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Susan. ‘I really felt nauseous.’
    ‘You’re welcome,’ Gil told her. He
nodded, and smiled, but made no immediate move to get back into his car.
    Susan glanced behind her. ‘I’d
invite you in, but – well, my grandparents are kind of old fashioned. They’d
want to know everything about what happened, you know; and right now I just
don’t feel like talking about it at all.’
    Gil scuffed his trainers on the
concrete path. ‘You’re going to want to talk about it sooner or later. You’re
going to have to.’
    She stood with her hand on the
wrought-iron balcony rail, looking at him with one of those distinctively
teenage expressions, bored, curious, go-on-show-me; her eyes in shadow. From
inside the house, they could hear a vacuum-cleaner ruminating from room to
room, and a television turned up loud so that whoever was using the
vacuum-cleaner could listen to Josie and
the Pussycats.
    ‘Could I call by later? ‘asked Gil.
    ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Susan.
She turned toward the house. ‘I mean, no offence or anything, but I really want
to forget it.’
    ‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ Gil
suggested, ‘I’ll leave you my number, and then if you want to talk about it you
can call me. Or even if you don’t want
to talk about it, I don’t mind.’
    Susan thought for a moment, and then
said, ‘Okay. But I have to go in now.’
    ‘Do you have a piece of paper?’
    She picked up a piece of chalk from
the flowerbed. ‘I’ll write it with this.’
    ‘Okay, then. It’s 755-9858.’
    ‘ Where’s that?’
    ‘Solana Beach, on the Boardwalk. My
father owns the Mini-Market.’
    ‘Oh, really? Okay, then.’
    At that moment, Susan’s grandmother
came out of the house, a small porky woman with strawberry-ice hair done up in
curlers, and a strawberry-coloured tracksuit.
    ‘Susan?’ she said, querulously. ‘You
came back quick.’
    ‘Oh, Gil here gave me a lift.’
    ‘Gil?’ demanded her grandmother, and
lifted up the gold-framed spectacles which she wore around her neck on a long
gilded chain.
    ‘Gil Miller, ma’am,’ said Gil,
giving her a wave. ‘Nice to meet you.’
    ‘Have I seen you before?’ Susan’s
grandmother wanted to know.
    ‘Could be, ma’am. My father owns the
Mini-Market down at Solana Beach.
    Sometimes I serve behind the deli
counter.’
    Susan’s grandmother lowered her
spectacles and allowed her face to subside into a soft blancmange of
disapproval. ‘Susan’s dating a medical student from Scripps,’ she told Gil. ‘A
fine boy, with a fine career in front of him. Irish.’
    Gil said, ‘Well, ma’am, that’s
excellent,’ even though he could see that Susan was desperately embarrassed. He
waved his hand again, an odd Howdy-Doody wave that he hadn’t really meant to do
at all, and then he swung himself back into his car and started up the engine.
    ‘Grandma,’ Susan protested, under
her breath. Then she called out, ‘Thanks for the ride, Gil.’
    ‘Yeah. You’re welcome,’ said Gil,
and backed himself out of the driveway.
    Susan watched him turn around in the
roadway, all screaming torque and squealing tyres, and roar off back towards
the beach. Then she followed her grandmother into the house, making sure that
the screen door banged noisily behind her. In the kitchen, her grandfather
looked up from his San Diego Tribune and
said, ‘Your friend Daffy’s here.’
    ‘Yes, and I was ashamed to let her
into your room,’ her grandmother admonished her. ‘The mess! I never saw
anything like it. You have drawers for your clothes, don’t you, and shelves for
your books?’
    ‘Oh, Grandma, I can’t keep
everything immaculate, the way that you do.’
    ‘It’s a state of mind,’ her
grandmother told her. ‘If your mind is tidy, then your house is tidy. Goodness
knows what Daffy thinks of you.’
    ‘Daffy thinks I’m very neat. You
should see her room. World War Eight isn’t in it.’
    Her grandmother hovered by the
doorway. Susan could tell that she was torn