"What? What else?"

"Miss Bolaris claims that you took an unnatural interest in her."

My stomach knotted and I felt crazy. The last time I had felt that crazy was when I knew Mark was having an affair and he wouldn't admit it. His earnest protests had made me feel as if I were spinning a hysterical web of fantasy. But this was worse. So much worse because of the extremity of the lie and the fragility of the trust.

"Unnatural," I said.

"She claims that you convinced her she was being abused and that you encouraged her to leave her family and come live with you."

"Live with me? I live in a trailer. I don't even have room for a cat."

"The point is, she says you have become obsessed with her. She says you made certain gestures toward her."

My dread hardened into a knot of anger, lodged in my chest. "Advances, you mean. s.e.xual advances."

"She stopped just short of saying that you did anything. Physically. More like you emotionally persuaded her."

Somehow I managed to override my fear and disappointment. I found the power in the anger that was now invading me and spreading through my body like a fever.

I managed not to give voice to the eruption. I calmly explained to Officer Mulligan that I had only cared about Hallie as a teacher. And that Hallie had confided in me, had as much as confessed that she was trading herself for music lessons. I told him about her pregnancy and how it had mysteriously gone away. I told him about her bruises and about my tense visit to the Edwardses' home. I told him about my obligation, as a teacher, to report any concerns that I had. I had concerns and I weighed them carefully and consulted a friend before I made the decision to call someone. It had been difficult, I told him, but I couldn't just stand by and do nothing.

Officer Mulligan nodded with an understanding expression. Then he asked if I was married. I told him I didn't think it was relevant. He asked if I had a boyfriend, and I told him that was really not relevant and then I demanded to know if I was being charged with anything.

"No, not officially," he said. "But these are things you'll be asked eventually. If you end up in court."

"All you need to know is that I'm a teacher. I'm her teacher. And teachers take more than a superficial concern in their students' well-being."

"Well, the good ones do," he admitted. "But the problem with teachers is that they are often left alone with their students. So sometimes it's just your word against hers."

"So is that how it is? These days, a concern is interpreted as an inappropriate response?"

He leaned forward. "The social worker just couldn't find any evidence of what you're talking about. Miss Bolaris is not pregnant. There's no evidence that she ever has been. There's no evidence at all of abuse."

"Fine," I said. "Then I was wrong. But you can't blame me for wanting to know."

He nodded and stared at me, twisting back and forth in his chair.

"Can I go now?"

"Sure, you can go anytime."

I stood and he didn't. I waited. He was looking at me in a way that I'd seen before. As if I were some kind of pathetic specimen, a relic from the past, something he'd glimpsed before and might never see again.

"I suspect this will all blow over. But if I were you, I'd stay away from Miss Bolaris."

"That won't be a problem."

I walked through the bull pen, toward the place where I thought I'd first come in. The blood was ringing in my ears. When I got to the door, I was surprised to find Officer Mulligan had followed me. He opened the door for me.

He said, "You know, I'm a bit of a musician myself. Hacked around on the guitar when I was young. It was just never going to happen for me. My father is a cop, and his father was. This was always going to be my path. But I admire you people. I admire what you do."

"That's fascinating, Officer. You might have to find someone else to tell the story of your broken dreams."

"Oh, I don't think dreams really break, do they, Miss Swain? They just kind of move around."

I was standing in the parking lot, trying to remember where I had parked, when Hallie and her mother came out. Hallie saw me and averted her eyes. Dorothy followed her gaze and wasted no time in coming up to me.

"I hope you're happy," she said. "I trusted you."

I looked away from her. I stared at Hallie, who was concentrating on her shoes.

Dorothy said, "My husband is a well-respected man. The last thing we need is a scandal. So I'm more than willing to let this all go if you promise never to get within a hundred yards of my daughter again."

I trained my eyes on Dorothy at last.

"So now she's your daughter?"

"She told me everything. I know who you are. I know what I know."

"And I know what I know. Maybe we should just leave it at that."

"You artists. Real life is not enough for you. You just have to embellish, don't you?"

"I'm not an artist."

"Stay away from us. Do you understand?"

She marched away from me, and I watched her go. I stared at Hallie until I thought her skin might bleed. She wouldn't look at me at all. I walked away and I didn't turn, even after I heard her running toward me. She grabbed my arm and I still wouldn't turn.

She said, "Don't you see how you messed everything up?"

"Let go of me."

"They almost made me leave. I can't leave. I don't have anywhere else to go."

I still couldn't look at her. But I said, "I tried to help you."

"I didn't ask you to help me."

"Sometimes people help without being asked."

"Yeah," she said. "But then it's not a gift. It's a burden."

I shook her hand off my arm and unlocked my car door.

I didn't look at her again until I had her framed in my rearview mirror. She was following Dorothy, her arms crossed and her head bowed to the ground. I saw, or thought I saw, a look of grim determination on her face. As if all of life was a battleground and she was planning her next move.

15.

NOWHERE IN ANY BIOGRAPHY I have ever read is there the chapter where the courageous but troubled protagonist decides to abandon her life's mission and focus instead on her affair with a twenty-eight-year-old ba.s.s player.

This is the course my life takes after my Christmas Eve encounter with Patrick. Any reservations I'd had about it in the past disappeared once he told me that I did not extend myself. It became my single-minded mission to prove him wrong.

So I extended myself with Clive. I extended myself in ways I had previously not thought possible. There are probably words in French to describe the ways in which I extended myself. It wasn't about love or even about s.e.x. It was about "I'll show him." And it's possible that this course of action exists in every person's story, but the biographer wisely leaves it out. How admirable can it possibly be? How can it be explained in the course of someone's spiritual journey? But I am here to tell you that some of my best work, certainly my most creative work, was accomplished right there in my trailer park, after a round or two of margaritas or martinis. What I'm thinking is this: Certainly, great accomplishments have been sparked by a headstrong desire to prove someone wrong. Maybe all of them.

It isn't difficult to introduce Clive back into my existence. I simply swallow my pride and call him. I tell him I want to discuss the possibility of forming a band. He falls for the bait and comes over to my place. After a few drinks, he falls for bait of a different kind, and in the morning he sits up in bed, rubs his goatee thoughtfully, and says, "Hey, what about that band?"

"What about it?"

He grins and says, "There ain't no band, is there?"

"No, there apparently ain't."

He doesn't complain.

No one at work has a clue, least of all Franklin. He simply notes that I am in a better mood than usual and credits it, in fact, to Clive's absence.

"I told you that guy was bringing everybody down," he says.

I just smile.

He has hired a surly, washed-up forty-year-old session musician to take Cive's place. A woman, as it turns out. She is cla.s.sically trained on the guitar but has abandoned it for the ba.s.s in recent years, and the fact that she is becoming uglier and surlier by the minute has driven her out of her chosen profession. No one was hiring her anymore, she complained to me as we stacked how-to videos together. They were jealous, she said, because she was too good at her craft. They were threatened. They hated women. They didn't understand the instrument. No one appreciated the bottom end anymore. She was just as devoted to the rhythm section as Clive, but her enthusiasm had decayed into a sour dismissal of all other instruments, and ultimately of music itself.

"It's all just bulls.h.i.t," she says to me. Her name is Josie. She has a jaundiced complexion and doughnut-colored hair. She is shaped like a doughnut, too. This has earned her the name Krispy Kreme behind her back. (Ernest's creation. He likes to a.s.sign people nicknames behind their backs. Mine is Pearls Before Swine, just because it is easy and because I'm not supposed to know it. I never informed him that I'd endured a version of that nickname since kindergarten.) "What's bulls.h.i.t?" I ask her, just to pa.s.s the time.

"Music, that's what. We all act like it's a career. A valuable way to spend our time. But it's just an excuse not to grow up. There are people doing real jobs in the world. We're just f.u.c.king around. We might as well be doing finger painting for a living. It's schoolyard s.h.i.t. Let's face it, we're all where we are because we didn't want to get a real job. Now it's too late to turn back. h.e.l.l, I can't even type. I'm stuck with music."

I like to hear her talk. She swears like a sailor, which is funny coming from a woman who looks like an embittered librarian. And I have endless patience for anything because I am getting laid on a regular basis by a man who has rock-hard abs and a seemingly permanent erection.

Patrick is giving me a wide berth at work. He seems to think he has gained some kind of upper hand with me. Occasionally I catch him smiling at me sympathetically, from across the room, as if he knows the mysterious origin of my deep sadness. What he doesn't notice, because he doesn't notice things, is that I have relinquished my deep sadness.

For about a month, I haven't talked to him at all. He is waiting for me to break. I don't break. One evening when we are closing up together, counting money in the cash register and sorting time cards, he says in a psychologist's voice, "How are you doing, Pearl?"

"I'm doing fine, Patrick."

He nods, as if he expects that kind of denial from me. Then he says, "Are you doing any work outside the shop?"

"A little," I say. It is true. I still do occasional session work and sit in with a country swing band once a month. But I know he isn't really asking about work. He is wondering if I am having a life. Extending myself.

"What about you?" I ask. "Are you moonlighting?"

He laughs, as if it is a ridiculous concept, and says, "One job is enough for me."

"Well, good. That's the best way to be."

When our work was done, we walk out together and he locks the door. He says, "Do you want to get something to eat?"

"No, I have to get home."

"What for?"

"I have a date," I say simply.

A look of surprise registers on his face before he can stop it.

"With who?" he blurts out.

"No one you know."

His face goes through a variety of expressions before he settles on indifference.

"That's good," he says in his psychologist voice. "I'm happy for you."

"Why?"

He laughs. "Why am I happy for you?"

"Yeah."

He shrugs. He doesn't know. This former physics professor who plays every instrument is stumped.

He says, "I don't think it's good for people to be alone too much."

"Good night," I say. And I walk away from him.

The funny thing is, he is right. And I am right. It's not nearly as much fun when both parties are right.

But that happens more often than not, I am forced to admit.

CLIVE CAN'T LET the issue of the band go. He mentions it when we are eating pizza in front of a Lakers game in my trailer.

He says, "I don't intend to spend the rest of my life teaching music. I want to do something, Pearl."

Clive is giving ba.s.s lessons from his apartment and in the homes of his students. It took him only a few weeks to match his salary at McCoy's, but he is now so busy he doesn't have time to pursue his own music. This is his constant complaint. I have endless patience for it. He is twenty-eight. He is supposed to long for something.

"I agree. You should do something," I say. "But you don't need me to start a band."

"Maybe you could learn to sing," he suggests. "Clubs pay more for bands with a chick singer. You're still hot. You could put on a miniskirt."

If you think I'm not flattered by being described as hot, you're wrong. Not to mention the idea that he is picturing me in a miniskirt.