Talented dancer and journalist Lydia falls in and out of love with hunky, businessman Mark, leading to a tumultuous relationship filled with passion and addiction. Their story winds through attention grabbing achievement, fabulous profits, spirit dance, a whirlwind of inebriation, impoverishment, pregnancy, loss of life, desertion, sobriety, Broadway success, a dramatic cliffhanger and a spiritual resolution.

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Lydia’s mother picked her up from school in her dad’s black Mercedes. Sarah usually drove her turquoise Thunderbird convertible. All the mothers looked away from Lidia and her mother. Lidia noticed several girls looking at her mother.

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“Are we getting a divorce?” Lidia asked her. She could smell the Scotch on her mother’s breath. She hated that smell. That smell meant crazy mother time.

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“Hell no,” her mother said. “Your dad’s just on a little business trip. He’ll be back.”

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When Lidia noticed me, I was hanging from the grandstand, shirtless, a beer cup clenched in my teeth. She looked up at me. “You need help?”

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“Oh, I’m fine,” I started to say as the beer cup slipped from my teeth. She blocked it with her red pom-pom, beer drops bouncing off the ground as she backed away.

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Lidia looked up at me and laughed. Then she flipped me the finger over her pompom just as the team started out of the tunnel. I watched her dance and cheer on to the field. At one point she looked back at me hanging from the stands and laughed again.

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The first time I ran into her on campus, she came around the corner of the Hearst Building, as I was coming toward her. We both stopped about ten feet apart. She dropped her books and did a little shimmy move, shoulders up and down, hips up and down, tiptoeing away and then toward me, her beautiful smile. Then she ran at me and jumped into my arms. I fell to my knees catching her, laughing hard.

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Sirens were suddenly in the parking lot. Search lights hit us. Lidia and I rolled off the lounge chairs and crawled, military style, to the cabana. The door was stuck, but I jerked it, and it came off the hinges and landed on the deck. We were laughing as we propped up the door to cover our position. The chlorine and mold smell overwhelmed our marijuana odor.

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Flashlights were darting around the pool and through the cracks in the cabana walls. We heard the two cops just outside the cabana. One hit the side of the cabana with a nightstick, and it collapsed. We crawled out the back of the rubble and slid into the pool. The police were searching through the mess. One turned toward the pool, and we ducked under the water. We held our breath for what seemed like ten minutes. When we popped up, the police were sitting in the rusted lounge chairs, smoking cigarettes, waiting for us.