But it was the food, as far as she was concerned, not the heavenly other events at Max’s, that was really the center. Max’s salads were always more beautiful and kinder than anyone else’s salads; he never put too little or too much vinegar or anything untoward like honey into the dressing. All the leaves were gloriously green and fresh and crisply

He said: “Honey, don’t ever try to figure out what’s going on between two people.” After she moved out of his house, he resumed life as a married man, and on the face of it it didn’t seem right that they were still in love. “But what will happen with Colman?” April asked. “How will it end?” “End?” she said. “What would end it?” For a while (five

April April hated Max. She loathed and despised Etienne. April couldn’t stand Jacaranda’s infatuation with the lull of a river, the stupidity of a barge.

oleanders

She found matzah hidden underneath her grandparents’ brocaded satin couch cushions, over at their West Los Angeles house every Passover.

The Beautiful Friend Up close in the sun-visor mirror, Jacaranda’s face was a sordid record of reckless debauchery, especially in broad daylight on the Fourth of July.

It was hard to believe, afterward, that it had taken only one day—the fifth of July—and two hundred dollars’ worth of cocaine, to straighten out the most major flaws of both Jacaranda’s and Sunrise’s life.

It was the Fourth of July. Jacaranda knew she could stay out of town at least till the fifth, and the fifth was a Monday, a Janet Wilton day.

Everyone took Sunshine acid and smoked grass called Icepack. And then, of course, there was all that tequila and rum and Courvoisier that rock-’n’-roll was finding out about after deciding grass wasn’t enough. She wore skintight