“Did you have your lunch with Jill?” she asks.

He tells her about Jill’s news.

“That’s wonderful,” Donna says. “I’m so happy for her.”

And she means it, Frank thinks, even though she and Jill have never as much as met. Frank has tried to bring the subject of Donna up to his daughter, but she’s cut him off every time and changed the subject. She’s loyal to her mother, Frank thinks, and he has to respect loyalty. Donna does, too.

“Hey,” she said when all this came up, “if she were my kid, and my ex wanted her to meet his new squeeze, I’d want her to act the same way.”

Maybe, Frank thought, although Donna is more sophisticated than Patty about matters romantic. But it was nice of her to say it anyway.

“She’s a good kid,” Donna says now. “She’ll do well.”

Yeah, she will, Frank thinks.

“Gotta go,” he says.

“Me, too,” Donna says, eyeing a customer coming out of the dressing room with an outfit that would be a disaster on her. He nods and heads out the door as he hears her say, “Honey, withyour eyes, let me show you…”

5

Rental properties, Frank thinks, is a polite way of sayinghemorrhoids.

Because they are an itching, burning pain in the butt. The only difference is that rental properties make money and hemorrhoids don’t, unless you’re a proctologist, in which case they do.

He thinks this as he drives around Ocean Beach checking on the half dozen condos, houses, and small apartment buildings he looks after as a silent partner in OB Property Management, a limited partnership, which is limited basically to Frank and Ozzie Ransom, whose name appears on all the paperwork and who takes care of the money. Except that after Ozzie counts the money, Frank counts it all over again to make sure that Ozzie isn’t robbing him like a bartender. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Ozzie; it’s just that he doesn’t want to put his “partner” in the way of temptation.