in handy once again. Along with a Swiss Army knife, and minicanister of capsaicin, and keys to most of the Western world, she kept a pencil flashlight in her purse for just such an occasion as a friendly B & E. In the thin beam of its light, Lillian's living room looked about the same as I had left it a week ago - trashed, but not alarmingly so. At least, not alarming to me.
"Yuck," whispered Maia. "Is this normal?"
"Yes," I said. Then reluctantly: "Maybe. I don't know."
A screen door screeched opened at the Rodriguez place and a puppy yelped as it was shoed outside. Some woman cursed in Spanish: " You feed the damn thing."
Men laughed. The bass was turned up.
"I don't think you need to whisper," I told Maia. "We could take clogging lessons in here and the Rodriguezes would never notice."
We checked Lillian's computer first. There was a half-finished spreadsheet for the gallery on file, a few word-processed business letters, a few standard software applications. The only disks on her desk were blank. She had no CD-ROM drive, much less the capacity for creating such a disk. The only thing we learned was that the Hecho a Mano Gallery wasn't even making enough money to bother recording.
In the corner of the main room was a board and cinder-block bookshelf that dated back to our college days. Maia and I pulled out books on everything from O'Keefe to Christo, unread textbooks with forgotten pressed flowers inside, five or six years worth of Sunset and Texas Monthly, all smelling like mildew and Halston. Finally Maia opened a white photo album and shone her flashlight on the first page. In the little yellow halo of light, Lillian and I stared up at us. I was wearing a tuxedo; she wore a red silk kimono over her black pantsuit, holding a peacock feather. The outfit, of course, had been a gift from my mother, an act of revenge as Lillian and I were preparing to go to my father's sixtieth birthday party, back in my first year in college. I'd like to say that I remembered the rest of the details about that night. The truth is I didn't. I looked at my own confident, very young smile, the way Lillian looked up at me with her head slightly tilted toward my shoulder. I couldn't imagine myself ever having been there. Maia flipped the page quickly - pictures of Lillian's family, several of us, all old and faded, a few of Lillian's paintings. Maia closed the book.
"There's nothing here," she whispered. She got up and moved on.
When I followed Maia into the bedroom she was shining her flashlight on Lillian's white wicker baby carriage. It was lined with red gingham and filled with rows of antique porcelain dolls. Ever since junior high, that carriage had been in Lillian's bedroom wherever she lived. I remember feeling nervous the first time I'd kissed her on her bed, looking over her shoulder at all those little porcelain eyes.
"It's my mother's." Lillian had laughed, biting my ear. "Family heirloom, Tres. I can't get rid of it."
I touched the gingham blanket. There was a small bundle tucked underneath. I brought it out. Ten letters postmarked from San Francisco, each carefully refolded and placed back in its envelope. Before I could put them away, Maia took the stack, noticed the address, then dropped them lightly back into the doll collection.
"So that's what happened to all my stamps," she said.
She shone the flashlight right in my eyes as she turned away. I tried to believe it was an accident.
After a few minutes in the bathroom, Maia found a cigar box full of assorted junk - door handles, rubber bands, costume jewelry, and a rather large diamond engagement ring.
Maia held up the ring and examined it. Finally she said: "Can I assume you didn't mail this too?"
I stared at it, wondering how many years I would have to work for something like that, assuming I ever got a job. Maia's expression was tightly controlled, but from the cold fierceness in her eyes I guessed she was pondering where on my face she might most effectively embed the engagement ring.
It was a strange feeling, sitting on Lillian's bathroom floor, having a stare-down with my former lover by the light of her pencil flashlight. Then the police siren sounded. It was a few blocks away and probably had nothing to do with us, but it reminded us where we were. Ten