A smile tugs at my lips and Angie rolls her eyes. “I got divorced,” she tells me.
“Oh. Well… congratulations?”
“Hear, hear,” says Maryellen, raising her wineglass. All of them scramble to find their own drinks, and then they clink and down the contents.
“Should’ve done it years ago, but in families like ours… there’s usually only one way out of marriage.” She gives a shrug, and I’m left to interpret what kind exactly she means by that. Religious families?… Italian families?
“Not sure which way is messier,” Helen says in a voice so low, I’m not sure I’m meant to hear. I smile and nod, even as my stomach grows slightly unsettled. She almost makes it sound like her husband… didn’t die of natural causes?
As soon as the thought crosses my mind, I realize how ludicrous it is. These sweet old ladies are harmless. They may be tough, but they’re not out here offing their husbands and subtly bragging about it.
“Anyway, son of a bitch used to come to Vegas all the time,” Angie goes on. “He was a piss-poor gambler too. But got lucky often enough that the hotel gave him a handful of vouchers.” She smiles. “I made sure to get those and his airline miles in the divorce. Paid for our girls’ weekend. I’m gonna put the pictures up on Facebook so he can see how much fun we had with his money.”
My smile grows wider as I picture this sweet old lady trolling her ex-husband on Facebook.
“Serves him right,” Helen chimes in. “He always underestimated you.”
These ladies get it. They talk as though their lives are infinitely better without the presence of men. I can definitely see the value of that mindset.
Isabella is mostly fixated on her cocktail, poking her straw at the ice in the bottom of her glass, but she offers a grunt of agreement.
“He sure did,” Angie says with a smirk. She leans a bit closer again, her voice going low and conspiratorial. “Thatwas his undoing in the end. He had no idea, but I’d been saving up for years. A little here, a little there. I hired the best attorney in town.”
Maryellen grins. “Made all of our husbands nervous.”
“If only we’d met your lawyer while Vincent were still alive,” Helen says. She turns to me. “I got my due in the will, but if I’d tried to leave him, he would’ve fought tooth and nail for every dime. If I could’ve, I would’ve hired that lawyer, and Vincent never would’ve seen it coming.”
“They never do,” Maryellen says before draining the last of her wine. “Despite how they run their business. Not like they’re strangers to skimming off the top. But the idea we keep any money they don’t know about, make anyplansthey don’t know about… They can’t fathom it.”
More and more, their lives are sounding like an episode ofThe Sopranos. I’m dying to ask what kind of shady business these men are involved in, but I’m also slightly afraid to hear the answer. Even though it’s ludicrous, and they obviously aren’tactualmob wives. That’s my exhaustion talking.
I wish I could spend the entire day with this coven of old ladies. Aside from theI’m not like a regular grandma, I’m a cool grandmavibe they all give off, they also seem content to blame men for everything, which is a sentiment I can really get behind.
A waitress stops by and the ladies all order another round of drinks. The waitress turns to me, but I decline. I don’t plan to drink any more for a long while, and I don’t have time to sit around anyway.
“I should probably go track Adam down now,” I say when the waitress leaves, and Maryellen does not look impressed.
“Let him come to you,” Angie says, and the other womennod their agreement. “I want to hear more about this situation of yours.”
Despite the fact that I’ve spent all day wanting this experience to be over, it occurs to me that I am never going to see these women again. They don’t know me. We have no connections out in the real world. I’m not going to get a better opportunity to vent about Adam and the past twenty-four hours.
Which is how I find myself rehashing the entire story.
“So, let me get this straight,” Maryellen says when I’ve finished, manicured finger tapping against her new gimlet glass. “You shared a bed last night, but he didn’t make any sort of move?”
“Right. Nothing happened last night.”
“Maybe you can work it out,” Isabella interjects sweetly, and the other three women groan. I’ve learned Isabella is the only one of them that’s happily married, so it stands to reason that the others shoot down her optimism on sight.
“All I’m saying,” she continues doggedly, “is that he sounds decent. It means something that he spent the night with you.”
“Yeah, it meant he was too drunk to navigate to his own room,” Maryellen says, echoing my own thoughts. “Eleanor’s too young to set the bar so low.”
Isabella shoots her a look, then turns back to me. “Have you asked him?”
“Asked him what?”
“If it meant anything to him? Last night, or the kiss?”
