“Antoinette Simmons?”
    I pivoted toward that belligerent voice.  Miss Ruby Lee was the only person allowed to use my given name.  A svelte woman with engorged ruby lips mounted upon an anvil-shaped head beamed at me. She squeezed her way toward me with an outstretched hand.
    “Remember me?”
    I quickly grasped and released the woman’s sleek palm.
    “I’m afraid I—”
    “Don’t be embarrassed.  Most people can’t believe it’s me.”
    “Well—”
    “Rainier View.  You were always with those girls.”
    I turned my head toward the church door. 
    “Margeaux.  Tomorrow.  Grace.  Y’all was tight.”
    I studied the woman’s face.  Her skin, the color of maple sugar, was polished to a high lustre, her ruddy hair pulled into a chignon so tight she had slits for eyes.  A keen nose.  Angled cheekbones.  She didn’t resemble anyone I knew.
    “One of them was my cousin.”
    My left eye twitched, I shifted a red stiletto. The woman grabbed my arm.
    “Luiza,” she said.
    “Urgh—”  Though not a day passed that I didn’t think about my dead friend, it was surreal to hear her name ease from that obscene mouth.  I grimaced, then resting bitch face. 
    “Nips and tucks, sugar,” the woman whinnied.  “Diet and exercise.  Isn’t that what they all say? None of us looks like we did back then, thank God.  I favor Luiza more now.”  She scrutinized my ensemble, hesitated on the shoes.     
     “You’ve come a long way baby.  Done quite well for yourself, I hear.”
    I jiggled my legs, eyed the crowd.  The door was a few yards away.  I swiped a hand against my leather pants as if wiping it clean.
    “’Course, Luiza never got a chance to make her mark—”
    I drooped, then straightened.  “I’m sorry—If you’ll just excuse me—”
    “This isn’t a good time to talk about her, is it?”  The woman pressed a business card into my hand.  “I’ll call you and we can meet someplace more private. I want you to tell me about the fire.”
    I grunted and backed into the crowd.  The small square of glossy paper nearly singed my fingers as I willed shaky legs to carry me out of the throng, away from the church, and into the crisp evening air where I huffed as if stricken with an asthma attack.  I squinted through tears at the elegant script.  My life as I knew it was over.