Mourning Glory Read Online Free PDF

of staring each other
down, Mrs. Burns nodded.
    "I pride myself on that perception," she said.
    Grace turned and started toward the door, stopping suddenly
when she heard her name called. She turned again and faced the woman behind the
desk.
    "In the enterprise I suggest, Grace, there is one more
caveat. It is fundamental."
    Grace looked at the woman, a commanding presence behind her
desk. Mrs. Burns lifted her left hand. At first Grace wondered if she was
giving her the traditional gesture of contempt.
    "Ring around your finger," Mrs. Burns said
cheerily. She directed Grace's attention to the glittering diamond marriage
band on the finger of her left hand. "This is essential. And beware the
prenup, the deal before you get it."
    "You make it sound like a sales agreement."
    "Now you're getting to the heart of the deal.
Especially if he's got kids. They'll guilt him into a tough prenup. Fight it.
My advice ... get him while he's hottest."
    "Is this stuff relevant to me? Really, Mrs. Burns.
Never."
    "Never say never."
    Speechless, Grace turned to the door with a heavy heart.
    "Last word of wisdom, Grace," Mrs. Burns said.
"Never move in before..."
    "Before what?"
    She lifted her left hand again.
    "This," Mrs. Burns said. "Ring around your
finger."
    "Screw you," Grace muttered.
    This woman is off the wall ,
she thought, slamming the door after her.

CHAPTER
TWO
    Her daily routine disturbed by these incredible
experiences, Grace felt disoriented and rootless. She had no idea how she was
going to spend the rest of the day, no less the rest of her life. She headed
back to her apartment for no apparent reason except that that was the only
destination that offered a haven.
    She lived in Palm Tropics, a small garden apartment
community a few blocks south of the Tamiami Trail built sometime during the
bucolic fifties. She shared a one-bedroom apartment with Jackie, who slept on a
studio couch in the living room.
    It wasn't exactly what she preferred as the perfect living
environment for raising a teenage daughter, but she lived with the sense,
despite her daughter's daily harangues, that all this hardship was merely a
passing phase. Unfortunately, after five years of living in this place, the
hope of imminent escape had become a cruel illusion. Jackie was exactly right:
The place was a dump.
    The management company prided itself on its maintenance
performance, the result being that the plumbing and kitchen fixtures were very
workable and, as a consequence, very unmodern, and the vomit-green-painted
stucco made the building rows look like World War I army barracks.
    Grace referred to the project as "shabby
genteel," which took the sting out of the inescapable fact that this was a
place for the downwardly mobile, of which she was a fellow traveler. Especially
now. Still, she refused to allow herself to brood, fearful that overanalyzing
her present condition would lead to depression in all its many facets.
    Call it lousy luck, she told herself, which sounded a lot
better than a squandered life. Besides, thirty-eight was still young in this
land of the blue hair, Social Security checks and Medicare. Maybe it was time
to go back to Baltimore. It was a thought that called her to attention. She
hated Baltimore and the rigid little lives her father and mother had lived.
Besides, there was nothing in Baltimore for her now or ever again. The image of
her father, Carmine the barber, still living there as a widower in the rooms
above the shop, completed the circle of dread. Baltimore was dead. She had
escaped along with many of her childhood friends. Escaped to where?
    She brushed off her long-term problem and concentrated on
her immediate dilemma, which was to fill up that time normally devoted to her
job. She ticked off possibilities. There was always a movie, but they didn't
open until later. Or the beach, but that meant exposure to the enemy, the sun.
    An errant fantasy of hitting South Beach in Miami and picking up a young hard body surfaced,