This is an excerpt from my novel, The Pleasure Palace , a sometimes-bittersweet romantic comedy set in the fictional town of Santa Verde, California. The town is quite transparently inspired by Santa Cruz, where I have lived for over forty years. This book is about the way love serves as a mirror which reveals people in all their beauty, awkwardness, silliness, and courage. I've chosen characters whom I hope reflect that: people in friendships, new relationships, long-term partnerships, marriages, and those still grieving a loss. One of the main characters, Tansy Wilder, is a writer working on a memoir about her childhood. Chapters from her book precede each of The Pleasure Palace 's main sections. Tansy, along with her sister, Rondi, grew up in a (fictional) part of Northern California called the Julia Bell Wilderness, ten miles away from Porter, the nearest town. Their father, Rick, has been a single parent since Tansy and Rondi were preschoolers; their mother, Annie, die