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Guilt has gotten more dinners on the table than hunger ever dreamed of. Mona goes right to the liquor cabinet, and Gray is already peeling the avocadoes. Like a veritable matchmaker I decide to give them some time alone and run up to my room for a sweater.
    First thing I do, I check my cheek in the mirror. Maybe he's right, one edge is faintly lighter, but nothing to write home about. It's not like I could cruise a boy at the Malibu Safeway. I move to shut the balcony doors, catching a glimpse of the gibbous moon as it flings its pearls on the water. Then I grab my red-checked crew-neck from the dresser and shrug it on.
    Though I only brought a single duffel bag with me here when I came just after New Year's, right away this place felt more like home than my own place ever did. My bleak one-bedroom in West Hollywood, with a view out over four dumpsters, looks like a garage sale driven indoors by rain. Nothing nice or comfortable, not a nesting person's space by any stretch. Whereas here I have a lovely overstuffed chaise across from the bed, swathed in a faded Arcadian chintz, and a blue-painted wicker table by the window with shelves underneath for books. The ancient curtains are swagged and fringed and look like they would crumble at the touch. If it sounds a bit Miss Havisham, don't forget the sea breeze blowing through clean as sunlight every day.
    Above the mahogany bed is a poster of Miss Jesus. The cross is propped against the wall at AGORA, and I'm leaning against it in full drag, pulling up my caftan to show a little leg. The expression on my face can only be called abandoned. My crown of thorns is cocked at a rakish angle. In the lower right-hand corner, in Gothic script, it says "Oh Mary!"
    This is only the third time I've managed to put Mona and Gray together, and I find myself excited by the prospect of spending an evening, just us three. The two of them have come to be my most immediate family, somewhat by elimination, my friends all having died, but I couldn't have chosen better. I realize I want them to know each other as well as I know them, for when it gets bad. When I'm curled in a ball and can't play anymore, sucking on a respirator, and then of course when it's over. They'll be good for each other, so opposite in every way.
    I've forgiven Mona already for bringing up Brian. It clearly won't happen again; she's not that dumb. The memory overload has passed, and once again my brother has faded into the septic murk of the past. What surprises me is this: as I trot down the spiral stair and hear my two friends laughing in the kitchen, I am so happy that some part of my heart kicks in and takes back the curse. I hope you're not dead and your kids are great. That's all. Good-bye. Fini.
    Gray is regaling Mona with the tale of his three Baldwin aunts—Cora, Nonny, and Foo. Mona is riveted. These three estimable ladies, maiden sisters of Gray's grandfather, the old rancher tycoon himself, had the beach house built for themselves and resided here every summer for sixty years. I who have heard this all before never tire of the least detail.
    We bear the steaks and our margaritas out the kitchen door to the side terrace, where Gray lights the gas barbecue. At the other end of the arbor we can hear the fountain playing. The moon is all the light we need. It's too cold to actually eat outside, but for now there's something delicious about being together around the fire, knocking down tequila and imagining the aunts.
    "They used to put on plays and musicales, right here," says Gray, gesturing down the arbor, then to the gentle slope of lawn beside it. "We'd all sit out there. I don't remember the plays, except Foo wrote them. They were very peculiar."
    "And none of these women ever married?" Mona stares over the rim of her drink into the shadows of the arbor, willfully trying to conjure them. "Were they ugly?"
    "Oh no, they were all very striking. Wonderful masses of hair, even when they were old ladies. And they wore