Stormy claps her hands together. “Then you must bring him by. Give me advance notice, though, so I look my absolute best. Who else have you got waiting in the wings?”

I laugh. “No one! I told you, I have a boyfriend.”

“Hmm.” That’s all she says, just “hmm.” Then, “I have a grandson who could be about your age. He’s still in high school, anyhow. Maybe I’ll tell him to come by and see you. It’s good for a girl to have options.” I wonder what a grandson of Stormy’s might be like—probably a real player, just like Stormy. I open my mouth to say no thank you, but she waves me off with a shh. “When we’re done with my scrapbook, I’m going to transcribe my memoirs to you, and you’ll type them up for me on the computer. I’m thinking of calling it The Eye of the Storm. Or Stormy Weather.” Stormy starts to hum. “Stormy weather,” she sings. “Since my man and I ain’t together . . . keeps rainin’ all the time. . . .” She stops short. “We should have a cabaret night! Picture it, Lara Jean. You in a tuxedo. Me in a slinky red dress draped over the piano. It’ll give Mr. Morales a heart attack.”

I giggle. “Let’s not give him a heart attack. Maybe just a tremor.”

She shrugs and goes on singing, adding a shimmy to her hips. “Stormy weather . . .”

She’ll go off on a singing jag if I don’t redirect her. “Stormy, tell me about where you were when John F. Kennedy died.”

“It was a Friday. I was baking a pineapple upside-down cake for my bridge club. I put it in the oven and then I saw the news and I forgot all about the cake and nearly burned the house down. We had to have the kitchen repainted because of all the soot.” She fusses with her hair. “He was a saint, that man. A prince. If I’d met him in my heyday, we really could’ve had some fun. You know, I flirted with a Kennedy once at an airport. He sidled up to me at the bar and bought me a very dry gin martini. Airports used to be so very much more glamorous. People got dressed up to travel. Young people on airplanes these days, they wear those horrible sheepskin boots and pajama pants and it’s an eyesore. I wouldn’t go out for the mail dressed like that.”

“Which Kennedy?” I ask.

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know. He had the Kennedy chin, anyway.”

I bite my lip to keep from smiling. Stormy and her escapades. “Can I have your pineapple upside-down cake recipe?”

“Sure, darling. It’s just yellow box cake with Del Monte pineapple and brown sugar and a maraschino cherry on top. Just make sure you get the rings and not the chunks.”

This cake sounds horrible. I try to nod in a diplomatic way, but Stormy is onto me. Crossly she says, “Do you think I had time to sit around baking cakes from scratch like some boring old housewife?”

“You could never be boring,” I say on cue, because it’s true and because I know it’s what she wants to hear.

“You could do with a little less baking and a little more living life.” She’s being prickly, and she’s never prickly with me. “Youth is truly wasted on the young.” She frowns. “My legs ache. Get me some Tylenol PM, would you?”

I leap up, eager to be in her good graces again. “Where do you keep it?”

“In the kitchen drawer by the sink.”

I rummage around, but I don’t see it. Just batteries, talcum powder, a stack of McDonald’s napkins, sugar packets, a black banana. Covertly, I throw the banana in the trash. “Stormy, I don’t see your Tylenol PM in here. Is there anywhere else it could be?”

“Forget it,” she snaps, coming up behind me and pushing me to the side. “I’ll find it myself.”

“Do you want me to put on some tea?” Stormy is old; that’s why she’s acting this way. She doesn’t mean to be harsh. I know she doesn’t mean it.

“Tea is for old ladies. I want a cocktail.”

“Coming right up,” I say.

13

MY SCRAPBOOKING TO THE OLDIES class has officially begun. I won’t deny that I’m disappointed with the turnout. So far it’s just Stormy, Alicia Ito, who is sprightly and put-together—short, buffed nails, pixie cut—and wily Mr. Morales, who I think has a crush on Stormy. Or Alicia. It’s hard to know definitively, because he flirts with everyone, but they both have full pages in the scrapbook he’s working on. He’s decided to title it “The Good Old Days.” He’s decorated Stormy’s page with music notes and piano keys and a picture of the two of them dancing on Disco Night last year. Alicia’s page he’s still working on, but his focal point is a picture of her sitting on a bench in the courtyard, gazing off into space, and he’s affixed some flower stickers around it. Very romantic.

I haven’t got much of a budget, so I’ve brought my own supplies. I’ve also instructed the three of them to collect scraps from magazines and other little bobbles and buttons. Stormy’s a pack rat like me, so she has all kinds of treasures. Lace from her kids’ christening gowns, a matchbook from the motel where she met her husband (“Don’t ask,” she said), old ticket stubs to a cabaret she went to in Paris. (I piped up, “In 1920s Paris? Did you ever meet Hemingway?” and she cut me with her eyes and said she obviously wasn’t that old and I needed a history lesson.) Alicia’s style is more minimalist and clean. With my black felt tip calligraphy pen, she writes descriptions in Japanese underneath each picture.