"Did anybody come to watch?" Tammy asked.

"Quite a few, coming and going. But not a crowd. Never more than twenty at any one time. And we were kept a long way back from the demolition which is why the pictures are so poor."

The women had been through all the pictures now. Tammy handed them back to Jerry, who said: "So that's another piece of Hollywood history that's bitten the dust. It makes me sick. This is all we've got faintly resembling a past in this city of ours, and we just take a hammer and knock it all down. How sensible is that?"

"Personally, I'm glad it's gone," Tammy piped up. Another wave of weakness had come over her as she looked at the pictures, and now she felt almost ready to pass out.

"You don't look too good," Maxine said.

"I don't feel too good. Would either of you mind if I went to lie down?"

"Not at all," Jerry said.

Tammy gave him a kiss and started towards her bedroom.

"Aren't you going to tuck her in, Maxine?" Tammy heard Jerry say.

"As it happens: yes." And so saying, she followed Tammy into the bedroom.

"You know, you mustn't let anything Jerry says bother you," Maxine said, once Tammy was lying down. She stroked the creases from the pillow beside Tammy's head.

"I know."

"He doesn't mean any harm."

"I know that too." She looked at Maxine, seeking out her grey eyes. "You know ... just for the record ... "

"No, Tammy. We don't have to have this conversation. You don't have a lesbian bone in your body."

"No, I don't."

"And if I do ... well, I haven't discovered it yet. But, as you raised the subject, I could quite happily take care of you for as long as you'd like. I like your company."

"And I like yours."

"Good. So let's have the world believe whatever it wants to believe."

"Fine by me."

Tammy made a weak little smile, mirrored on Maxine's face.

"Who'd have thought?" Maxine murmured.

She leaned forward and kissed Tammy very gently on the cheek. "Go to sleep, honey. I want you well."

When she'd gone, Tammy lay beneath the coverlet, listening to the reassuring rhythm of conversation between Maxine and Jerry from next door, and the draw and boom of the Pacific.

Of all the people to have found such comfort with: Maxine Frizelle. Her life had taken some very odd turns, no question about that.

But somehow it still seemed right. After the long journeys of late, the pursuits and the revelations, the terrors that could not speak, and those that spoke all too clearly, she felt as though Maxine was somehow her reward; her prize for staying the terrible course.

"Who'd have thought?" she said to herself.

And with Maxine's words on her lips, she fell asleep.

"I want to go back to Rio Linda," Tammy announced two days later. They were sitting on their favorite spot, out on the patio, and today there was a splash of the vodka mixed with tomato juice in Tammy's glass.

"You want to go home?" Maxine said.

Tammy took her hand. "No, no," she said. Then, more fiercely: "God, no. That's not my home any longer."

"So -- ?"

"Well, I had this huge collection of Todd Pickett memorabilia. And I want to get rid of it. Then I want to think about selling the house."

"Meaning you'll move in with me?"

"If it isn't too sudden?"

"At our age, nothing's too sudden," Maxine said. "But are you sure you want to go through all that stuff yourself? Can't you get one of the fans to do it?"

"I could, I suppose," Tammy said. "But I'd feel better doing it myself."

"Then we'll do it together."

"It'll be boring. There's so much stuff. And Arnie's been using the house on and off so it'll be a pig-sty."

"I don't care. When do you want to go?"

"As soon as possible. I just want to get it over and done with."

Tammy tried to find Arnie, first at the airport and then at his new girlfriend's house, just to warn him that they were coming into town, but she didn't get hold of him. Part of her was glad that Maxine was accompanying her, when there were so many variables she couldn't predict; but there was another part of her that felt a little uncomfortable at the prospect. Maxine lived in luxury. What would she think when she laid eyes on the scruffed, stuffed, little ranch-house where Tammy and Arnie had lived out the charmless farce of their marriage for fourteen-and-a-half years?

They got an early plane out of Los Angeles, and were in Sacramento by nine-thirty in the morning. Maxine had arranged for a chauffeured sedan to meet them at the airport. The chauffeur introduced himself as Gerald, and said that he was at their disposal. Did they want to go straight to the address he'd been given? Tammy gave Maxine a nearly panicked look: the moment was upon her, and suddenly she was anxious.

"Come on," Maxine said. "We'll face the horror together. Then we'll be out of here by the middle of the afternoon."

Arnie hadn't bothered to mow the front lawn, of course, or weed the ground around the two rose bushes that Tammy had attempted to nurture. The bushes were still alive, but only just. The weeds were almost as tall as the bushes.

"Of course he may have changed the lock," Tammy said, as they approached the front door.

"Then we'll just get Gerald to shoulder it in," Maxine said, ever practical. "It's still your house, honey. We're not doing anything illegal."

In fact, the key fitted and turned without any problem; and it was immediately apparent from the general state of the place that Arnie hadn't after all been a very regular visitor here in a while. But the heating had been left turned up so it was stiflingly hot in all the rooms; a stale, sickly heat. In the kitchen there was some food left out and rotting: a half-eaten hamburger, a pile of fruit which had been corrupted into plush versions of the originals, two plates of pizza crusts. The stink was pretty offensive, but Tammy got to work quickly clearing up the kitchen, while Maxine went around the house opening the windows and turning down the heating. With the rotted food bagged and set outside, and bleach put down the sink to take away the stench, the place was a little more hospitable, but Tammy made it very clear that she wanted to stay here for as short a time as possible, so they set to work. Given the size of the collection it was obviously not going to be sorted through and disposed of in a day; all Tammy wanted to do was collect up all the stuff that was personal, and either burn it or take it away. The rest she would let members of the Appreciation Society come in and collect. They'd end up fighting over the choicest items no doubt; all the more reason not to be there when they came.

"I didn't realize you had so much stuff," Maxine said, when they'd looked through all the rooms.

"Oh I was a top-of-the-line obsessive. No question. And I was organized." She went over to one of the filing cabinets, opened it, and fingered through it till she found the file she wanted.

"What's this?" Maxine said.

"Letters from you to me. Usually Dictated but not read."

"I was a bitch, I know. I was just trying to protect him the only way I knew how."

"And it worked. I never really got near him. Nobody did."

"Maybe if I had been less paranoid, he'd have been less paranoid. Then we wouldn't have tried to hide him away, and none of this -- "

Tammy interrupted her. "Enough of that," she said. "Let's start a bonfire out in the back yard, and get this done."

"A bonfire? For what?"

"For things like these." She proffered the Maxine Frizelle file. "Things it's nobody's business to ever see or read."

"Is there much like that?"

"There's enough. You want to start a fire with these, and I'll bring some more stuff out?"

"Sure. Anywhere in particular?"