One Door From Heaven

advanced age, but before I had a chance, she won by cheating."
        "Aunt Gen always cheats," Micky confirmed.
        "Good thing we weren't playing Russian roulette," Leilani said. "My brains would be all over the kitchen."
        "I don't cheat." Gen's sly look was worthy of a Mafia accountant testifying before a congressional committee. "I just employ advanced and complex techniques."
        "When you notice those pina coladas are garnished with live, poisonous centipedes," Micky warned, "maybe you'll realize your palm-shaded terrace isn't in Heaven."
        Aunt Gen used a paper napkin to blot her brow. "Don't flatter yourself that I'm sweating with guilt. It's the heat."
        Leilani said, "This is great potato salad, Mrs. D."
        "Thank you. Are you sure your mother wouldn't like to join us?"
        "No. She's wasted on crack cocaine and hallucinogenic mushrooms. The only way old Sinsemilla could get here is crawl, and if she tried to eat anything in her condition, she'd just puke it up."
        Geneva frowned at Micky, and Micky shrugged. She didn't know whether these tales of Sinsemilla's debauchery were truth or fantasy, although she suspected wild exaggeration. Tough talk and wisecracks
        could be a cover for low self esteem. From childhood at least through adolescence, Micky herself had been Familiar with that strategy.
        "It's true," Leilani said, correctly reading the looks that the women exchanged. "We've only lived beside you three days. Give old Sinsemilla a little time, and you'll see."
        "Drugs do terrible damage," Aunt Gen said with sudden solemnity. "I was in love with this man in Chicago once…" "Aunt Gen," Micky cautioned.
        Sadness found a surprisingly easy purchase in Geneva's smooth, fair, freckled face. "He was so handsome, so sensitive-"
        Sighing, Micky got up to retrieve a second beer from the refrigerator.
        "_but he was on the needle," Geneva said. "Heroin. A loser in everyone's eyes but mine. I just knew he could be redeemed."
        "That's monumentally romantic, Mrs. D, but as my mother's proved with numerous doper boyfriends, it always ends badly with junkies."
        "Not in this case," said Geneva. "I saved him." "You did? How?"
        "Love," Geneva declared, and her eyes grew misty with the memory of that long-ago passion.
        Popping open a Budweiser, Micky returned to her chair. "Aunt Gen, this sensitive junkie from Chicago… wasn't he Frank Sinatra?"
        "Seriously?" Leilani's eyes widened. Her hand paused with a forkful of pasta halfway between plate and mouth. "The dead singer?"
        "He wasn't dead then," Geneva assured the girl. "He hadn't even begun to lose his hair yet."
        "The compassionate young woman who saved him from the needle," Micky pressed, "was she you, Aunt Gen… or was she Kim Novak?"
        Geneva's face puckered in puzzlement. "I was attractive in my day, but I was never in Kim Novak's league."
        "Aunt Gen, you're thinking of The Man with the Golden Arm. Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak. It hit theaters sometime in the 1950s." Geneva's puzzlement dissolved into a smile. "You're absolutely right, dear. I never had a romantic relationship with Sinatra, though if he'd ever come around, I'm not sure I could have resisted him."
        Returning the untouched forkful of pasta salad to her plate, Leilani looked to Micky for an explanation.
        Enjoying the girl's perplexity, Micky shrugged. "I'm not sure I could have resisted him, either."
        "Oh, for goodness' sake, stop teasing the child," Geneva said. "You'll have to forgive me, Leilani. I've had these memory problems now and then, ever since I was shot in the head. A few wires got scrambled up here"-she tapped her right temple-"and sometimes old movies seem as real to me as my own past."
        "Could I have more lemonade?" Leilani asked.
        "Of course, dear." Geneva poured from a glass pitcher that dripped icy condensation.
        Micky watched their guest take a long drink. "Don't try to fool me, mutant girl. You're not so cool that you can roll with that one."
        Putting down the lemonade, Leilani relented: "Oh, all right. I'll bite. When were you shot in the head, Mrs. D?"
        "This July third, just passed, made eighteen years."
        "Aunt Gen and Uncle Vernon owned a little corner grocery," Micky explained, "which is like being targets in a shooting gallery if it's on the