The Girls of Tonsil Lake Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jake—along with both my ex-husbands—had come. I had kept my distance from my exes, but Andie and Jake were like old friends, laughing and drinking toasts and standing with their arms around each other. They’d looked almost as married as Jean and David did, and I remembered feeling jealous. Which wasn’t very nice of me, I guess, but I just felt so alone, and I’ve never learned to like that.
    I’d thought then that Jake was just about the handsomest man I’d ever seen this side of a movie screen and I still thought so. “But you’ve gotten so thin,” I said. “Why is it men eat everything that’s not nailed down and lose weight while women gain just by walking through a kitchen?”
    He laughed and hugged me again. “Are you going to let me buy you dinner?”
    “I could be convinced.” I gave him a Mae West look and a little flip of hip.
    “Be still my heart.” He grinned at me. “Get your purse. If you’re nice, I might even take you dancing.”
    He didn’t take me dancing, but we did go to the Comedy Shop and laugh ourselves silly before he delivered me to the door of my room before midnight.
    “Oh, Jake.” I put my arms around him. “How could Andie have let you go?”
    A shadow seemed to fall over his eyes, dimming the ever-present twinkle. He was silent for an instant, his face a mask, but he recovered so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. “What, and deny the rest of the world the pleasure of my scintillating company by keeping me?”
    “There is that,” I said, and raised my face.
    He took the hint, kissing me there in the hallway of the eleventh floor of the hotel. I couldn’t really afford to stay here, but had given myself the night as a reward for the upcoming promotion. It was a first-date kind of kiss, and I broke it with every intention of going back for more, but he stepped away slightly, covering my mouth with two fingers.
    “You need your rest for your big meeting tomorrow,” he said, “and I need to be going.” He kissed my cheek. “Good luck, Suzy-Q. I’ll call you.”
    I thought about the evening as I undressed and showered. We’d talked about Andie’s illness, about what all of our children were doing these days, about the pitiful state of gas prices in the Midwest. He’d asked about my job and I’d told him more than he probably wanted to know, but he hadn’t talked about himself, something I found unusual and endearing in a man.
    The lighting in hotel bathrooms is uniformly cruel to any woman over twenty-two. I kept my back to the mirror as I dried off, slathered on body lotion, and dropped a silky gown over my head, but I had to face it to take off my makeup.
    The plastic surgeon did a good job with my eyes—I never have that vaguely surprised look I’ve seen on other women—and the partial facelift I had five years ago is holding up well. But as I looked at myself that night, I saw the hint of a double chin when I turned my head, and there were faint lines around my mouth and below my eyes that it took two coats of concealer and a healthy application of makeup base to hide.
    I applied moisturizer, then applied it again just for good measure.
    “You’re damned near fifty-one,” I told my reflection. “You can’t fight gravity forever.” I grinned at myself. “Well, maybe you can fight it, but you can’t win.”
    I remembered Jean’s joke about me having my breasts sewn into place and looked down at my chest, wondering if I should go ahead and invest in another surgical procedure.
    Andie used to say, “I’ll do something about them when they smack me in the knees when I walk, especially since my fallen ass will be smacking the backs of them at the same time.” We’d always laugh, but it wasn’t so funny anymore. I couldn’t go braless in public anymore, because my nipples were exhibiting a definite downward trend, but I wasn’t sure I wanted the expense or the pain of more cosmetic enhancement.
    One of the things I tell the ladies who use my