and the best hot dog in the known universe, Pegasus Books with its used fantasy and science fiction novels, People’s Park, where bearded sojourners held congress at the picnic tables. Amoeba Music, Moe’s, Shakespeare & Co. Buskers playing tom-toms, sidewalk vendors selling incense and tie-dyed socks. Students, tourists, dealers, greasy spoons of many nations.
Jess’s building was Old Hollywood–hacienda style: stucco, red tile, and wrought iron. Sconces lit the entryway, where the mailboxes were set into the wall. Jess paused, looking for her mail key. “Oh, well,” she said.
An elderly neighbor climbed the steps. “Hey, Mrs. Gibbs, how are you?” said Jess, unlocking and holding the door open. “Do you remember my sister, Emily?”
“We have not had the pleasure.” Mrs. Gibbs was a petite black woman with freckles on her nose, and she wore a white nurse’s uniform under her black raincoat. White dress, white stockings, green rubber boots. Mrs. Gibbs placed her hand on Emily’s head. “May you always be a blessing.”
“That was strange,” Emily whispered as Jess led the way up the stairs.
“She’s a friend.”
“What do you mean, ‘friend’?” Jess tended to collect people. She was friendly to a fault. She went through little fascinations, and easily fancied herself in love. “Do you actually know that woman?” Emily’s voice echoed in the stairwell. “Does she usually put her hands on people’s heads?”
Jess held open the door to her apartment, a real find, despite the rattling pipes and cracked tile in the bathroom. Eleven-foot ceilings, plasterwork like buttercream, closets deep enough to sublet. “She’s lived in the building for, like, thirty years,” said Jess, as if that explained everything.
Her roommates Theresa and Roland lolled on the couch watching
“Hey,” said Jess.
Roland held up a warning finger. “Shh.”
Jess led her sister into her bedroom. The walls were lined with overloaded Barnes & Noble folding birch bookcases. Piles of sweaters and Save the Trees leaflets filled a papasan chair. A battered wood table from the street served as desk for an ancient IBM desktop computer. On the wall hung a framed Ansel Adams poster, the black-and-white image of a glistening oak coated and crackling with ice. On her bulletin board, Jess had pinned photos of their father, Richard, and his wife, Heidi, and their little girls, Lily and Maya.
“Maybe you should dry off before you try on the …” Emily was rummaging in her shopping bag as Jess peeled off her socks and her damp sweater. “I have something else in here for you.” She produced a thick prospectus.
“Initial Public Offering for Veritech Corporation, Sunnyvale,” Jess read off the cover.
“Right. You should read all of that. And also these.” Emily handed Jess a wad of papers. “This is our Friends and Family offering. You fill this out and send a check here.” She pointed to an address.
“Why?”
“You’re eligible to buy one hundred shares at eighteen dollars a share. So you need to mail in a check for eighteen hundred dollars.”
Jess grinned in disbelief. “Eighteen hundred dollars?”
“No, no, no, you have to do this,” Emily said. “After the IPO, the price will go through the roof. Daddy’s buying. Aunt Joan is buying….”
“Maybe they can buy some for me too.”
“No, this is important. Stop thinking like a student.”
“I am a student.”
“Just leave that aside for the moment, okay? Follow the directions. You’ll do really, really well.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you heard of Priceline?”
“No.”
“Sycamore Networks?”
Jess shook her head as Emily rattled off the names of companies that had gone public in 1999. The start-ups had opened at sixteen dollars, thirty-eight dollars, and were now selling for hundreds of dollars a share. “Just read the material, and mail the check….”
“But I don’t have eighteen hundred dollars,” Jess reminded her sister.
“So borrow.”
“All right, will you lend me eighteen hundred dollars?”
Emily lost patience. “If you’d just temporarily give up your aversion to money …”
“I don’t have an aversion to money,” Jess said. “I don’t have any. There’s a big difference.”
“I don’t think you understand what I’m giving you,” said Emily. “I get only ten on my Friends and Family list.”
“So it’s sort of an honor,” said Jess.
“It’s sort of an opportunity. Please don’t lose this stuff. You have ten days to take care of this. Just follow through, okay?”
“If you insist.” Emily’s bossiness brought out the diva in Jess.
“Promise.”
“Promise,” Jess said. After which she couldn’t help asking, “Do I still have to try on the clothes?”
“Here’s the blouse, and the jacket. Here’s the skirt.” Emily straightened the blanket on Jess’s unmade bed and sat on top.
The skirt was short, the jacket snug, and they were woven in a rust and orange tweed. The blouse was caramel silk with a strange lacquered finish, not just caramel but caramelized. Jess gazed for a moment at the three pieces. Then she stripped off the rest of her clothes and plunged in.
“Oh, they’re perfect,” said Emily. “They fit perfectly. Do you have a mirror?”
“Just in the bathroom.”
“Here, brush your hair and tie it back. Or put it up. Go take a look.”
Jess padded off to the bathroom and peeked at herself in the mirror, where she saw her own bemused face, more freckled than she remembered. The tweed jacket and the silk blouse reminded her of a game she and Emily had played when they were little. They called themselves Dress-Up Ladies and teetered through the house on high heels. Sometimes Emily would wear a satin evening gown, and pretend she was a bride. Then Jess would be the flower girl, with scarves tied around her waist. That was before their father gave away their mother’s clothes.
“Can you see?” Emily called from the bedroom.
“It’s really nice,” Jess called back.
“It’s a Vivienne Tam suit,” said Emily when Jess returned.
“Thank you. I could tell by the … label.” Jess sat down cautiously on her desk chair. Comically, experimentally, she tried crossing her legs.
“You hate it,” Emily said.
“No! It’s really very pretty.” Jess was already undressing.
“Just say you’ll wear it once.”
“I’ll wear it to your IPO.” Jess pulled on a giant T-shirt and sweatpants.
“You aren’t going to the IPO. It’s not a wedding.”
“Okay, I’ll wear it to your wedding.” Jess flopped onto the bed. “Don’t you miss him?”
“We’re used to it.”
“I never would be,” Jess declared, and added silently, Never in a million years. She would never deny herself the one she loved, or make excuses for him either. She’d never say, It’s complicated, or We have to be patient. Love was not patient. Love was not kind. It didn’t keep; it couldn’t wait. Not in her experience. Certainly not in her imagination.
“What did Dad and Heidi get you?” Emily asked.
“Just the tickets home for Thanksgiving. And they sent me pictures from the kids. See—Lily wrote her name, and a rainbow.” Jess spread their half sisters’ drawings over the bed. “I think these scribbles are from Maya. And I
