It was nice being with someone who wasn't directly involved in her business, or any aspect of show business. She was tired of actors, singers, musicians, and all the crazy people she dealt with every day. She had gone out with several of them, and it always ended as it had with Jake, or sometimes worse. They were narcissists, drug addicts, lunatics, or just generally badly behaved people who wanted to take advantage of her in some way. From what she had seen, they had no conscience, no morality, and they did whatever felt good to them at the time. She wanted something better than that in her life. Even at nineteen, she was far more stable than they were. She didn't do drugs and never had, had never cheated on anyone, didn't lie, wasn't obsessed with herself, and was a decent, moral, honest person. She wanted the same from someone else. She and Tom had talked a lot about her career in the past few days and where she wanted to go with it. She didn't want to abandon it, but wanted to take charge of it herself. It was unlikely her mother would ever let that happen. Melanie had said to Tom that she was tired of being run, controlled, used, and pushed around by everyone else. He was impressed by how logical, rational, and sane she was.

“I've got to go back to Berkeley and move out of my apartment,” Tom said, in answer to her question. “It sounds like it may be a while before I can do that. At least the Golden Gate and Richmond Bridges have to reopen, so I can get over to the East Bay. Then I'll go back to Pasadena after that. I was going to stick around for the summer. I have a job here in the fall, but everything could change now, depending on how soon businesses can reopen. I may look for something else down there.” Like her, he was practical, had a level head, and kept a clear view of his goals. He was twenty-two years old, wanted to work for a few years, and then go to business school, maybe at UCLA. “What about you? What have you got on your agenda for the next few weeks?” They hadn't talked about it in any detail before. He knew she was leaving on tour in July, after a concert in Las Vegas. She had told him how much she hated it there, but it was an important venue for her, and the tour was going to be huge. After that, she was planning to be back in L.A. in September after the tour. But he had no idea what she had planned through June. It was still only May.

“I have a recording session next week for a new CD. We're doing some of the material I'll be using on the tour. It's a good warm-up for me. Other than that, I'm pretty free till my L.A. concert in June right before I leave. Do you think you'll be back in Pasadena by then?” She gave him the date, and looked hopeful. He smiled, listening to her. Getting to know her had been wonderful, seeing her again would be like a dream. He couldn't help thinking that she would forget him as soon as she got back to L.A. “I'd love you to come to the L.A. concert as my guest. It gets pretty crazy when I'm working, but it might be fun for you. You can bring a couple of friends if you want.”

“My sister would go nuts,” he said, smiling at her. “She'll be home in June too.”

“Why don't you bring her,” Melanie said, and then her voice dropped down to a whisper. “I hope you call me when you get back.”

“Will you take my call?” he asked, looking worried. Once out of the Presidio and back to her real life, she was a major star. What could she possibly want with him? He was just a fledgling engineer and no one on her radar screen. But she seemed to like being with him, as much as he enjoyed being with her.

“Of course I will,” she reassured him. “I hope you call me.” She jotted down her cell phone number for him. Cell phones were not operating in the San Francisco area yet, and wouldn't be for a while. Computer and telephone service hadn't been restored either. There was some talk that they would be up and running in another week.

They walked back to the hospital again then, and he teased her as they wandered in. “I guess you won't be going to nursing school for a while, if you're going on tour.”

“Yeah, right. Not in this lifetime.” She had introduced Tom to her mother the day before, and Janet hadn't been impressed. As far as she was concerned, he was just a kid, and his engineering degree meant nothing to her. She wanted Melanie to go out with producers, directors, lead singers, and well-known actors, anyone who would catch the eye of the press or in some way help her career. Whatever his other failings, Jake had been in those leagues, as a lure for the press. Tom never would be. And his boring, wholesome, well-educated Pasadena family was of no interest to Janet whatsoever. She wasn't worried about it, she figured Melanie would forget him as soon as they left San Francisco, and she wouldn't see him again. She had no idea about their plans to meet up again in L.A.

Melanie worked with Maggie all day and well into the evening. They had a pizza together that Tom brought them that night from the mess hall. The food had actually remained surprisingly good, thanks to a continual supply of fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables that were flown in by helicopter, and the creative skills of the chefs. Everett joined them after his final AA meeting, and said he had turned it over to a new secretary, a woman whose house in the Marina had been destroyed, and she was planning to stay at the shelter in the Presidio for several months. The meeting had grown remarkably just in the past few days, and had been a source of immense support to him. He thanked Maggie again for encouraging him to do it. She assured him gracefully that he would have done it anyway. And they continued to sit and talk, after the young people left for a last stroll on their final night together. This was a time they would all long remember, some of them in poignant ways.

“I hate to go back to L.A. tomorrow,” Everett confessed, after Tom and Melanie had left. They had promised to come back and say goodnight. The L.A. contingent were leaving early the next morning, and Melanie wouldn't be back to work again. “Are you going to be okay here?” He looked worried about her. She was full of fire and brimming with energy, but there was also something vulnerable about her that he had come to love.

“Of course I will. Don't be silly. I've been in much worse places than this. My own neighborhood, for instance.” She laughed, and he smiled at her.

“So have I. But it was nice being here with you, Maggie.”

“Sister Maggie to you,” she reminded him, and then chuckled. There was something between them that worried her at times. He had started treating her like a woman, not just a nun. He was protective of her, and she reminded him that nuns weren't ordinary women, they were under God's protection. “My Maker is my husband,” she said, quoting the Bible. “He takes good care of me. I'll be fine here. You make sure you'll be fine in L.A. too.” She was still hoping he would go to Montana to find his son one of these days, although she knew he wasn't ready to do it. But they had spoken of it a couple of times, and she encouraged him to think about it.

“I'm going to be busy editing all the shots I took here. My editor is going to go crazy.” He smiled at her, anxious to see the shots he had taken of her the night of the earthquake and since. “I'll send you copies of the ones I took of you.”

“I'd like that.” She smiled. It had been a remarkable time for all of them, tragic for some, and life-altering in good ways for others. She had said as much to Melanie that afternoon. She was hoping that at some point Melanie would get involved in volunteer work. She was so good at that kind of thing and had comforted so many people with so much gentleness and grace. “She'd make a great nun,” Maggie commented to Everett, and he guffawed.

“Stop recruiting. Now that's one girl who's never going to enlist. Her mother would kill her.” Everett had met Janet once, with Melanie, and hated her on sight. He thought she was loud, overbearing, pushy, pretentious, and rude. She treated Melanie like a five-yearold, while exploiting her daughter's success to the hilt.

“I suggested that she look up some kind of Catholic mission in L.A. She could do some wonderful work with the homeless. She told me she'd love to stop everything she's doing one day, and go away for six months, to work with poor people in a foreign country. Stranger things have happened. It might do her a lot of good. That's a crazy world she works in. She might need a break from it someday.”

“She might, but I don't think that's going to happen, with a mother like hers. Not while she's selling platinum records and winning Grammys. It may be a while before she can do something like that. If she ever does.”

“You never know,” Maggie said. She had given Melanie the name of a priest in L.A. who did wonderful work with people on the streets, and went to Mexico for several months every year, to help there.

“And what about you?” Everett asked her. “What are you going to do now? Go back to the Tenderloin as soon as you can?” He hated her neighborhood. It was so dangerous for her, whether she acknowledged it or not.

“I think I'll stay here for a while. The other nuns are going to stay too, and a few of the priests. A lot of people living here now have nowhere else to go. They're going to keep the shelters running at the Presidio for at least six months. I'll work at the field hospital, but I'll go home to check on things from time to time. There's probably more for me to do here. I can use my nursing skills.” And she had used them well.

“When am I going to see you again, Maggie?” He looked worried about it. He had loved seeing her every day, and he could already feel her slipping out of his life, possibly for good.

“I don't know,” she admitted, looking sad for a minute herself, and then she smiled, remembering something she had meant to tell him for days. “You know, Everett, you remind me of a movie I saw when I was a kid. It was already an old movie then, with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr. A nun and a marine get stranded on a desert island. They almost fall in love, but not quite. Or at least they're sensible enough not to let it happen, and they become friends. He behaves very badly at first and shocks her. He drinks a lot, and I think she hides his booze. She reforms him somewhat, and he takes very good care of her, and she of him. They were hiding from the Japanese while they were on the island. It was during World War II. And in the end, they get rescued. He goes back to the Marines and she to the convent. It was called Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, and it was a very sweet film. I loved it. Deborah Kerr made a great nun.”