Kitabı oku: «Taking Back Mary Ellen Black», sayfa 2

As polka music filled the store, vibrating around the scent of raw pork and garlic, I reminded myself of that. “Daddy, when is Jesus coming back?” I pronounced it the correct way.

“Jesus?” Daddy asked, in the biblical way. With a sigh, I swallowed a Spanish lesson. If after years of working with Jesus, Daddy hadn’t learned, I wasn’t going to be able to teach him. Jesus had inspired other additions to the store, though. Chorizo and farmer’s cheese and fresh tortillas. Daddy’s store met the needs of a blending neighborhood, and his business thrived. Probably even when I wasn’t around for the neighborhood to wallow in my humiliation. Too bad my presence hadn’t attracted this kind of business to the VFW. I might have made more than a handful of quarters a night.

“His cousin Enrico just stopped by. I was talking to him out back.” And here I’d thought he’d just been sneaking a smoke. “Jesus should be back in three days.”

Sounded a lot like the homily I’d just heard the Sunday before. Going to mass was a requirement when living at home. To add to my humiliation, the girls had told Mom how rarely we’d gone before, only on Easter and Christmas. But the restaurant had been closed on Sundays, and between sleeping late and watching football, it was the only time that Eddie had actually been with his family. My time would have been better spent lighting candles to secure my future, as Grandma said. Figuring that at her age the end was near, she lit a lot of candles. Good thing Saint Adalbert’s didn’t have a sprinkler system, just a leaky roof.

“Don’t worry, Mary Ellen.”

I pulled myself from my maudlin thoughts. “What?”

“Don’t worry. As you can see, business is good. I’ll have enough work for you and Jesus.” Knowing Jesus worked circles around me, I doubted it. And I didn’t want it. The apron, the false sympathy of neighbors, the polka music, the raw meat and garlic smell of fresh kielbasa. I enjoyed the VFW more. Too bad Florence was coming back this weekend.

“Dad…” I was tempted. A job I disliked was better than no job at all.

“It’s fine, Mary Ellen. You’ll earn enough money here for your girls’ clothes and lessons and stuff. You don’t need any more than that.”

“What?”

“You’ve got a roof over your heads—”

As all the neighbors had chortled, little Mary Ellen Black was living with her parents. Yeah, it was better than a box. But it wasn’t my home. Heck, it wasn’t even Dad’s home, not when he had to smoke and drink in the garage. “I want my own house, Dad.”

“You said you couldn’t afford it, honey.”

“Not that house.” That house had never been mine, either. It had been Eddie’s. I had decorated it. I had filled it with the smells of home cooking and fresh potpourri, but it hadn’t been my dream house. Like the restaurant, that new multilevel house in the suburbs had been Eddie’s dream. I’d always preferred the character of older houses. But would I ever be able to afford one?

“Then what? You want another house?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe I didn’t need a house; a condo, an apartment, anything away from the West Side and my mother.

“Mary Ellen…” The bell dinged above the door, announcing the arrival of another customer. And so my employment from hell continued.

I hadn’t told Dad or Mom yet, but I intended the day before Jesus came back to be my last. I was passing over working at the butcher shop in favor of something, anything else. Not that I’d figured out my dreams…

They say a girl can dream? Not this girl. I can bake cookies, drive daughters to gymnastics and Girl Scouts and decorate a house like nobody else. Now that I had current experience waiting tables and providing customer service in a shop, I’d find another job. I had an interview down at Charlie’s Tavern, and if they didn’t hire me, I could always make Eddie give me back my old job at the restaurant. That was the least support he could provide; I’d certainly make better tips than at the VFW.

Mrs. Klansky returned for more pork chops and to kick me again. She brought photos of Natalie’s six-bedroom contemporary to flaunt in my face. The stark white color scheme inspired nothing in me but a need to grab up a paintbrush.

“So she doesn’t have time to decorate, huh?” I asked as I wrapped the chops, purposely picking out the fattiest ones.

“Well, she’s really busy…” Mrs. Klansky peered at her own photos.

“Can’t afford a decorator then?” What about a pool boy?

Dad snorted beside me, but amusement, not reproach, glittered in his green eyes. He might like the extra sales, but he didn’t like people kicking his little girl.

“All that white is the thing, you know,” she argued, all bluster.

I snorted now. “Ten years ago, maybe.”

“Well, at least she has a—” She stopped herself, not out of sensitivity, but because Dad had lifted his cleaver and sliced neatly through a rack of a lamb. He was the best butcher in town.

“I’m sure she’s much too busy to worry about a house, anyhow,” I said in a sweet tone. The same one she’d used when telling me that I’d surely find another husband, someday… Like I wanted another husband! Not!

I wanted a job, where people didn’t come in for raw meat with a side of gossip. After I rung up her purchase and she’d left, Dad patted my shoulder with a bloodstained hand. Although the health department now required them, Dad hated plastic gloves and refused to wear them. And as I could attest, the blood seemed to seep through them, anyhow.

“Why don’t you knock off early? Things are slowing down, and your mother mentioned this morning that she could use an extra for her weekly bridge game.”

More old ladies wallowing in gossip? I shuddered.

He laughed. “Mrs. Klansky won’t be there. And they really do seem to have fun.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had fun on my own. I had fun with my children. Although Amber spent most of her time in a book, she could be relied on for an occasion amusing comment, and little Shelby was a regular comedienne. But I needed my children to rely on me, not me on them. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

And that night I would tell both my parents that I wasn’t coming back to the butcher shop to work. After what I’d seen in my few weeks of employment, I probably wasn’t coming back to purchase anything from it any time soon, either.

The bell dinged again. “Take care of this last person and take off. I’m slipping out back a minute…”

“To check your oil,” I finished for him as he reached for his cigarettes.

“Don’t tell your—”

“Mother,” I finished again with a giggle.

“You two still do that,” said a familiar voice.

Any fleeting amusement fled. I could handle playing bridge with Mrs. Klansky better than I could handle this. Having my oldest, closest friend from school see me down and out. Jenna O’Brien. Jenna wouldn’t fantasize about Eddie’s dick falling off if he’d cheated on her. She would have grabbed up Daddy’s meat cleaver and taken care of that problem herself. Despite being petite and gorgeous, Jenna had balls and if her husband had cheated on her, she’d have his in a glass jar to warn anyone else from making the same mistake. God, I’d missed her.

“Still do what?” I asked like it hadn’t been nearly eleven years since I’d talked to her last…shortly after my wedding, in which she’d been my maid of honor, when she’d helped me into my dress and told me point blank that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Was she back in my life now to say I told you so? Should I have listened to her? Should I have had her help me back out of that hypocritical white dress and out of the church? She’d offered, and I’d turned her down.

“That thing you and your dad always do…” I caught the wistfulness in her voice. Jenna’s dad had died when she was eight.

I shrugged, still not meeting her eyes. “Yeah, some things never change. Guess it’s just a bad habit.”

“Heard you kicked your other bad habit.” Like on my wedding day, she was offering me the gracious way out.

Waddling down the aisle five months pregnant, I’d displayed little grace then. Why start now? And since I’d chosen Eddie over her, Jenna deserved to gloat. “Kicked him? I wish I had. But hell, no, I packed his bags so he could kick me aside for a twenty-year-old cocktail waitress. I actually packed his bags for him.”

And then, bracing myself for pity or triumph, I met her gaze. I didn’t have to guess what was in her big brown eyes, the amusement bubbled out with her laughter. “You packed his bags?”

“I thought he was going on a golf trip. Never saw it coming.”

She shook her head, brown curls dancing around her shoulders. “You saw it coming on your wedding day. You just didn’t want to face it.”

“So you’ve come to say I told ya so?” I got up the nerve to ask.

A trace of bitterness passed through her dark eyes. I’d hurt her all those years ago, and she hadn’t deserved it for just being a friend. She sighed. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Fun?” There was that word again.

“Naw, that’s not why I came.”

Enviously I eyed her tiny figure. Obviously she hadn’t come for the fatty pork chops. “So why did you come?”

“I was playing bridge at your house—”

“You were?” I had imagined a group of women closer to Grandma’s age.

She sighed. “Yeah, Mom suckered me in, and I had a minute. Anyway they sent me to get you.” No doubt she wouldn’t have come for me on her own. Unlike the other old neighbors who had wanted to rub my nose in my misfortune, Jenna hadn’t even cared that much…not after all these years. “We could use another person or two.”

“For bridge?”

She glanced toward the back door and lowered her voice. “For poker. You in? I heard you could use the money.”

Following suit, I lowered my voice. “They play for money?”

She laughed. “Hell, yes!”

Damn. Did I know Mom and Grandma at all? Apparently not. “Well…”

“Or would you rather stay here for all the neighbors to wallow in your misery?”

“You know about that?”

“I grew up only a few doors down from here. I know about that.” She’d had her own misery for the neighborhood to wallow in. Her old man hadn’t exactly died from natural causes, unless it was natural for a man to drunkenly fall down his own basement stairs and bust his head open. And then there were the skeptics who had always wondered if Jenna’s mom hadn’t gotten sick of being knocked around and knocked him for once…right down those basement stairs to the unforgiving surface of the concrete floor.

“So you coming? Or you love working here too much to lose the apron for a couple of hours?” Jenna. Eleven years hadn’t smoothed her sharp edges any, edges she’d no doubt developed to fend off the pitying pats of the neighborhood, for the poor little O’Brien girl.

Even after all this time, I could be more honest with her than I could be with my family…or sometimes, myself. I lowered my voice more. “I hate working here.”

“Figured as much. You try to get something else yet?”

I nodded. “I’ve got an interview at Charlie’s Tavern.”

“So you like waiting tables? Is that what you want to be when you grow up?”

“I don’t know what the hell I am now, let alone what I want to be.”

The amusement left, and concern flooded her eyes. “Ah, Mary Ellen…”

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I feel sorry enough for myself,” I admitted.

“And working here isn’t going to help that.” She blew out a breath. “And if you think it’s bad here, Charlie’s is the neighborhood bar. It’ll be worse there. I have a job opening. Mom said I should mention it to you.”

Jenna had always been close to her mom, even more so after her dad’s death. She was fiercely protective of the woman who’d been through so much. And she never disappointed her. If Mrs. O’Brien hadn’t told her to, Jenna wouldn’t have brought up the job to me. Probably wouldn’t have come to see me at all.

She hurried to add, “It’s only temporary. My processor— I’m a mortgage loan officer, by the way—”

Like I didn’t know it. Mom bragged about Jenna as if she was one of her own children. And with the amount of time she’d spent at our house growing up, she very nearly was.

“Yeah, I know. You’re doing very well.” And I wasn’t jealous, not like I was of Natalie. I’d never begrudge Jenna any of her success because I knew how hard she’d worked for it. She’d always been ambitious, like Eddie. Maybe that was why they’d hated each other; they’d been too much alike. Then. Not now. Because Eddie hadn’t ever achieved what he’d hungered for. Whereas even Jenna’s tailored business suit, a rich burgundy suede, shouted out her success as loudly as my mother did. She looked great, but she shrugged off my compliment.

“Well, interest rates are good right now, so we’re busy. And my processor, the person who handles all my paperwork to make sure the loan closes, is pregnant. She wants to take it easy. She’ll come back after she has the kid. But she’s as big as a house now and needs to kick back. You in?”

I blinked. “What? The poker game?”

“The job, you interested?”

“Working for you?”

“It’s crazy, demanding work. But you don’t have to wear that apron.”

I dragged the offensive garment over my head and tossed it on the counter. Yeah, it was temporary. I was becoming my own temp agency. Someone off with a hip replacement or a maternity leave, send in Mary Ellen Black. But I wouldn’t be handling raw meat. And hopefully I’d make more than quarters and hear a lot less pity over my divorce.

And maybe while her processor kicked back, I could figure out just exactly what I did want to be when I grew up. Hopefully, she’d be off a long time with this pregnancy and baby, because if I hadn’t figured it out in almost thirty-one years, I didn’t like my chances of figuring it out in six weeks. “Yeah, I’m interested.”

CHAPTER F
Friendship

Jenna nodded as I came around the counter. “And what about the poker game? You in?”

“Since they’re playing for money, I guess that depends on what you’re paying me,” I hedged.

She glanced around the small store; we were the only two inside. “Cash, or that creep might sue you for alimony.”

Just like Jenna, always thinking, even when I wasn’t. Just what the heck did go on inside my head? Only the orchestra of crickets singing?

“And he would,” Jenna continued. “Creep never deserved you.”

That was why Jenna and I had stopped being friends. Because of her and Eddie’s mutual animosity, I had had to choose between them, a choice I shouldn’t have had to make. Now it was clear that I shouldn’t have dropped her friendship. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, too proud to admit if I’d hurt her. But pain showed in her dark eyes. “You were knocked up, scared, and pressured by your parents.”

And she would know that because she’d always known everything about me. “Yeah. And in love. I really loved him. How stupid was that?”

“Cut yourself a break. It happens to the best of us.”

“Not you.”

She lifted her ringless left hand, but a faint indent marred the third finger. “I was.”

“Was not!” I ignored the pang of hurt over not being invited to her wedding. Why should she have invited me? We hadn’t been talking after my wedding day.

“Your mom never told you that?”

“She mentioned something once, but it was around the holidays and she was making rum balls. Mom’s never completely lucid when she’s making rum balls.”

Jenna chuckled and grabbed my arm, tugging me toward the door. “Mr. Black, we’re leaving for the bridge game.”

“Have fun!” my dad called from the back, a puff of smoke drifting in through the open door.

Jenna’s car waited at the curb, a black Cadillac. She clicked a switch to unlock the door, and I stepped over the leaves in the gutter to crawl inside. “God, I stink like the store. You sure you want me in here? I can walk.”

“Shut up and buckle up,” Jenna said as she slid behind the wheel. “You’re fine.”

No, I wasn’t. But talking to Jenna again after all these years gave me hope that I might be. After all, I wasn’t the only one with a newly ringless hand. I’d pawned mine to pay the cheap, neighborhood lawyer. “So tell me about your marriage.”

She laughed with no amusement. “I fell for a pretty face, a very pretty face.”

“That makes more sense than falling for Eddie. Nobody could ever call him pretty.” Thank God the girls didn’t look a bit like him. When we’d first met, I had thought he looked like Andy Garcia. Now he looked more like Danny DeVito.

She laughed again, in agreement, but no resentment flared in me. How could I resent the truth? “So he was pretty. Tell me more,” I urged.

“You know, Mom was right. Pretty is as pretty does. Never could figure out what that meant until it was too late. He was in construction. So picture the big, hard bod. Strong, silent type. Mom also says beware of the quiet ones, still waters run deep. I don’t know about deep, but he ran all around.”

“On you?”

She snorted. “Yeah, go figure. Guess I worked too much for him.” She’d always been so driven. Growing up poor had given her ambition.

“But he worked a lot, too. Out of town. Building houses.” She snorted again as she maneuvered the Cadillac through the back alley to my parents’ house. “Playing house was more like it.”

“So how’d you find out? Did he finally tell you?”

“Stupid ass had my little brother working with him—remember Rye?”

As a thirteen-year-old too small for his age. “Yes.”

“Well, Rye picked up on it. Told him to come clean. So he did…on Christmas Eve. Merry freakin’ Christmas, huh?”

“So you killed him, right?”

She laughed again as she jerked the Caddy to a halt behind my mom’s minivan. “I’ll never tell.”

“It’s me, Jenna. You’ll tell me.” It was my way of saying I hoped we could be close again, as close as we’d been when we’d told each other everything.

She stared at me for a minute, dark eyes cautious, reminding me that I’d betrayed her trust as much as her ex had. Then she sighed. “Yeah, I probably will. But right now, I’m feeling lucky. They were playing five-card stud when I left, and your granny was kicking ass.”

“Grandma?”

She nodded. “Yeah, she’s a shark.”

Did I know any of the women in my life? Grandma and Mom played poker. And Jenna had gotten cheated on, too, just as I had. I would definitely have to pay more attention to my daughters, make sure I knew them completely. Then maybe, someday, I’d find the time to work on knowing myself.

“You in?” Mom asked as she expertly shuffled the deck of playing cards and dealt them out to the women sitting around our dining-room table. No, this wasn’t a bridge game. The dainty teacups and little cakes and cookies were a bit deceiving. But a pile of brightly colored chips in the center of the lace tablecloth gave away the real game. And so did the bland poker faces of the women sitting around the table.

Bluffing. I knew the look. I’d seen it on Eddie’s face often enough these last couple of years. “Sure, deal me in.” Patting my purse that bulged with quarter tips, I slid onto a chair between Grandma and Jenna.

And memories filtered through my mind. Grandma had taught me how to play this game with my dolls during tea-time. How well could I remember her lessons? Apparently pretty well. A couple of hours later, I pushed back from the table, my pot sliding toward the edge. I’d done well. Real well.

Or they’d let me win out of pity. But I was getting as good at spotting pity as I was at recognizing bluffing. And their resentful faces, flushed from the tea and the game, told me they didn’t pity me now. I stood, swaying a bit. After the first sip, I’d discovered this tea wasn’t simply brewed. It was laced heavily with rum.

“Are you okay?” Jenna asked. “She always got sick whenever we used to drink,” she shared with our mothers.

I wasn’t so drunk that I couldn’t remember and realize she was right. And here I thought I’d stopped drinking because I’d lost my virginity to Eddie the last time I’d gotten drunk. And like a good, God-fearing Catholic girl I had intended to wait for marriage. I really had. But I think it’s kinda like that chicken-and-egg thing, because I probably wouldn’t have married Eddie if I hadn’t had premarital sex with him and gotten pregnant. Love aside, I’d been too young.

“Are you getting sick?” Mom asked, her blue eyes narrowing as she studied me.

“No, I’m fine.” If I kept repeating it, I’d believe it. “I got another job today and won the pot.” And maybe I could rebuild my friendship with Jenna, too. Life really was good.

“The girls’ll be home soon from school,” Mom reminded me. The public-school bus dropped them right in front of the house.

They couldn’t see me like this. They wouldn’t understand their mother being drunk. I didn’t understand their mother being drunk. Once I’d known it wasn’t just tea, I should have stopped drinking. I should have been the responsible one…as I’d been for the last eleven years.

I’d lapsed. And even while the rum and almond cookies roiled through my stomach, I didn’t really regret joining the game. And I really didn’t want it to end.

Since they’d started their new school a couple of weeks ago, if I wasn’t working at the VFW, I’d made a point of being home when Amber and Shelby got off the bus. I wanted to make sure they settled in, made friends and that nothing had gone wrong during their day. I hated the days I wasn’t there; they’d already lost the attention of one parent as he wallowed in debt and his affair. They couldn’t afford to lose me. Guilt settled heavily on my shoulders.

Mrs. O’Brien, voice soft, spoke close to her daughter’s ear. After a second, Jenna sighed and nodded. “If you promise not to puke in the car, you can come along to an appointment with me,” she offered, no doubt at her mother’s urging, “that’ll give you an idea of what I do, so you understand what you’ll have to do when you start working for me Monday morning.”

“I really should…”

“Heck, go along,” Grandma urged. “This morning I promised to show the girls a few card tricks when they got home. Obviously I taught you well.” Behind her cat’s-eye glasses, her left eye closed in a wink. Had she let me win? She was so good to me, to my girls, too.

I wasn’t the only adult in my children’s lives. Grandma, Daddy, and even my mother were great with them, loved and lavished attention on them. Wasn’t the saying that it took a village? I winked back. “Thanks, Gram. You sure did teach me well.”

Swaying on my feet, I turned toward Jenna, not too proud to accept her offer. “You’re going to work?”

“Doing a re-fi for Lorraine. She runs the beauty shop around the corner from your pop’s store. Come along.”

I could savor my little buzz a while longer. And talk to Jenna some more. Eleven years was too long without her, without her brutal honesty. “Gram, you really don’t mind watching the girls?”

She shook her head, jostling her blue curls. “Go, have fun.”

“We won’t be long,” Jenna offered as she vaulted to her feet. I envied her balance and energy.

“Bring along your winnings,” Mom chimed in. “Maybe Lorraine can do something with your hair.” Leave it to Mom to sober me up. Just like having a boy, I bet she thought that having nicer hair might have kept Eddie from straying.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Jenna tugged me toward the door. “She still gets to you.”

I sighed. “Yup, sad but true, and now she has even more ammunition.”

We climbed into the Cadillac and peeled out of the alley just as the bus was arriving at the front of the house. “I’ll come in—meet the girls when we get back,” Jenna said. She’d never seen them before. How could we have gone from such good friends to no communication whatsoever?

Shame at letting Eddie take over my life had me glancing out the window, and I caught a blurry reflection of myself in the side-view mirror. I looked washed out, old. And I wouldn’t be thirty-one until January, the new year. Would I find Mary Ellen Black by then?

I turned back to Jenna, who, despite her several cups of tea, handled the car with expert skill. It was neighborhood legend how well the O’Briens held their liquor…until Mr. O’Brien had fallen down the basement stairs. Before then, drinking had never made him clumsy, just mean. Jenna’s hair curled around her face in shiny, chocolate-colored waves. Despite her divorce, her clothes didn’t hang on her. I didn’t want to be Jenna. I knew I didn’t possess an ounce of her drive or ambition. But looking at her now, I knew I wanted to be better than me.

“I have no office skills,” I warned her, worried how much I’d disappoint her, especially since she’d only made the offer because of her mother. I was more capable of waiting tables at Charlie’s Tavern or Eddie’s restaurant.

“Can you dial a phone?” she asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“And you took typing classes with me and were a helluva lot better at it. You’ll be fine, Mary Ellen.”

I wanted to believe her. I shifted my purse on my lap, the weight of my winnings lying heavy against my thighs. “So you think Lorraine can do something with my hair?”

She laughed. “Don’t let your mother get to you.”

The years rolled away. We were carefree teenagers again…or as carefree as teenagers ever were. At least, we had been more carefree then than the two divorced women we were now. “Easier said than done. I’ve gotta get out of that house.”

“How did you lose the house? You have Morty the lawyer represent you?”

Heat rose to my face. “Morty was all I could afford. And the bank got my house. The bank got my car, too.”

“So you have nothing.” Her voice held none of the morbid fascination of the other people from my past who had pointed that out to me over the last few weeks.

“Just my name. I took that back. Most people—” especially Mom “—didn’t think I should, that I should have left mine the same as the girls’. But I wanted it back.” And for once I’d gotten what I wanted.

“I never took Todd’s,” Jenna said. “I’d already crossed over from real estate to the mortgage company, had name recognition.”

“Morty did make sure that I wasn’t responsible for any of the debts Eddie had racked up during our marriage. You were right about him.” Even though it had taken years for him to become the loser she’d always thought he was.

She lifted a hand. “Wish I’d been right about Todd. It’s hard to see when you’re too close.”

“You owe Rye for making him tell you.”

“I gave him a black eye.”

“Your ex or Rye?”

“Rye.” She’d always had a bad temper. A rueful smile lifted her mouth as she slammed the Caddy to a stop outside the pink stucco building that housed Lorraine’s Hair Salon.

From that name, I concluded that maybe I wasn’t the only person lacking imagination around here. Lorraine, a heavyset, bleached blonde, settled the pink phone back on her counter as we walked in the door. A few heads lifted from magazines as a handful of women sat under droning dryers. A couple of the neighborhood women waved.

“Hey, Jenna,” Lorraine said, then turned on me. “Mary Ellen, your mama was right. That hair needs some serious help. Have a seat!” She spun a chair toward me and pointed to the cracked vinyl seat. “Sit. I won’t take all your winnings. But we gotta do something about that hair. Gotta liven up your look.”

“We have an appointment, Lorraine,” Jenna reminded the beautician. Despite the prosaic name of her shop, a gleam in Lorraine’s eyes suggested she had an imagination, all right. She was probably imagining me in some big-hair Dolly-do close to her own style.

“I just came along on Jenna’s appointment to understand what she does. But thanks, Lorraine.” For insulting my lank, uninspired hair that is, of course, the sole reason my husband left me for another woman.

“Sit!” she said again, hands on her hips.

“Lorraine, come on,” Jenna interrupted on my behalf again. “The re-fi. I’m going to save you millions or less.”

Lorraine snorted. “A lot less since I don’t have any millions to save. The papers you wanted are all ready and in that folder on the counter. So stop being a businesswoman for a minute and be a friend, Jenna O’Brien. Tell Mary Ellen that hair needs help if she wants to land another man.”

Panic pressed down on my chest, leaving me just enough breath to exclaim, “I don’t want another man!”

“Still pining for the old one?” Lorraine goaded.

I snorted now. A sound I hadn’t thought I could make. “God no, I just don’t want another husband.”

“A new do won’t get you a marriage proposal,” Lorraine began.

“But it might help you find some young stud for hot sex,” Jenna chimed in distractedly as she flipped through the folder of Lorraine’s financial records.

Hot sex sounded good. But maybe that was just the allure of the unknown. It had been good with Eddie for all but the last couple of years. But I don’t think I’d ever had hot sex. The possibility of getting some lured me to the chair. That and the rum still humming through my veins. I’d hardly settled back against the vinyl seat when Lorraine whipped a plastic cape around my shoulders. “So a new haircut can get me hot sex?”

Lorraine and Jenna laughed in unison, the husky harmony hinting that they’d both had hot sex at least once. “It’ll take more than a cut,” Lorraine said, walking in a circle around my chair.

I was glad she did that rather than spinning me. I don’t know what had me more worked up, the idea of changing my hair—or the idea of hot sex. But apparently Lorraine didn’t think redoing my hair would be enough to get it. No doubt I needed exercise, new clothes, new makeup, new attitude…

“A dye,” Lorraine said, bobbing her double chin in agreement with her own wisdom.

“Red,” Jenna said with the firmness of conviction.

“Red?” I gasped.

“You always wanted red hair.”

News to me. I’d had wants back then besides getting out of the West Side? “I did?”