, he's gained a family. He said, "So that's the new plan--you two ganging up on me?"

Lisbeth sang out, "Sisters."

Our brother Danny stood up on the platform in the corner window area of the establishment, clinking a fork against a champagne glass to get the group's attention. "People," he said. "Let the voting on a new name begin. I'll start the bidding by suggesting 'Dollface.'" He looked in my direction. "If we name the place after Ceece, perhaps she'll have less inclination to bolt every time we hold a party here?"

I had no intention of abandoning this particular celebration. The venue hosting our party, the Village establishment formerly known as LUNCHEONETTE, is now an unnamed café that, as of today, officially and permanently will host Danny's cupcake business. Make that, our cupcake business.

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While it may be a joint business of which I am co-owner, Danny's nickname for me shouldn't bear the brunt of becoming our business name. Too cute and obvious. Nixed. "'Pastabilities,'" I chimed in. "That's what I think we should call the place."

Aaron asked, "But isn't the plan for this business to indulge the sugar more than the pasta side of the carb food chain?"

True loves be damned, I smelled a voting bloc. I said, "Is that distinction really so important? Who wouldn't want to eat in a cupcake place called 'Pastabilities'?"

"I wouldn't," Johnny Be Damned said.

"I wouldn't either," Lisbeth seconded. "But I'd be glad to have my management consulting team research and develop an appropriate corporate brand name--"

The Danny and CC voting bloc: "NO!"

Johnny mused, "As hard as it is to operate a successful food business in Manhattan, it's even harder to come up with an original name for it. So I'm throwing 'Geldof' into the suggestion pile, after Sir Bob Geldof--"

I interrupted, "Who's not actually a proper 'Sir,' since he's not a British citizen, even though he gets called 'Sir'--"

Only to be interrupted back by Johnny, "And Danny could formulate special brand cupcakes named after Sir Bob's biological and adopted daughters."

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"I like it," Danny said. "The black-and-white cupcake becomes the Fifi Trixibelle, the spring fever cupcake becomes the Peaches Honeyblossom ..."

Aaron grabbed Danny's hand, inspired. "... And the flower frosting cupcake becomes the Pixie Frou-Frou! The peanut butter cupcake becomes the Heavenly Hiraani Tigerlily! I can already see the marketing campaign: Come to Geldof--cupcakes catered to your every groupie craving."

Danny laughed. "There's our niche! I foresee customer lines out the door and down the block."

Sid-dad shook his head. "What's the matter with simply calling the place 'Cupcake'?"

Sid-dad is biased. Frank-dad is not. "How about just sticking with the name LUNCHEONETTE, until inspiration strikes?" he said.

We all more or less grumbled, "Okay." If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I always imagined it would be too weird to see my two families merge, but watching Frank and Sid-dad step aside to inspect the preliminary remodel plans at the counter together, I realized it was in fact too overdue. The two dads, former college roommates and former best friends, their friendship long lost to the Nancy riff that produced me, converged in New York for a talk after Max's funeral service. A talk about me. They emerged from that talk to pronounce that while I may call myself a slacker, I'm in fact anything but.

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Despite my refusal to go to college or to culinary school, they decided that with the right backing, Myself was fully capable of learning how to run a business. They were equally bullish on Danny's prospects. And so Our Two Dads (being that Sid-dad is also Danny's godfather) teamed together to formulate a Plan. Trust funds were cashed out, offers made, papers signed. Danny and I, along with our families as investors, now own LUNCHEONETTE.

Hmmm: Our Two Dads. Potential band name ... or potential café business name?

The sound of a champagne cork popping open announced our celebration was ready to get lively. A glass of sparkly arrived in my hand courtesy of the honored guest who'd brought the bottle to help us christen the New-Old establishment. "I see your doll still travels with you," said Miss Loretta, the NY bio-fam's longtime friend and former housekeeper, acknowledging Gingerbread perched on top of the blueprints lying on the counter. When I first came to New York to meet the bio-fam, Miss Loretta had extended an offer to my sixteen-year-old girl self to park Gingerbread on a shelf at her restaurant uptown if Gingerbread and I were ever ready to part ways. I'm allegedly a woman now, one with a hella remodel debt piling on, and I still wasn't ready to part with my childhood doll.

I pointed in the direction of La Marzocco, eternally reliable and therefore saved from the discarded appliances list included in the

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remodels upgrade plans. I told Miss Loretta, "Naw, Gingerbread doesn't travel with me so much as hang out in my important places. And she's fixing for a permanent retirement. The remodel plans will provide a custom-built shelf designed for Gingerbread to sit over La Marzocco."

"Good spot for her," Miss Loretta allowed. "From there Gingerbread can lord over and grace your community of customers, family, and friends. Amen." She lifted her glass to me. "Cyd Charisse, I wish you much luck and happiness with this business, and I promise not to hold a grudge at you for breaking my nephew Luis's heart."

I informed her, "We were 'just friends.'"

She patted my back. "You just let yourself go on believing that, honey."

I hadn't let myself believe that Chucky would show up after I sent the invitation to her at the nail shop, yet here she was, holding a glass of champagne in her foxy rhinestone-studded manicured hand. Though I hadn't expected her to come, I'd prepared for her just in case. I had mucho to hablar with her. "Chucky," I said, "Encantada de verte. Me han dicho que no me esforcé lo suficiente para darle una buena oportunidad a nuestro primer intento de amistad. Así es que cogí un curso de español de inmersión intensivo durante un fin de semana en caso de que tuviera la oportunidad de hablar en español contigo hoy. ¡Así es! ¡Asistí a una escuela actual y me quedé el tiempo

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complete! Me ayudó que el profesor del curso era muy guapo, (y soltero, si tienes algunas amigas que están buscando salir con un recién graduado de NYU que estudió español como asignatura principal). Él escribió lo que estoy diciendo ahora para poder memorizármelo. Pues, ¿piensas que podemos tratar de nuevo a ser amigos?" 1

Chucky laughed. "Si. Cuz your pronunciation sounds like shit. You're gonna need a lot of my help, I can already tell. And congratulations on your new business. I hope to be following in your footsteps a couple years down the road, and I might be needing your help."

"I'm there for you," I said.

"Classy party for a not-yet-opened business," Chucky said, pointing in the direction of the band.

Aaron and his bandmates had set up at the corner window, conferring over selection of their first song. Now that the band is back in business, they've changed names too, also after extensive name negotiation, the result of which is that My Dead Gay Son

***

'I'm glad to see you. I've been cold I didn't give our first try at friendship a good enough chance. So I cook an intensive Spanish immersion weekend course just in case I might have the chance to talk to you today, in Spanish. That's right, I went to an actual school and stayed the whole time! It helped that the instructor at the language class was very cute (and available if you have any friends looking for a date with a recently graduated Spanish major from NYU). He wrote down what I am saying now for me to memorize. So do you think we can try again at being friends?

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has morphed from No "Way Gay to Yes Way Gay, Okay? Per the family business agreement, Aaron's involvement with this business shall be restricted to band performances at our café. He and Danny have chosen to play it safe this time. Despite his outstanding chef skills, Aaron will not be joining us in a professional capacity. Living and working together was what did him and Danny in last time. They won't make that same mistake.

Neither will Danny and I. Aaron is moving back into their apartment, and I am moving out.

Accordingly, Sid-dad waved a set of legal agreements in my direction, beckoning me over to the counter area. Apparently what adulthood really means is endless papers to sign, to seal your fate-- for what, you have no idea. Sid-dad tried not to look at me all proud (or maybe his look was jet-lagged haze from all the SF-NY travel time he's logged between Max's funeral and tonight's christening), but with that bald head and pudge face, he wore satisfaction like a merit badge. There's my daughter the Little Hellion--didn't think any of us would survive her teenage years, and now just look at her! Grown up, on her own, and with a proper haircut at last. "I think that's the first time since you were in kindergarten that I've seen you wear a dress that wasn't black," Sid-dad said. "Green becomes you."

To go along with my new haircut--razor-sharp bob angled from my neck down to my chin, with blunt bangs and a single process old-school original black color--I wore a party dress

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similar to the green flapper one the real Cyd Charisse wore for her spectacular dance in Singin' in the Rain. But so we shall never forget which Cyd Charisse is which, I've called upon Lisbeth's corporate branding. Next to my old tattoo of a shrimp on the obscure flappy underside of my arm, I've got a new tattoo--a simple brown coffee bean. In honor of Myself.

Sid-dad pointed to the bottom line on the last piece of paper. I signed and sighed. Sid-dad said, "You sound like your mother. And that's that. Max's apartment lease is officially in your name." In Manhattan scoring a great apartment has nothing to do with combing real estate ads and inspecting different pads before deciding on your perfect home. Here it's all about being in the right place at the right time--and having the cash (and your dad) available to meet with the building super and make it all happen. Also, being willed a cat.

I'm like Max: New York--I love it!

I told my father, "Please tell Mom we're not going to protest her threatened inspection next month, but she can fuggedabout her redecoration intentions for my apartment. Yvette Mimieux won't have it." Yvette and I will allow a visit, we might even find it in our hearts to look forward to it, but we'd never allow my mother to ruin our apartment's CC-merged-with-Max decor with her impeccable taste.

Yvette and I have decided to work through our Max sadness by

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reconstructing the Wall of Sadness. We've left Max's pictures on the wall, but added new flags--red and yellow prayer flags, sent to us from Shrimp in Nepal. We've also installed new pictures, of our San Francisco and New York families, and a drawing Shrimp sent along with the prayer flags that pictures Max standing on his piano bench, broomstick in hand, banging on the ceiling to Heaven and yelling up at the neighbors, "Keep that racket down!"

The latest haiku from Shrimp (spell-checked by Dante), via text message from Kathmandu:

Charisse owns mimieux

Three more months till shrimp visits

Name café for me?

Our party at the café-not-to-be-named-"Shrimp" (I'd vote for it, but Danny would nix) was enlightened by the arrival of a lady I didn't know. Frank greeted her, then introduced her to Lisbeth and Danny before making his way over to me. "I've got someone I'd like you to meet," Frank said. "Mary, this is my other daughter I've been telling you about. CC, this is my friend Mary."

He didn't say "lady friend" or "girlfriend," and they didn't hold hands, which was nice, considering how ancient they are (i.e., not in an acceptably cool old people hand-holding way like Fernando and Sugar Pie), but Mary must have been Frank's "special" friend.

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Even more creepy than the shock that she appeared to be an age-appropriate companion and not some Barbie type twenty years his junior--minus the BOTOX I'd clock Mary as being in her late fifties--was that Mary's fashionable blond prettiness could have passed her for a near-senior-citizen-age version of... my mother.

My head didn't even know how to deal with that thought so I just said, "Nice to meet you, Mary." I turned to Frank. "How come you didn't tell us you were bringing a friend? We'd have sent her an invitation."

Frank said, "I believe in randomness over regularity." Saucy like Yvette! Who knew?!?

Danny tapped my shoulder. "Didja save the first dance for me?"

Of course I did. I am the cup to his cake.

The instruments tuned and fired up, Yes Way Gay, Okay? settled into their first song--a slow-tempo, tender version of "My Favorite Things." For a gay Jewish chef who can't dress for shit, Aaron could really sing him some soul.

Steven and Fallon Carrington shared the first cotillion dance, naturally. "Salut, Commandant," I said, my face pressed against his ear. "Salut, Dollface," he answered. "And don't think I didn't see you flirting with the UPS man earlier today." He mimicked, '"Gosh you're strong to carry an industrial machine like that! Want a cappuccino to ease that burden?'"

Damn all-seeing, all-knowing brother.

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I said, "I was just trying to reel in a brew customer. The first one's always free. Isn't that the saying?"

"I think the saying is, 'Home is where the heart is.'"

'"There's too many fish in the sea.'"

'"Absence makes the heart grow fonder.'"

"Or some such crap."

"Exactly."

Three months till Shrimp visits this summer! The UPS man with the muscles nicely contouring his uniform shall be purely aesthetic distraction to make it through until then--a hypothetical wanton desire. Easy come, easy go, is what I will tell Danny next time he teases me about the Man in Brown.

Shrimp need not worry. I'll be waiting for him.

I'm right here.

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We have no body to view, no processional trip to a cemetery. Laura always planned things through, and that didn't change with her death. She asked for cremation and no burial. She who had everything was at heart a minimalist.

Instead, we have cookies after the service. The dining room is set up with a large buffet of catered food--light salads, polite sandwiches with the bread crusts cut off and cucumbers inside, the edamame Laura loved to nibble, set out in the beautiful bowls she brought back from Japan. No one appears to be eating much besides the sweets. Perhaps when an elderly person dies the mourners can reflect on that person's life with a celebration of food and memories, but that is not the case here. I don't hear anyone talking

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about Laura, no exchange of smiles and laughter-- Remember that time when she ... ? I hear chatter, but it's soft, humble. Or maybe I'm too high to properly distinguish the mourners' conversations over their tea and coffee cups. The spread of food is mostly a waste, but the caffeinated drinks appear to be a hit. I'm not the only person here who wants to jolt away the numb.

And who doesn't love cookies--tray after tray of delicate Italian butter cookies; ghraybeh, the Lebanese sugar cookies that were Laura's favorites; and an impressive assortment of homemade sweets contributed by the guests. I sample each variety. All these fancy cookies, but the universal truth remains the same: There is no substitute for the wholesome goodness that is chocolate chip cookies. I can picture the Georgetown society ladies arriving with their Saran-wrapped plates: Jim. Darling. I'm so sorry about your beloved daughter killing herself. Here are some chocolate chip cookies our cook made. The secret ingredient is cardamom. Delicious, no?

We stand at opposite corners of the dining room, Jim and me, the two pillars of Laura's life. I feel like I should go over to him, touch him, talk to him, tell him I'm sorry, but I can't. I don't. The food rises high between us, buffering all these people, the fillers of Laura's life. The gathered surround Jim, offering solace, but I remain alone, observing. If Jim notices me at all, I'm sure it's to think, That weirdo. Maybe now I can finally let her go. There's no more reason for her to stay.

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My feet are lodged to the floor in the remote corner of this expansive room. My head is dizzy and my body wants to sway. I yearn to take a very long nap. I place one hand against the wall to prop me up. I need something or someone to hold me steady. But all I have are cookies.

Professor Jesuit approaches me, looking old and kindly, which I hate. I look down, concentrate on the plate in my hand and the Oxy tingle-buzz coursing through my fingers. I have nothing to say to God's handyman. Although if I did, I might inform him that I've given the matter substantial thought, and I've resigned myself to the possibility that I am doomed to an afterlife of eternal hellfire, and I'm okay with it, really I am. It's not like I even believe in God, but still, I imagine Him and me in a powwow on Judgment Day. Saint Peter or whomever has the day off so God himself is going down the checklist for my entrance to Heaven. He goes: Well, Miles, you smoked like a chimney and indulged in way too many trans-fatty foods, and for Christ's sake, you were high at your own cousin's funeral, hut otherwise, you did all right in life. Didn't hurt anybody but yourself. Paid your taxes. Recycled. Helped little old ladies cross the street. (Didn't you?) But I don't know ... those snarky comments, that vile cynicism during times of crisis. I'm not so sure I like it. I will then have to set Him straight. Hey, Big Guy, get some perspective. Who gave us a world of Holocaust, AIDS, global terrorism, famine, ecological disaster, bigotry, genocide, warfare--shall I keep going down the list? Maybe it's

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ME who should be judging YOU, and not the other way around. So step aside from those pearly gates to Heaven or Hell, whichever the case may be, bucko. Let me through to Laura. We're not scared of You. Professor Jesuit passes me by. Minion.

The cookie plate in my hand mesmerizes me with swirls of color and texture, rainbow sprinkles and cinnamon rays and powdered sugar dust, and I must look up again because the cookies are dizzying me. I raise my eyes from their plate reverie, but my view of the mourners has clouded over, gone mute. My eyes lock with Jim's across the room, and in that flash instant, no one exists in this room besides the two of us. In that brief moment, our eyes remember a shared lifetime of Laura, and I see his chest suddenly heave, trying to contain a sob--he who has remained stoic and gracious throughout the afternoon, comforting all those who are trying to comfort him. It's like electricity passes between us, because I feel the heave in my chest as well, and tears well in my eyes. The plate trembles in my weak fingers and I must look back down again, return to my cookie-plate trance, steady my hand. To hold the moment any longer would mean neither of us could remain in this room, finish this gathering of mourning.

Jim's probably more of a weirdo even than me, in my opinion, but God can take note. I am not without empathy. I know what it is like to be Miles right now, a freak high on sugar and so much more, but I do wonder how it must feel to be Jim in this moment,

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too. He's a seventy-two-year-old man who marched for civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, but chose to focus the latter part of his life on raising a child. What will the latter-latter part of his life now be? A philanthropist born into extreme privilege because his great-grandfather invented an appliance still used in most First World households, Jim parlayed his wealth and privilege for relatively modest selfish purpose--a grand house, grand trips--while choosing to funnel the bulk of his time and money into activism, into his hometown. And now to have his lifetime of giving come down to this one day. His cherished daughter, his one best accomplishment, took away the fundamental gift he had created for her. Life.

My cookie trance breaks when I am mauled in an embrace by the last person here from whom I would have expected--or wanted--comfort. "It's like it doesn't feel real or something, you know?" Bex, Laura's high school best friend, says to me. Her talents reside on the field hockey field, grunting and running and hitting, so I imagine she can be forgiven her lack of articulation skills. Bex is the person who named me "8 Mile," thinking I didn't know. She didn't even go to the same school as me. Yet the name traveled.

I'll never figure out how a girl like her managed to be invited to five proms this year alone; nor do I understand why at the moment of mutual acknowledgment of our shared person's suicide, this is the thought that occurs to me in relation to Bex. But it's true--she's not even that pretty, yet somehow her shiny white smile

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on pink dimple cheeks always wins out, despite her plain brown hair and eyes, her curveless, boylike, field hockey body. Bex is a girl who would never understand what it's like to have an 8 Mile butt, because she doesn't even have a butt.

I step out of her arms. I don't want that stick touching me, even if she did love Laura. She's the reason I lost the last few years of Laura--Bex, and he who trails behind her, Jason, Laura's ex-boyfriend. At least he will not try to touch me. Handsome soccer-star boys who just finished their first Ivy League year won't bother trying to comfort a girl like me, heavyweight to his featherweight class.

"Hey," he says to us. He's so blond and handsome, it would almost be intoxicating, if not for his predictable, casual acceptance of it, as if those looks and that privilege were the natural right of any white boy from Woodley Park whose parents are both telegenic political media commentators.

What's there to say back? Hey? Bummer about that suicide and all, right, dude?

Laura took us by surprise when she broke up with Jason after New Year's. Now I get it. Laura wanted Jason to understand his freedom to move on. After.

Has Jason ever noticed how much Laura and I look alike? Shave me down a dozen sizes, straighten and dye my hair back to its natural color, take off the goth makeup and give me a fresh-faced

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cover-girl glow, and I could be Laura. I could be the one to console him. I could envelop him.

But it's Bex who jumps into Jason's arms, pressing her face against his lean chest. What would it be like to be her, open to touch, expecting that anyone would want it from her? She holds on to Jason tightly. In their embrace, I see that soon, their grief could potentially turn to something deeper. Laura wouldn't mind. I do.

I am not without my own knight in shining armor. Jamal has found me again. Not only is he my best friend, he's my psychic; I don't realize I am parched until I see him standing before me, bearing a tall glass of water. "Thought you could use this," he says. He hands me the water and I gulp it right down. He asks Bex, "Weren't you the girl who tutored my sister Niecy in math this year? Seems like I've almost met you about a dozen times." Niecy goes to the same school that Bex and Laura just graduated from. Jamal's a mama's boy; he had no problem going to the charter high school where his mother is the principal, but Niecy, she wanted her own path, the one with the fancy girls.

Bex loosens herself from Jason's arms and turns to Jamal, appraises him. What's not to admire about the black suit and baby-blue silk tie (for Laura), his caramel eyes and smooth cocoa skin, or the Afro hair he's disciplined into ten braids running the length of his scalp, knotted at the nape of his neck? Jamal must meet Bex's standards. She smiles, momentarily distracted from

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her grief. "Don't tell me. You're the brother who blasted all the D.C. go-go music from the speakers in his attic room so we had to go to the library to get any studying done in peace? I mean, I like old Chuck Brown and Rare Essence just as much as anybody who grew up here, but Niecy was trying to raise her PSAT score, and you weren't helping."

"You're Rebecca, right? Seven-up!" Jamal responds. Bex couldn't know Jamal's way of acknowledging a person he likes is to speak to them in snippets of songs, preferably by Parliament, his favorite funk band from back in the day.

"Everybody calls me Bex. Ho!" she sings back. I would not have expected a girl like her to speak in Parliament.

Jamal doesn't date white girls. Why should he, he says, when he lives in Chocolate City, surrounded on every block by the finest-looking flavors of nonvanilla?

I can no longer deny the Oxy, deny the sway gripping my body, throwing me off balance, hurtling me either toward passing out on the floor, or to a good long nap. Jamal sees it, catches me before I fall. His palm presses against the heavy folds of my arm, warming me.

"Go home and sleep it off." He leans over to whisper in my ear, and my body tingles all over again in anticipation of our private exchange, free of Bex's ears. "This is so not cool today, Miles."

Who's he to judge?

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I expect Jamal to take my hand and walk me home to the carriage house, which he would do if we'd whiled away an afternoon down by the canal, sharing a joint. Instead, his hand that's holding me up gently pushes me away, to regain my own balance. His attention turns to Bex, nonnegotiable, nonreturnable.

Teenagers. So fickle.

I am still high, but crashing down.

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