About thirty minutes later, the tape had finished and we had stopped in front of a now familiar 24 hour grocery store. I sighed as I felt a sudden sadness in my heart. Compared to the intense candy colors in the car and the joyous music, the neighborhood looked almost sad. It looked faded, gray. Even the blue sign on the grocery store was weather beaten and heavy-hearted looking.

Ambrose rubbed my bare shoulder and smiled at me encouragingly. "Tell me what happens, okay?" he asked with a concerned tone in his voice.

"I promise," I assured him, and gathered my things.

As I got out of the car, he helped me get a good hold of my purse and then waved at me. He looked back at me as he drove away, still with that concerned face. I waved to him and he waved back again. Then he was gone.

I sighed deeply as I looked at the grocery store, then turned and walked around the corner into Mrs. George's neighborhood once again.

Under her third floor window, I felt a small fear rising up in my belly. My eyes darted to the second floor window where that lady had shouted at me last week. Her window was darkened, but it made me so nervous. Gripping the chocolate brown photo album in my hands, though, I knew I had to begin this hard task once again.

"Mrs...George..." I called tentatively at first. "Mrs. George...I have ph...photos for you!"

No response of course. I breathed and closed my eyes, getting a good hold in my spot on the sidewalk with my feet. The darkness and silence were a weight on my body, making me shiver in the early October air.

"Mrs. George?" I called again, looking up at her dark window. "Mrs. George, can I talk to you? I have these photos for you. Ambrose gave me these photos, and I put them in a new water proof photo album for you! Look! These pictures will never get destroyed by a stupid little...boy again. I promise! You never have to see me again, I just want you to have these! I'm sorry I wrecked your photo album, but please, Mrs. George!" My voice was raised now, desperate. I didn't realize how desperate I sounded until I shouted "please". I swallowed, feeling a deep blush rise to my cheeks.

My breath caught as a bright yellow light flicked on and flooded the third floor window. A shadow appeared behind the beautiful lace curtains, but stayed there unmoving. She was watching me. The blush reddened on my cheeks, my face becoming so warm I felt like it was August.

I raised the photo album above my head so she could see. "Mrs. George, see it?! It's for you! It was really expensive for me, but I just want you to see how much I care about it! I-..." I breathed in, tears coming to my eyes from nowhere. The images of her looking off into the distance, so young and in love came to my field of vision in a memory. But another memory, much more distant, of an older elegant person dressed in a beautiful long black dress, smiling at me gently with soft brown curls framing her wise face, turning the pages of a photo book drifted in and I couldn't hold back my feelings anymore.

"I love you as a friend, Mrs. George!" I shouted. "I've loved you as a friend since I was fourteen! You mean so much to me! When Miss Paula showed me your photos when I was fourteen... I knew I had to be like you! I knew! Please, Mrs. George, I just want to talk to you again! Please believe me! I loved Miss Paula, and I love you, too!"

The shadow didn't move. She just stood there. I was unsure if she was ignoring me or what she was doing.

"Please, Mrs. George. Please!" I called, crying now and feeling the tears dripping down. My make-up was ruining but I didn't care. I suddenly didn't care about anything, but giving this album to Mrs. George.

My breath caught in my throat as the shadow disappeared from the window. The light turned off. A sob rocked my body, rolling through it and my legs buckled. Crouched on the ground, I used the last card I had in my deck.

"GEORGINA MONROE!" I screamed.

Something that sounded like a gunshot echoed through the night and I fell on my backside in fear. I looked up and held my hand to my chest. Mrs. George was staring at me with a neutral expression from her open window. A sad expression, the same one as always.

"Georgina..." I whimpered, unable to contain my tears, choking on them.

"Do not ever use that name," she spat at me. Then with a quick snap, her window was closed and she had disappeared again.

Stunned, I sat there on my behind, staring up at her empty window wide-eyed.

Twenty minutes later, I walked around the corner towards the Jewish 24 hour grocery store in a daze. It had taken me twenty minutes to realize Mrs. George was not coming down to retrieve the photo album, that she had left me sitting in the darkness on the street. But I still wanted to give it to her, so I walked into the glaring light of the grocery store for the third time in three weeks.

Behind the counter, Charlie was staring at the cigarettes above him, snapping gum in his mouth. He startled when he saw me, like he had seen a ghost. I must have looked a fright because he gasped and got up from his stool immediately.

"Oh Miss Ruiz, what happened?" he asked in the same sort of gasp, coming around the counter and taking me by the shoulder.

"You wouldn't...believe," I hiccupped, a tear rolling down my cheek at the glad familiar sight of him.

"Do you want some water or something?" he asked, a sad expression on his face. All these sad expressions. I was sick of them.

A flash of pink from the freezer case down the aisle from us in the corner of my vision distracted me. I sighed, defeated. "A strawberry milk would be lovely," I said unhappily. He nodded solemnly and left me to retrieve one down the aisle.

Looking around, I noticed there was nowhere to sit in this place. I wanted to sit down so much. He was back quickly and I told him of my desire to sit. He understood completely and led me to the stool he had been sitting on behind the counter. I sat gratefully and opened the strawberry milk. Its cool sweetness hit my tongue and I felt something inside of me relax.

He sighed, leaning on the counter in front of me. He looked at me as I drank, a strange small smile on his face.

"Mm? What?" I asked, stopping myself in my drinking momentarily.

"I was just thinking...you and Mrs. George are so alike. She depends on strawberry milk, too. My father says that when she doesn't have her strawberry milk she gets a bit unstable? I'm not saying you're unstable right now, it's just...the strawberry milk calmed you like it supposedly calms her," he said, still having that smile.

Tears bubbled into my eyes and his expression changed to one of worry and sorrow.

"What's wrong? What happened?" he asked with deep concern.

"Oh Charlie, I..." I began, my other hand going up to my neck to touch my pearls, to feel their comfort.

I gasped and my breath escaped my body completely.

"CHARLIE!" I shrieked, jumping to my feet.

"What?!" he cried, alarmed.

"MY PEARLS!" I screamed, dropping to my knees and crawling on the floor, desperately searching. "MY PEARLS ARE GONE!"

A look of panic spread on Charlie's face and he got on his hands and knees, too, searching for them. I couldn't control my tears again and I couldn't see anything, which is not good when you're desperately looking for something. My arms and legs seized up, a painful burning feeling going through my body in fear, sadness, everything...

"My Mama's pearls," I sobbed, unable to do anything. "My Mama's Audrey pearls..."

Charlie crawled up to me and rubbed my back. "We'll find them, I swear! Maybe they're outside? If they're in the store I'll find them, but if they're outside! Come on, we have to search outside!" He pulled me up to me feet and I sobbed as he practically dragged me outside by my hands.

In Miss Cha Cha's car going home from the contest at Club Her Majesty, I was completely drained and numb. My neck was still bare, the familiar weight from my Mama's Audrey pearls not there and making me feel completely off balance. It felt like my body's center was gone, my heart. My face was pressed against the window, my eyes closed.

Ambrose's tear stained face looked through the car's windshield as he directed the car through the late night rain.

"Do you want to stay at my place tonight?" he asked cautiously, his voice gravelly from his own tears earlier at the discovery that I had probably lost my Mama's precious pearls forever.

"Yeah," I whispered, hardly able to speak. "I can't face my Mama. What would she...what will she say to me, Ambrose? Oh my god, my Mama...I can't...I can't believe this is happening...!" I began to cry again, and soon I was rocking back and forth in my sobs, wailing.

Ambrose eased into a curbside spot and turned off the car. His familiar arms folded around me, his head finding the back of my neck and he kissed it.

He just held me for a long time, crying with me, as I sobbed and wailed about how I had lost my Mama's Audrey pearls: the only connection she had left to any kind of happiness she ever had in her life. To the only time I had been happy in my life, too.