o way, Delia thinks. I can't seriously be standing face to face with Carol Burnett.
The comedienne has opened the stage door wide and is grinning at her in that way only Carol Burnett can.
                "Um," Delia stammers, "I'm looking for my Rodrigo. My friend. Rodrigo. He's an usher. Have you - I mean - can I ...?"
                A hurried woman carrying a clipboard and sporting a backstage pass lurches between them and practically spits the words, "Who are you?"
                Delia considers confessing that she's just a working girl from Orange County who borrowed a designer dress so she could crash the film festival and, with any luck, bump into dreamy screen star Ed Burns, bewitch him over empanadas at Cafe Buenos Aires' VIP after-party, ravage him discreetly in the restaurant's candlelit courtyard and then, eventually, marry him at a small, tasteful ceremony in the Italian countryside.
              But she opts for the shorter version: "No one."
              "No entrance through this door," the woman snaps and, as the box office has long been sold out, the evening Delia so giddily anticipated ends with a cranium-rattling slam.
              She shuffles dejectedly through the Arlington's now-empty arcade, and looks up at the glowing marquee.
              "A Salute to Santa Barbara's Own," she reads. "Guess I don't qualify."
              Clomping the half mile back to the parking lot behind the art gallery, she wonders if she made the right decision by moving here, or if it was a mistake to fall in love with a city that isn't designed to welcome visitors for more than a two-night minimum.
              Even after four months, she still feels more like an outsider, a virtually invisible witness to the seductions of this enchanting city, than an integral part of it.
              It was State Street's quaint and picturesque landscape that lured her here after the death of her beloved dad, the famous travel photographer Roland Flude. The gurgling fountains and white stucco façades reminded her of the charming European villages they visited together in her childhood.
              But the scenery feels impenetrable now, the shops too pricey and the pretty, second-story offices barred to all but a secret coven of faceless aristocrats. They are the same elite insiders, she figures, who buy rather than borrow downtown's haute couture, and enjoy unlimited access to the swankiest soirees.
              Sure, skulking around on the city's fringe allows Delia to roll her eyes and snicker openly at its hokey parades, insulated politics and solipsistic, small-town newspaper columnists. And she loves that, she truly does.
              But what would it take, she wonders, to actually belong here? What would it feel like to be welcomed among Santa Barbara's inhabitants-of-import, rising above the tourist-trampled sidewalks and blissing out on one of those wrought-iron, bougainvillea-covered balconies that hover over her head even now, as she walks.
              "Ooof!" she hears herself say as she trips and sprawls face-down on the pink concrete. Her hand lands on the toe of someone's weathered black sneaker.
              She looks up to see the kind, bearded face of street musician Jason P. Jason, who flashes her the friendliest smile she's seen north of La Habra. He lifts one Bunyanesque hand off his acoustic guitar long enough to reach down and help her up.
              "Whoa, slow down, little lady," he says, in his deep, soulful voice. "You'll get there soon enough."
              The words ring in her ears on the drive home, competing with the buzz of her sky-blue Honda Metropolitan scooter, which she rides because she can't afford a car and can't pedal a bicycle in a pencil skirt.
              Delia takes a detour past the Santa Barbara Mission, simply because she loves how its spectacular pink façade reacts to the setting sun, and then points her handlebars east. She feels a sharp chill on her bare legs and neck as she sails down the serene, winding streets deep into the soul of Montecito, where she rents an itty bitty guest house at the back of a grand and showy estate.
              Delia pulls up to the property's herculean iron gates and punches the entry code into the security keypad, her mind already unwrapping a Hungry Man dinner and popping it in the microwave.
              The gate doesn't budge. She assumes her fingers, numb from the ride, fumbled the buttons. She tries again.
              Nothing happens.
              Delia is cold. She is hungry. She is locked out on the street for the second time today. And now she's pissed.