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And Paulette says, “I don’t want to interupt you.” She says, “I just need to put another log on the fire.”

And Grace shuts the book in her lap and says, “Paulette, we need you to settle a disagreement for us.” Lifting her frontalis muscle to raise just one eyebrow, Grace says, “Don’t you wish Misty would hurry up and paint her masterpiece?”

The weather today is partly angry, leading to resignation and ultimatums.

And Misty turns to leave. She turns a little and stops.

The waves outside hiss and burst.

“Thank you, Paulette,” Misty says, “but it’s time everybody on the island just accepted the fact that I’m going to die a big fat nobody.”

July 12

IN CASE YOU’RE CURIOUS, your friend from art school with the long blond hair, the boy who tore his earlobe in half trying to give Misty his earring, well, he’s bald now. His name’s Will Tupper, and he runs the ferryboat. He’s your-aged and his earlobe still hangs in two points. Scar-tissued.

On the ferry this evening coming back to the island, Misty is standing on deck. The cold wind is putting years on her face, stretching and drying her skin. The flat dead skin of her stratum corneum. She’s just drinking a beer in a brown paper bag when this big dog noses up next to her. The dog’s sniffing and whining. His tail’s tucked, and his throat is working up and down inside his furry neck as he swallows something over and over.

She goes to pet him and the dog pulls away and pees right there on the deck. A man comes over, holding a leash looped in one hand, and he asks her, “Are you all right?”

Just poor fat Misty in her own beer-induced coma.

As if. Like she’s going to stand here in a puddle of dog pee and tell some strange man her whole fucking life story on a boat with a beer in one hand and sniffing back tears. As if Misty can just say—well, since you asked, she just spent another day in somebody’s sealed-off laundry room, reading gibberish on the walls while Angel Delaporte snapped flash pictures and said her asshole husband is really loving and protective because he writes his u ’s with the tail pointing up in a little curl, even when he’s calling her an “... avenging evil curse of death ...”

Angel and Misty, they were rubbing butts all afternoon, her tracing the words sprayed on the walls, the words saying: “... we accept the dirty flood of your money ...”

And Angel was asking her, “Do you feel anything?”

The homeowners were bagging their family toothbrushes for laboratory analysis, for septic bacteria. For a lawsuit.

On board the ferry, the man with his dog says, “Are you wearing something from a dead person?”

Her coat’s what Misty is wearing, her coat and shoes, and pinned on the lapel is one of the god-awful big costume jewelry pins Peter gave her.

Her husband gave her.

You gave her.

All afternoon in the sealed laundry room, the words written around the walls said: “... will not steal our world to replace the world you’ve ruined ...”

And Angel said, “The handwriting is different here. It’s changing.” He snapped another picture and cranked to the next frame of film, saying, “Do you know what order your husband worked on these houses?”

Misty told Angel how a new owner should move in only after the full moon. According to carpenter tradition, the first to enter a new house should always be the family’s favorite pet. Then should enter the family’s cornmeal, the salt, the broom, the Bible, and the crucifix. Only then can the family and their furniture move in. According to superstition.

And Angel, snapping pictures, said, “What? The cornmeal’s supposed to walk in by itself?”

Beverly Hills, the Upper East Side, Palm Beach, these days, Angel Delaporte says, even the best part of any city is just a deluxe luxury suite in hell. Outside your front gates, you still have to share the same gridlocked streets. You and the homeless drug addicts, you still breathe the same stinking air and hear the same police helicopters chasing criminals all night. The stars and moon erased by the lights from a million used car lots. Everyone crowds the same sidewalks, scattered with garbage, and sees the same sunrise bleary and red behind smog.

Angel says that rich people don’t like to tolerate much. Money gives you permission to just walk away from everything that isn’t pretty and perfect. You can’t put up with anything less than lovely. You spend your life running, avoiding, escaping.

That quest for something pretty. A cheat. A cliche. Flowers and Christmas lights, it’s what we’re programmed to love. Someone young and lovely. The women on Spanish television with big boobs and a tiny waist like they’ve been twisted three times. The trophy wives eating lunch at the Waytansea Hotel.

The words on the walls say: “... you people with your ex-wives and stepchildren, your blended families and failed marriages, you’ve ruined your world and now you want to ruin mine ...”