"Fine. How was work-"

"-Gee, I wish they'd called me sooner. Evans, I mean. I hate for him to think ... I want everything to go smoothly."

"Is Alice there now?" I ask, as casually as I can manage.

"No, she's out. She's got some meeting. A neighborhood thing, I guess. Couldn't be school-related, or you'd be there, too, right?" he says, and I'm not sure if it is a question or not.

"Right," I say, deciding, in an instant, not to bring up that Alice had left school before it began. I don't know why I don't tell him. Something in his voice. Instead, the revelation hovers in my throat, too momentous to spill forward. I say nothing.

Then, not a week later, the next head-jerking puzzle.

I am walking into the home ec lab to meet up with Alice for our carpool home. The cavernous room, with its half dozen kitchen units for students to practice making beef bourguignon, is dark, lit only by faint late-afternoon sun. Past the kitchenettes and through the set of sewing machines, I can see Alice standing in front of her desk, my view partially obstructed by sewing dummies.

I pause for a second, because I think I hear her speaking to someone and I wonder if it is a student she might be reprimanding, or counseling, and I don't want to interrupt.

Quickly, however, I can see she is distraught in a way she wouldn't be with a student. The low murmuring becomes more fervent. I step slightly to my side and see the profile of a man leaning against the edge of her desk, facing her. The dark furrow of his brows juts out, and as I inch closer, I can see the edges of a steel blue sharkskin suit.

"Well, how would I know she wasn't going to go through with it? I only know what she told me."

Then, the deep, indecipherable tones of the man. Then, her again: "Did she give you the rest? I told her not to do it. I knew it would turn out this way." She raises the back of her hand to her forehead. I twist around one of the kitchen counters and see him. He doesn't move at all as they speak, but she moves constantly, winds her arms around herself, scuffing her heels on the floor anxiously.

"She's digging her own grave as far as I'm concerned. That's his story, anyway. I can't promise anything, but she knows better. Christ."

Her head bobs wildly. I still can't hear him, even as I pa.s.s the kitchen units and near the sewing machines, about twenty feet from them. He never moves at all, so still, issuing the low tones of confidence and placidity.

"Christ, why do you think she ... d.a.m.n it, anyway. Well, she's made her bed and now ..."

Alice's foot taps staccato, and suddenly she looks up from her own frantic tapping to the man. He meets her gaze, and then, as if feeling my struck gaze upon him, looks over to me.

"h.e.l.lo there," he says calmly, pausing a cool, languorous moment before moving out of his leaning slouch and standing upright. The eyes are the thing-like a Chinaman's. The heaviest lids you ever saw, barely any pupil can squeak through. Cushiony lids and puffy lower rims unbalanced by angular black brows.

Alice's head turns suddenly, jarringly to me, her eyes wide and gla.s.sy. Then she quickly smiles and runs over.

"Oh, honey, Lora," she coos sweetly, and with surprising sincerity. "Let me introduce you." She hurries over to me, grabs my hands in her frosty ones, and tugs me back with her.

The man, hat in one hand, holds out his other toward me. "Good to meet you, Miss King. I've heard ..." He trails off, touching his mouth to my hand, fingertips touching the back of my wrist so fleetingly I wonder if I imagine it.

"This is an old friend," Alice says, tugging at the sleeves of her dress and standing very straight.

"Oh?" I say politely, taking my hand back and burying it safely in my dress pocket.

"I know Alice from when she was a little girl with curlicues and pantaloons." He winks at me, eyes, face impenetrable, voice soft and low. Utterly unreadable. Is he teasing? Is he lying? Is he sharing a sweet truth?

"Family friends?" I find myself asking, when no one says anything.

"You could say. Seems we've always known each other." A soft pause and a long arm out to Alice's shoulder as Alice smiles indecipherably. "But I've been living in Mexico for a while."

"But you're back now." Alice looks up at him. "Isn't it wonderful that you're back? Make new friends but keep the old, as they say."

Alice wrings her hands and rubs at her watch, pretending not to look at the time, and then abruptly, broadly, she does look, as if in a stage gesture.

"Oh, Lora, it's late, isn't it?"

"Yes," I say. "Should we go?"

Alice nods anxiously and grabs her purse and gloves from the desk, navigating her way behind him.

"I never did get your name," I find myself asking.

"Joe Avalon," he says serenely, putting on his French gray felt hat.

"Miss King, the pleasure has been mine."

In the car afterward, Alice chatters away about her troublesome fifth-period cla.s.s, about Nancy Turner, who is going to perform a monologue at the state drama compet.i.tion, about the Handler girl with the dirty neck whose mother seems to have left town with a marine. She unleashes a stream of talk the likes of which I haven't heard since the night I first met her. A long rant filled with comments, thoughts, and questions for which she leaves no room for answers. Finally, "Isn't he the nicest fellow? He's an old family friend and he's always helped me out of jams. He just always seems to turn up when I'm in trouble, and for that, I'll always be grateful to him."

"So you're in trouble now?" I ask, turning the steering wheel as we enter their drive.

"No, no, of course not. I didn't mean now. Just in the past, things I owe him for. Not that he expects more than a thanks. But I say it all just to suggest what a fine fellow he is. My friend Maureen, who dated him for a while, used to say, 'a stand-up guy.' That's what he is. Though I'm sure you couldn't tell that from the quick exchange, but even though he looks a little ... you know, he's really the kindest man you'll ever meet. I should have him over for dinner some night now that he's back in town. I'd really like Bill to meet him. They'd get along like a house on fire, I know. Don't you think? Well, maybe not. Oh, here we are."

And I remember this: a slow, slow turn of her head from me to the house. I remember it occurring in actual slow motion, dragged out, and her head turned and her lit, blazing eyes transforming instantly into coal weights, her face a slow, pale blur studded with heavy, inkblot eyes turning to the house, turning and turning off like a windup toy shutting down and shut... ting ... off.

That night in my apartment, and other nights, too, burrowed under the covers, I watch the shadows on the wall and think of meeting men, meeting men like in movies, and meeting men like Alice and her mysterious friends seem to-seem to at least in Alice's stories- men met on buses between stops, in the frozen foods aisle, at Woolworth's when buying a spool of thread, at the newsstand, perusing Look, in hotel lobbies, at supper clubs, while hailing cabs or looking in shop windows. Men with smooth felt hats and pencil mustaches, men with Arrow shirts and shiny hair, men eager to rush ahead for the doors and to steady your arm as you step over a wet patch on the road, men with umbrellas just when you need them, men who hold you up with a firm grip as the bus lurches before you can reach a seat, men with flickering eyes who seem to know just which coat you are trying to reach off the rack in the coffee shop, men with smooth cheeks smelling of tangy lime aftershave who would order you a gin and soda before you even knew you wanted one.

These men weren't like the men with whom I went to the pictures: Archie Temple, the chemistry teacher, who never got further than rubbing his rough lips halfheartedly against mine, or Fred Cantor, the insurance salesman who sold Bill his policy and took me to Little Bavaria once a month or so for long, c.o.c.ktail-drenched dinners. While I seldom got past the first, small gla.s.s of sweet wine, Fred could go for hours, jollily imbibing and telling stories of his combat duty in the Pacific. Not always but often there would be an awkward, searching embrace in the front seat of Fred's burgundy Buick. A few beery kisses and Fred would get ideas, and before I knew it, he was pressing my hair against the side door window as I tried to peel away from him.

Where were the golden boys of my high school days, the boys with sweet breath and shy smiles, with proud gaits and long lashes, the boys who sat with you for hours in the booth at the local five-anddime just hoping for a promise, a promise to go to a dance or listen to records with you at Dutton's Hi Fi or to share a paper plate at the church social?

Though I knew these boys, held their sweet, damp hands in mine only a handful of years ago, they were now like sketches in a yellowed paperback, a photo alb.u.m from many generations past. When we moved to Los Angeles to live near our G.o.dparents, we were only sixteen and nineteen. What we left behind remained a half-imagined reverie of half-opened adolescence, caught now forever between curiosity and harsh awakening.

The thing about Lois...

Alice's friend Lois Slattery has a kind of crooked face, one perpetually bloodshot eye just higher than the other, and that Pan-Cake makeup you often see on what Alice calls "girls on the make." She begins periodically appearing at Bill and Alice's, each time without warning. Somehow, I end up, over and over again, having conversations with her. Each time thinking, Poor Lois, in a few years, she'll have a slattern look to match her name.

Her clothes are sometimes very expensive but never look like her own, are either too big or too small, or are well-cut and well-made but someone has stepped on the hem, or the collar has a cigarette burn on it. These flaws aren't, as I first thought, because Lois can only afford secondhand clothing. In fact, the garments are often new, bought that day and already with splatters on the lace edging, or the heel loose. It is as simple as this: she has a complicated life and her clothes can't help but show it. It is all part of her unique disheveled glamour.

As it turns out, Lois is less an actress than a professional extra and a sometime dancer. She takes acting cla.s.ses in West Hollywood. But most of all she seems to go out dancing and drinking with girlfriends or enlisted men or publicity men.

She is the kind of woman whose face you try to commit to memory because you feel something might happen to her at any minute and you'll have to remember that left dimple, the burn mark from a curling iron on her temple, the beauty mark next to her eye, the small tear in her earlobe, from an earring tugged too far.

"I hooked up with this fella lived in Hanc.o.c.k Park," Lois says out of the corner of her mouth, cigarette dancing lazily. "Had a gold telephone, that was how high-hat he was."

I've never heard a real person talk like this.

"How long did you date?"

"We never dated," she says matter-of-facfly, unstrapping her high heels as ashes fly from her hanging cigarette. "But he was a swell guy. He used to take me dancing and to fine parties up in the Hills, and then, very late, we'd drive over to Musso's for an omelet and one last martini. He once introduced me to Harry Cohn, the big studio guy. Oh my, was he a real blowhard. But it ended badly. With this fella, I mean."

"What happened?"

"Let's just say"-she flings her shoes onto the floor and props her feet up on the coffee table-"he had some bad habits."

"Other women?" "Even more pressing interests, honey. I'm an open-minded gal, G.o.d knows, but even I got my limits."

"Do you ever run into him?"

"Nah. He moved to Mexico last I heard. I was looking for him to get back some of my clothes and a brand-new straw hat when I ran into Joe Avalon. He was staking out his place looking to collect on some debts owed. It got pretty complicated."

"I didn't know you knew him, too." Hearing her say his name gives me a start.

Lois punches out her cigarette and begins to apply a bright lipstick without a mirror. "Everybody knows Joe, honeybunch. Everybody."

"Did Alice introduce you?"

"Oh, gosh, peach, it don't work like that."

"What do you mean?"

She places her palms together and twists her wrists in opposite directions in a gesture that seems as though it is supposed to mean something to me.

"Time, Lora, works different in your world." She twists her wrists back again.

"To me, I've always known Joe Avalon. He was the number-one cherry picker on my block. He changed all our diapers, tweaked our mamas' teats. He was the glimmer in my papa's eye. He lived on the rooftop of every house on our block, and could slither down the chimney at night. He was, is, and always will be your four-leaf clover and dangerous as h.e.l.l. He's always been here. This town will always have guys like him, as long as it keeps going."

This is the longest speech Lois has ever given me. I won't forget it ...

As we hurtle toward the end of the school year, I see less of Alice on the weekends. Her teaching and her swelling social schedule fill every minute. Still, she seems unable to stop. It is around this time that she begins suffering from what she calls her "old affliction," migraine headaches, hissing pain so severe she feels her own skull will crush her. These headaches send her into dark rooms with cool, oscillating fans for hours, even days on end. "It's related to my cycles," she confides nonchalantly. "So there's nothing I can do about it."

The headaches are almost daily occurrences by the time Bill's baseball league starts up its season. She makes most of the games, putting on a brave face, but I fill in when the pain becomes too much. It helps make Bill less worried. He never wants to leave Alice alone, but she insists, setting a cramped hand on his chest and swatting him away.

Long hours in the bleachers, hands wrapped in knitting or spread out over McCall's, the investigators' wives sit, and often I sit with them. Tonight, it is with the blond and blunt-nosed Edie Beauvais.

"Lora, I'm desperate. I've got to get pregnant. We've been waiting for so long now." She runs her tiny hand up and down her arm, which is flecked with goose b.u.mps from the chilling night air. "We had this fantasy of getting pregnant on our wedding night. That's what I expected. But now ... I just want it so bad, Lora." Edie is the young wife of Charlie Beauvais, one of Bill's coworkers at the investigators' office. Although he was always willing to take a coworker who'd had a hard day out for a beer, and he'd always stop in at the local tavern when an after-work gathering was under way, Bill never had many friends. Besides, most of the men in his department are either heavy drinkers or gamblers or both, or are wrapped up in the politics of the office.

But Charlie has been a kind of mentor to Bill, showing him the ropes when the other men resented Bill's quick rise, which they attributed to luck or imagined connections.

"But you're so young, Edie," I say, watching the action absentmindedly, watching Charlie waving his hat, waving a player in, laughing mightily, big white teeth against his stubble-creased face. "You've got plenty of time."

"I know," she says. "I've got nothing but time." She stifles a long sigh by dipping her chin and tucking her mouth into her collarbone.

Edie is twenty-three, Charlie's second wife. Born in Bakersfield, she was straight out of modeling school when they met four years before. She had talked her way out of a speeding ticket, claiming a "feminine emergency."

"Are you going to help out at the fund-raiser again?" I ask.

"Sure, sure," she says, eyelashes fluttering, trying gamely to focus on the action. "Where's Alice?"

"She wasn't feeling well," I say.

Edie nods vaguely, watching Charlie bounding in from the infield, removing his hat and rubbing his crew cut vigorously.

"Looking good, honeybunch," she coos, waving and twisting in her seat. Charlie's face bursts out into a grin. It seems to explode over his whole rubbery face as he turns to join his teammates on the bench.

"When are you going to get yourself one of those? A husband, I mean," Edie asks as we watch Bill take a few practice swings.

"So you think I'm in danger of old maid status too?"

She turns to me with a smile. "Don't you want to have a house and kids and nice things?"

I look at her with her blond lashes, eyebrows penciled with delicacy, face so fresh and flat and empty, as only California faces can be. "It's hard to find a man like Charlie, though, isn't it?"

"Hmmm," Edie says, eyes roaming dreamily back to the game, to the shoving match that seems about to unfold between Bix Carr and Tom Moran, who always fought, over sports, old debts, patrol a.s.signments, cars.

I am supposed to say these things, the things I should want. It is what you say. I look at Edie, looking at the other tired, careless faces on the bleachers, hair tucked in curlers under scarves, bodies straining or flaccid, pregnant or waiting to be.

We watch as Bill and Charlie separate the men, and Bill talks them down, his hand on Bix's shoulder, Bix nodding, cooling. Tom abashed, kicking the dirt.

"I'm going home, sugar." Edie sighs, stumbling forlornly down the bleachers.

I wave good-bye.

An hour later, the game finally over, Bill wanders over. "Where's Edie? Charlie's looking for her."

"She left," I say.

"Oh. Really? That's funny. Charlie-"

Tom Moran comes running up behind Bill, slapping him mightily on the back. "Billy, where's that gorgeous wife tonight?"

Bill extends a hand to help me descend the bleachers. "Under the weather."

"Too bad. Don't mind gazing up at her."

Bill looks over at him for a second, as if caught between annoyance and good humor.

"You know." Tom shrugs, grinning at me anxiously. "She's different than the others. Than the other wives. Ain't she?"

I smile faintly, and Bill tilts his head, unsure how to respond.

I know this isn't the first time he's heard these comments. I've seen the way they look at her. They watch her when she comes to City Hall, they watch her at the social events, they watch the way she walks, hips rolling with no suggestion of provocation but with every sense that she knows more than any of the rest. A woman like that, they seem to be thinking, a woman like that has lived.

Their wives come from Orange County, they come from Minnesota or Dallas or St. Louis. They come from places with families, with sagging mothers and fathers with dead eyes and heavy-hanging brows. They carry their own promise of future slackness and clipped lips and demands. They have sisters, sisters with more babies, babies with sweet saliva hanging and more appliances and with husbands with better salaries and two cars and club membership. They iron in housedresses in front of the television set or by the radio, steam rising, matting their faces, as the children with the damp necks cling to them, sticky-handed. They are this. And Alice ... and Alice ...

Charlie Beauvais, he once said it. Said it to Bill in my earshot. He said, Don't worry, pal, don't worry. It's not that they want her. It's just they have this feeling-and they're off, Billy, they're way off-but they have this sense that, somehow behind that knockout face of hers, she's more like the women they see on the job, on patrol, on a case, in the precinct house. Women with stories as long as their rap sheets, as their dangling legs...