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who’d been crying, who’d put away a fifth of something expensive. “I could make a call right now. Within an hour, someone would come and end your miserable life. Five grand, and you’d just disappear. I think it would be worth it.”
    Josie looked over at Pen, facedown on the furry couch, her skirt all hiked up behind. She had holes in the ass of her tights. “I loved him too, Meredith. You weren’t the only one.”
    But his mother didn’t hear her. She just kept talking, like a drunk arguing with ghosts toward closing time. “You thought you were latching onto a good thing. But he slipped from your clutches. You didn’t think of that, you little whore —”
    “I hope this is making you feel better —”
    “I don’t want to feel better. I want you to suffer, the way I’m suffering now.”
    “Then you didn’t even have to call,” Josie said, hung up the phone.

3
    Funeral
    A t nine forty-five on Friday morning, Josie Tyrell drove through Griffith Park, her rattly Falcon covered with band stickers making the only noise there was. She passed the lawns and old trees of Crystal Springs, the silent merry-go-round with its proud carousel horses, tented for winter. Last weekend, thousands of people had mourned the dead Beatle here. Today there was only the empty sandbox, the vacant swings. She followed the signs around the zoo parking lot to the back of the mountain, the air heavy with eucalyptus and laurel sumac, pitchy and green. And there it was, just as he said it would be, the metropolis of the dead. Forest Lawn, then Mount Sinai. He’d called as he said he would. Inspector Brooks. “It’s Sinai,” he’d whispered. “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. Off the Five at Forest Lawn.”
    Mount Sinai didn’t look like the Bakersfield cemetery. There were no headstones, just acres of open rolling hillside, green closely cropped lawns, plaques flat on the grass. Easier to mow. You could ride right over the graves. It made her sick just to think of it. And Michael had never wanted to be buried anyway, he’d wanted cremation. But it wasn’t his choice. He had nothing to say.
You didn’t think about that. Nobody gives a crap what the dead want. It’s all her show now. Nobody’s asking you shit.
    They were parking cars in a big lot before a massive sandstone building, one luxury car behind the next, tight, like concert parking at the Hollywood Bowl. No leaving early. A young man flagged the weak-mufflered Falcon in behind a Cadillac. The colorless light held the mountains in high contrast, blue and pale gold, and the sky was blue and far away. She adjusted her black sunglasses and got out of the car. She probably shouldn’t have gotten high on the way, but she didn’t know how else she was going to get through this. Everybody was probably doing Valium by the fistful anyway, what the fuck was the difference?
    She walked away from the dusty blue Ford, touching her
Germs
sticker—for memory, not luck. The cold air was shockingly fresh. A Rain Bird rhythmically watered the stiff Saint Augustine grass. She knew she shouldn’t have worn her yellow fake fur coat, though she’d cleaned it, though it was the only warm one she had. She knew there was something in her, a persistent defiance, that wouldn’t let her do things the way she was supposed to. Even now. Even today.
    The other people, wearing drab grays and browns, talked quietly in the sun. She tucked a bit more of her hair into her beret and tried to look as sedate as she could as she followed the passengers of the Cadillac, an elderly couple, the man in a business suit and overcoat, the woman in a fur tipped in sunlight, as far as the Hall of Remembrance. But then she couldn’t force herself to go through the doors.
    She moved to one side and lit a Gauloise, looking through her big square sunglasses at the naked-trunked eucalyptuses glowing white against the dark green chaparral of the park. How often they’d hiked on the other side of this mountain,