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become McCormick Foods International. To say that there was never any chance she would go hungry was therefore an understatement.
    Of course Buddy McCormick would have preferred a daughter who wore dresses instead of pants; who lived in suburbia rather than sub urbia; and who had a husband and three children instead of a synthesizer and three guitars, but, all in all he figured that Paulie wasn’t the worst daughter a man could have, though he didn’t invite her out to the country club too often.
    When Luba arrived upstairs she flung her bags down in the hallway and hurried into the dimly lit living room. She was dying to tell Paulie the news, but she wanted to savor the moment, not just blurt it out. After all, it wasn’t every day a wish came true.
    â€œGod! I’m bushed,” she cried, flinging herself onto the couch. “I’ve been shopping,” she added as an afterthought.
    Paulie was sitting in the tub chair across from the couch, the heel of her left foot balancing on her right knee, a guitar resting comfortably on her lap. Behind her on the wall was a large framed poster of her band, Drek, with Paulie in leather jeans and a torn T-shirt standing menacingly in the center, holding her favorite guitar like a machine gun.
    â€œListen to this.” She played a couple of riffs. “What do you think?”
    â€œHmm.” Luba wagged her hand back and forth. “It needs work,” she said and then, dismissing the music, “Don’t you want to know what I bought?”
    â€œYou know clothes don’t interest me,” replied Paulie, running a hand through her short-cropped black hair.
    â€œDon’t you want to know how much I spent?”
    Paulie shrugged indifferently. “I’ll find out when I get my American Express bill.”
    Her indifference infuriated the younger girl, and Luba leaped to her feet and grabbed the largest of the bags, which happened to have the Bloomingdale’s insignia on it.
    â€œYou’ve just got to see this!” she cried, tugging a tissue-wrapped something out of the bag. “I nearly died when I saw it!” She ripped off the tissue and flung it onto the floor. “Look!” She waved the jacket over her head. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”
    Paulie raised one heavy black eyebrow.
    Undaunted, Luba continued to extol the virtues of her purchase. “It’s a pilot’s jacket. Just like the ones they used to wear in the war. Not Vietnam. The one before that. Or was it the one before the one before that?” She stopped to think, her young face creasing with the effort. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. The point is, it’s an authentic copy of an original flight jacket. See, they even made it from distressed leather so it would look old.” She brought the jacket over for Paulie to examine.
    Paulie felt the sleeve. “Distressed? It looks more like suicidal to me. What was the pilot—a kamikaze? It’s crap.”
    Luba’s face fell. “You don’t like it.”
    Paulie sighed. “It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that if you’re going to buy leather, buy good leather. This stuff is obviously made from split skins. It’s stiff and it’ll crack the first time you wear it in the cold.”
    Luba defended the jacket. “But that’s the whole point.”
    Paulie shrugged.
    Luba chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. “O.K., O.K., I’ll take it back.” Disappointed, she put the jacket back into the bag. She didn’t feel like showing off the rest of the things she had bought. Not now. Paulie could be so critical. Then she remembered her news.
    â€œHey, guess what?”
    â€œYou know I don’t like to play guessing games.” Humming to herself, Paulie strummed a few chords on the guitar.
    Luba persisted. She wanted the other woman to tease the news out of her. “Don’t you want to know why I went