Loose Diamonds Read Online Free PDF Page B

first single woman I knew who bought champagne by the case (except for a random movie star friend of my mother’s). In Honey’s case, it was Cristal. And let me say, right from the start, that I don’t actually know what happened to Honey, which leads me to my second theory that I’ve never tested but always believed—that in some way, the U.S.A. could be a perfect place to hide, just vanish, set up another identity and carry on.
    Honey was also the first 23-year-old woman I knew who owned her own house. Big house. Spanish. With a step-down living room and a formal dining room and a sweeping staircase that would do Scarlett O’Hara proud. The rest of us all rented, lived in somebody’s poolhouse, had a roommate or an apartment on Fountain. Honey immediately painted the Spanish tiles in the entryway and on the staircase black, giving it an even more dramatic effect. (I would like to add that she did this herself in short shorts and tennis shoes with an electric sander and a paintbrush, down on her knees, crawling around half the time, which was impressive in itself.)
    The street that she lived on had no name. It was a small cul-de-sac off Benedict with three houses on it, hidden in the front by a Buckminster Fuller domelike structure that blocked any view of what was behind. It probably had a Benedict Canyon address but since it was hidden by the street and you were more than likely to drive right by it without even knowing it was there, we took to calling the street “No Name Street” and named the house that, as well.
    My friend Lisa, who is a casting director and terribly practical, thinks Honey moved to Los Angeles because she had a dream but it was a little difficult to put your finger on exactly what her dream was. I think Honey moved to Los Angeles because she needed a fresh start, a place where she had a little less history and a little more room to carry on. In some way, she needed a place to hide. And “No Name Street” was a perfect place to hide, for a while anyway.
    Honey was gorgeous, in an old-fashioned sultry kind of way, deep-blue eyes, dark lashes, soft, curly dark hair, and her figure was a little round, not the least bit anorexic like the rest of us. She was full of useful (or useless) homilies like “Never sleep on your back. Gravity pulls down, you know.” She said it with such certainty that you were certain she was right. But then what side were you supposed to sleep on? Facedown. That didn’t make any sense either. She was a big proponent of some kind of horse shot (no clue what it really was), dispensed at a clinic in Switzerland, something to do with anti-aging and this was the late ’70s and she was in her 20s.
    I wonder what she looks like now and whether there might not have been some kind of adverse health effect from what must have been a version of a growth (or female) hormone before its time.
    There was a lot of speculation about whether Honey was an heiress because someone had to be paying for the mortgage and the trips to Switzerland, not to mention the champagne. She’d moved from Atlanta, but she was born in a small town in Texas. She once told me that the only oil in the town she was born in was at the gas station on the corner. There was something about the way she said it that made me believe she’d been raised dirt poor. But, like I said, none of us could really tell. And to my knowledge, neither of her parents ever showed up on her doorstep and she never went to visit them.
    My friend Lisa thinks that Honey got by on looks. I don’t really think that’s true as Honey perfected other things, too. She was endlessly amusing, almost as if it was a honed skill, but she also got the joke if there was one in the room. She knew how to flirt, as if it, too, was a practiced trait. She always kept the table set, so to speak, just in case anybody dropped in. And she was game for practically anything. You couldn’t help but feel she had her passport on her at all times just in