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fact had had to be faced: Life is not like the movies—you don’t just get money when someone dies. Sometimes you lose money. There are strange expenses and taxes. Mike Gold had taken only minimal steps in the way of insurance, so without his income, they were in trouble.
    In the summer and the fall, May had sat with her mother and helped work out their budget. They’d canceled her father’s subscriptions to his sports magazines, turned off the cell phones, and limited the cable service. Her mother had switched to working nights and bumped up her hours. She’d also accepted a few small family loans—enough to pay for May’s tuition and a bit of the mortgage. Still, things were not looking very good.
    Pete’s dad was an accountant. He did their taxes, and he knew the score. Pete’s mom often sent over strange assortments of extralarge items she picked up at the wholesale club—jumbo bottles of dishwasher detergent, twelve-packs of soap, jugs of shampoo with pump dispensers. She’d say, “It was such a gooddeal, I couldn’t pass it up!” or, “It was two for one, so I just figured I’d give this one to you!” to try to keep the whole thing from being awkward. It still always was.
    They pulled into the shopping center where May worked, which was between a collection of housing developments and the access road from I-95. Pete drove up to the brown building in the far corner of the parking lot, the one that had been born as a Pizza Hut but had lived through several incarnations since then.
    â€œDo you need a ride home tonight?” he asked.
    May looked out at the rain. She had no other option, aside from walking through the downpour in the dark.
    â€œI don’t want to mess up your plans…,” she said.
    â€œI just have to go over to school later and finish hanging some lights for the show. We’re doing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat .”
    â€œIt sounds like an infomercial.”
    â€œIt’s a musical,” Pete clarified. “They’re always musicals. So, what time are you done?”
    â€œEleven.”
    â€œEleven,” he repeated, again in the strange accent. “So, I’ll come back then.”
    With that settled, May stepped out into the rain and ran to the door, and the Cutlass rolled out of the parking lot and vanished beyond the gray horizon.
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    Presto Espresso wanted desperately to look like it was part of some huge chain of coffee bars. It had the wooden tables, the wall murals, and the recycled cups. It had drinks with catchynames, always prefaced with the words our signature, as if Presto Espresso made coffee in some special, famous way. It had generic jazz music pumped into the air from hidden speakers. What it didn’t have was customers. Working there was a long exercise in killing time—stacking cups and grinding coffee and standing around. Specifically, it was an exercise in killing time with Nell Dodd, the assistant manager.
    â€œMy dorm was right near this massive cell phone tower,” Nell was saying as she arranged a pile of cups in bowling-pin fashion at the far end of the counter. “And it’s a well-known fact that cell phone signals give you brain cancer. So I talked to the residence life staff, but they completely refused to move me.”
    â€œUh-huh,” May said.
    Nell had started college in September and left after two weeks. She’d been living at home and working at Presto for the last nine months while contemplating her “new direction.” May had started working at Presto in December, and she’d heard this story at least fifteen times since then.
    â€œEverything about the place sucked,” Nell went on. “Like my roommate. My roommate was this total crypto-fascist sorority-girl wannabe. I mean, pretty much all she wanted from college was to pledge Sigma Whatever Whatever, which is just about the saddest thing I have ever