Free Cemetery of Angels by Noel Hynd Page A

unpacked the bag of groceries. “He’s a shrink. Faculty at UCLA. He’s a fully tenured professor in the psych department, if you want to be impressed. Or ‘psycho’ department, maybe I should call it, since it’s UCLA. Anyway, Maurice is a brain. He’s written a dozen scholarly books.” She rolled her eyes, beautiful brown ones. “Puts little old me to shame.”
    “I really don’t know anyone in the neighborhood yet,” Rebecca said. “I mean, I’ve met a lot of people. But I don’t really
know
people. Understand what I mean?”
    “I hear you. But now you know me.”
    “Thanks. I do.”
    “And within a few weeks you’ll meet everyone else. I promise you that you’ll like it here. How’s that? My personal verbal guarantee, worth the paper it’s printed on.” Melissa smiled.
    “Thank you. That’s encouraging.”
    “You’re not from California,” Melissa said. “I can tell. My guess is you’re from the East. You’ve got that reticence that Westerners mistake for hostility.” Rebecca frowned.
    “You’re really right on, aren’t you?” She asked. Melissa smiled very prettily.
    “No use hiding what we think. Is there?”
    “I’m from Maryland originally. My husband’s from Virginia. Most recently we lived in Connecticut.”
    “Why did you come here?” Melissa asked.
    The incident in Fairfield flashed before Rebecca’s mind. She rejected it.
    “My husband’s an architect. He wants to open his own firm. He has a contact here. In Brentwood.”
    “Nice area. Money, you know,” Melissa said approvingly. “Can’t live well in this town without oodles of money.”
    “The contact’s a friend from graduate school. The friend has too much work for his own firm so he subcontracts.”
    “Nice arrangement. An architect is a smart thing to be around here. If we ever have The Big One, someone’s going to have to put up a lot of new buildings.”
    “The Big One’?”
    “The big earthquake. A whammo 8.8 job. The one everyone thinks is inevitable.”
    Rebecca shuddered. Nothing more sobering than thinking of her house leveled to the ground within weeks after the mortgage approval. Melissa laughed. Rebecca finished unpacking a brown bag.
    “Sometimes when I refer to ‘The Big One’ to women from the East, they think I’m talking about an orgasm,” she said.
    Rebecca laughed.
    “I wish I were,” Melissa said, raising her degree of candor to the next level. “As a single woman, you never know who you’re going to pair off with next.”
    “Have a boyfriend?” Rebecca asked.
    “Would I be concerned about my next orgasm if I did?’ I mean, other than something I can do for myself?” She flexed her index finger.
    Rebecca laughed again. There was something about Melissa, a crude frankness and irreverence that was infectious. Rebecca felt good just laughing with her.
    “How does ice tea sound?” Rebecca asked.
    “I never knew it made a sound.”
    “I mean…” Then Melissa started to laugh and Rebecca joined in a second later.
    “I’m sorry,” Melissa said. “I couldn’t resist.” Still laughing. “Ice tea would be terrific,” she said.
    Rebecca set to making some. Fresh brewed, plus ice, plus some mint, lemon, and sugar. Melissa watched her and admired the finished product when it was served.
    Rebecca sat down at the kitchen table, joined her friend, and sipped.
    “This is delicious,” Melissa said.
    “Thank you.” Rebecca sipped, too. The brew was good.
    “Did you say you were from California?” Rebecca asked a few moments later.
    Melissa smiled.
    “Do I look it?”
    She did. The blond hair. The tan legs. The shorts. Or at least she looked as if she had been there for a while. Rebecca didn’t know what to say.
    “Think hard,” Melissa said, sitting with perfect posture and leaning back in a chair. She folded her hands behind her head.
    Then Rebecca recalled.
    “Oh, of course! You just told me. You drove out in…”
    “…in a non-air-conditioned seven-year-old