Sublime

when Max one day said, “Jacaranda is the best-dressed woman in Los Angeles,” it came out sounding mean-spirited and vile. The gold had washed off the surface and the Gates of Paradise had been melted down for private purposes no longer on public view. It was only art anyway,

Empty Barge Blues Maybe it was what Gilbert said. Maybe Max, once Jacaranda softened up and wouldn’t even risk blue paint anymore, had found bluer pastures, leaving Jacaranda ashore.

She changed into an expensive T-shirt Simon had bought for her, then sat around, waiting, like the end of every day was a first date.

One night, when Jack Ripler and Sunrise Honey were driving down Topanga in his van, Jack got so angry that he hit Sunrise Honey right across the face. She swerved the car into the bushes, jumped out, opened his door, yanked him upright, and then kicked in three of his ribs. “Retarded!” Jacaranda had laughed, clapping her hands with delight. “She’s

New York struck her as impossible for another reason. Jacaranda was afraid of New York—all alone by herself, with no ocean (the Atlantic was not an ocean). She’d heard from infancy that South Carolina was just about the only place on that East Coast where you could surf, and if you couldn’t surf on an ocean, it wasn’t the ocean. She’d be all alone

“You’re not?” Gilbert asked. He pulled himself together and sat up straight, his hand now a mere formality on her thigh. “It’s not something that can be transmitted orally, is it?”

Or maybe it was because she had never met a man who was passionate about elegance. What went on between men and women was based on a kind of enraged foundation that to Jacaranda could only be transcended through clashes-by-night sex.

There were about two hundred people there, and Jacaranda knew that Sunrise had never been to this studio of Jack’s before. Part of Shelby’s insistence that Jack Ripler have the July 3rd party was as a studio-warming, though it seemed much more likely to scald and burn from sex and rage instead.