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tiptoe into my father’s music room when he left so she could look at his collection of Dixieland 78s and feel she was in the presence of the ultimate sophistication.
    And no wonder the way she looked at all we had sometimes made me see that it wasn’t just broken Crayolas after all. But of course I’d forget when she got a new neon pink Orion sweater from Ohrbach’s which didn’t strike me as fair.
    Andrea herself, most of the time when we were teenagers or children, seemed to pass through life like a pastel cloudsmudged and blended into her surroundings. The quality of her voice became more reasonable too.
    â€œI’m really an orphan,” she would explain to me. “My parents were the king and queen and when I grow up, I’m going to become the princess. That’s who I really am.”
    â€œReally?” I asked, although I believed whatever Andrea told me without question since Andrea never lied and I was only ten.
    â€œThat’s right,” she said.
    â€œWell, I always knew you didn’t belong living in Watts,” I agreed. “You’d be much more at home in your own castle. On your own throne. With lots and lots of gold and jewels and chocolate cake.”
    â€œAnd my own library,” she said.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œAnd lots and lots of jazz musicians,” she added, “not just records. To play just for me.”
    Since having musicians right there playing where I lived was what I grew up with, I preferred chocolate cake. They always let Andrea have all the chocolate cake she wanted, whereas Bonnie and I were stuck because all we had were advantages.

“D ID YOU TAKE THE P IERCE arrow to rehearsal?” I asked Lola on our walk up Canyon Drive.
    â€œI walked,” Lola said. “Right over that hill there. Through the coyotes.”
    We paused and looked toward Bronson Canyon and west toward the hill Lola had once crossed on foot at dawn. It would have been at least two miles over coyote- and rattlesnake-infested hills till you came down past Valentino’s old house to where the Hollywood Bowl was. But to Lola, after so many hikes up Mount Hollywood, these low hills mighthave seemed nothing in the days when they weren’t covered with the houses built on them now.
    â€œOn Sunday mornings when your Aunt Goldie spent the night, I’d bring her breakfast in bed,” Lola said. “I was so surprised the first time I did this.”
    â€œSurprised?”
    â€œBecause she’d never had breakfast in bed before,” Lola said. “She didn’t even know there was such a thing. And I was so unconscious, I just did it without thinking. Because I couldn’t conceive of what being poor meant—or even lower middle class. We always had Fraulein to do everything for us before we asked.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “Goldie sure must know what breakfast in bed is now, thanks to you.”
    â€œYou know who knew all about being rich? Before anyone had to tell her, she just knew? Goldie’s sister, the younger one.”
    â€œYou mean Aunt Helen?”
    â€œHelen knew everything,” Lola nodded. “Just everything. And she sang like an angel. What a voice that gorgeous beauty had, what richness—everything about her just had a glow—golden, that’s how she was. And she knew it.”
    â€œBefore she moved to New Jersey,” I said, “and ruined the whole thing.”
    â€œThese things happen,” Lola said philosophically.
    â€œTo dumb people, not Helen,” I said. “Every time she comes to visit us, you know what she says? She is driving up La Cienega to our house from the airport—you know La Cienega, that hideous street filled with ugly Lowry’s Prime Rib restaurants?—and she lets out this musical note sigh like a bell. ‘Ooooooo,’ she says, ‘I’d forgotten how green and beautiful L.A. is.’ She says that when we’re not even