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windup toy, or dominoes falling, unstoppable.
    At no point do I stop and ask Alice anything. I just put on my apron. There doesn't seem to be anything I can say to stop her. I don't know what I would say. So, within a few minutes of first seeing the spectacle, I am hanging palm fronds from streamers to the sound Die a Little -- 23 --
    of ukulele music, listening to Alice make phone call after phone call, her voice pressed and hot.
    Somehow, somehow--for Alice alone could make something like this work--it all comes together, and by the time my brother comes home, wide-eyed and weary, Alice's whirring energy melds seamlessly with the larger excitement of a group of neighbors and a handful of fellow teachers and my godparents, all swept up in Alice's frenzy and heads bobbing under pulsing tiki lights and the purple and red luminescence of dozens of bright lanterns.
    And all of them, everyone she invites, show up. And they all eat and they dance and they toast Bill as if they had actually started that day thinking of what they might say about his hard work and strong character. And Bill keeps looking around dazedly, not knowing what to say, biting his lower lip and spinning slightly, plate sagging in his hand, dripping pineapple glaze on the patio, too stunned to lift his wrist and steady himself.
    As Alice drags out a tub of firecrackers to the delight of the crowd, I sidle up beside him. He looks down at me, putting a drowsy arm around my shoulder, his finger tickling my ear. We stand there, without saying anything, watching Alice dart around like a firefly. It seems like we are both thinking the same thing. Or at least, what I am thinking in full, he is wondering in part. How long can this go on? This fever pitch, this spinning, quaking thing before us. Forever or a little less?
    And then, so soon after it might have been the following week...
    "But, Bill, you're telling me Alice is qualified to teach high school?"
    "She is. I mean, she's qualified to teach home economics. She studied it. At Van Nuys Community College." He's followed me into my car after lunch, sits down next to me on the bench seat.
    "Well, she'd have to get her teaching certificate." I shrug. "It takes months of coursework and student teaching." I wonder if Bill's sudden urgency has anything to do with the surprise party.
    "No, no. She has her teaching certificate. She got it to teach in Lomita about four years ago. But then she finally got in the seamstresses' union and started working for the studios instead."
    "Really? Well, that's great, Bill," I say, meaning it, really meaning it. Alice content means Bill content, after all.
    And anyone could see Alice was desperate to channel her energy into a new project. "Long afternoons," she'd say to me, eyes a little too bright, neck a little too straight, teeth a little on edge, "the afternoons, Lora, are endless."
    "So do you think you could talk to Don Evans? Maybe offer to bring her in so he could meet her? I'm sure if they met her, they'd see she'd be a great addition. I'm sure she'd charm the pants off them.
    And the kids would love her."
    Die a Little -- 24 --
    "But I'm not sure what I say means much. For hiring, especially.
    I'm not senior faculty."
    "But you'll try?" He looks down at me, squeezing my fingers gently.
    "She's my sister now, isn't she?" I smile.
    As it happens, it is all too easy. Principal Evans is eager to make a quick hire, with Miss Lincoln ready to leave and begin planning her wedding. It seems like the whole process unfolds effortlessly, with Alice coming for an interview and receiving a modest offer two days later, contingent on her submitting appropriate credentials. Within three weeks, she will be in the classroom.
    "Tell me everything about these girls, Lora," she says, the table in front of her papered with open books (Mrs. Lovell's First Book of Sewing, Teaching Domestic Arts to the Young, The National Association of Home Economics Teachers Presents a Guide for Lesson Plans), pads