sighs. “Nothing! I’d just like to see him again. It’s been a long time. Cece is seeing someone she hasn’t seen for—”
She listens, then says, “Okay, you know what, Sandy? You’re getting way ahead of—”
She listens again. “No. No I’m not. Will you just … All right, look. I’ll talk to you later.”
She hangs up.
Silence, and then Renie asks to have the radio turned up.
Lise adjusts herself in a way that looks like she’s either casting something off or readjusting it so that it will hang better on her.
“Good store, good store!” Joni yells, pointing to a cooking store called Pannifed, and we all pitch forward when the brakes are put on.
When we come out, Lise is bitching that all the new pots Joni bought won’t fit in the kitchen and Joni is bitching that Lise bought a coffee press that is the wrong kind. Renie bought polka-dot coffee mugs, a variety of fancy salts, and almond-scented dish detergent.
I. Bought. Nothing.
LISE AND I ARE SHARING A ROOM AT THE MOTEL IN DES MOINES. I’m waiting for her to finish getting ready to see Steven. She comes out of the bathroom dressed in a blue sheath dress and a string of pearls, her usual pearl studs. Low, bone-colored heels.
She sits on the edge of the bed, her hands tightly clasped, looks at her watch.
“Ten minutes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My heart rate is one-sixty.”
“You look really nice.”
It’s as if those words launch her back into the bathroom. She comes out in a couple of minutes changed into a pair of black pants, a plain white button-down, sandals. The necklace is off.
She sits back down on the bed and looks over at me. “Better, I think.”
“You looked lovely in that dress. Was it new?”
“Well, that’s right. That’s part of the problem. I want to be comfortable, and I can’t be comfortable in a new dress. Or … in a dress period. Better to be comfortable.”
“You still look nice.”
“Thanks. Cece, will you wait outside with me for him to come?”
“Of course.”
“It’s a gray Avalon we’ll be looking for. Help me to look for a gray Avalon.”
“I will.”
“Do you know where Renie and Joni are? I don’t want them to come out there. I don’t want it to be … a spectacle.”
“They went to the pool. They said they were going to have a soak in the hot tub.”
Lise nods. “I wish that’s where I was going.”
I reach over to touch her hand. “You’ll be fine. You need to do this. The cards said it would be good.”
“They didn’t say that.”
“Well, they didn’t say it would be bad.”
She looks at her watch. “Okay. Five minutes of. Let’s go.”
We go down to the lobby, and she looks out the window. “Oh God, he’s here.” She looks over at me. “I shouldn’t have done this.”
“Just … Have a good time. Have a good time! We’ll see you later.”
She goes out toward the car, and a tall, silver-haired man gets out to open the door for her. He’s good-looking, from what I can tell from here. He closes the door and goes around to his own side, and I see Lise make the tiniest wave at me. I wave back, then go and change into my bathing suit. It doesn’t matter how old I am, it doesn’t matter how I look in a suit (though this black halter-top one was designed by a compassionate person and I really like it). Putting on a bathing suit always gets me a little jazzed; I’m ready to have a good time. I cannot remember ever having a bad time in a bathing suit. I think about this in the elevator, on the way down to the pool, and it’s really true, I haven’t.
JONI, RENIE, AND I are back in the hot tub after having gone out to Dairy Queen, where we had sundaes and onion rings for dinner. A young couple comes into the pool room in their bathrobes. They stand a few feet away from the hot tub, watching, then leave the room. Almost immediately, though, the young man comes back and says, “Are you going to be in there much longer?”
“We just got in,” Joni says. “But there’s room for you two, if you want.” She gestures, in a halfhearted kind of way, to the other side of the hot tub, where there is indeed room for two more people.
“That’s okay,” he says, and leaves again.
But now the woman comes in and walks over to the edge of the hot tub and crouches