“SIX!” Tall Thin Lady yells at him. “One, two, three, four, five, six. Helen’s fat granddaughter has six cats!”
“You don’t want to end up like that,” Blue Hair adds.
“It’s true,” Tight White Curls says. “Men don’t want you once you’re over thirty. Your eggs are getting too old, so your currency drops exponentially.”
My eggs? Oh, this is awful.I have a strong notion to abandon the group and sprint off to my apartment. There’s clearly no way they could catch me. Instead, I speak louder than is probably necessary, even with this group. “Today, we’ll be visiting the west wing of the palace which includes the library, the gold drawing room, the throne room, the grand ballroom, as well as the main dining hall.”
One of them raises her hand, but I ignore her and continue. Pointing to the ceiling, I say, “These are the murals painted by Giovanni Canaletto in the sixteenth century. Few people know this, but back in the 1980s, a fire broke out in the kitchen and we almost lost these beautiful works of art to smoke damage. After that, the entire palace was fitted with sprinklers and sliding fire doors were added to each side of the Grande Hall.”
“How much did that cost the taxpayers?” one of them quips.
“Shut up. You’re being rude.”
“What did you say?” the man asks me. “I can’t hear you at all.” He turns to a woman with bright red lipstick, some of it smeared on her straight, white teeth. “Is she speaking English?”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” I say, raising my voice and moving closer to him.
“Don't bother.” Blue Hair shakes her head. Turning to him, she shouts, “She said these paintings are almost as old as you.”
This earns her a laugh from the rest of the group. I take a few steps, then turn back to them, my heart sinking when I see the snail’s pace at which we’re about to embark on our tour. There is literally no way we’ll finish in under an hour. I’d be shocked if we were done by teatime. Double damn. “So, we’re celebrating one hundred miles of mall walking,” I say, smiling and nodding in a way that says, ‘please be much faster than this.’
“That's right, Your Highness,” a woman with a short fringe says. “And not one single mile with the use of aids.”
“Not so much as a cane,” Tall Thin Lady adds.
“Canes are for candy asses,” one of the ladies at the back says.
“And walkers are for wimps!” one of them adds.
Grinning, I say, “My goodness, I hope I have your strong constitutions when I'm your age.”
“I doubt it,” Blue Hair says, wrinkling her face up even more than it already was. “You seem pretty soft. No offense.”
“Shealwaysmeans to offend,” the woman with red lipstick adds.
Blue Hair glares at Red Lipstick. “Oh, don't mind her, she's just sore because the rest of us don't want her here. She's not arealnonagenarian.”
“Let it go already, Betty. I'll be ninety next week!” Red Lipstick says. “It's not my fault the rest of the octogenarian walkers died!”
Tight White Curls leans in and gives her a steely glare. “That's not what I heard.”
“Hey, leave her alone, you bunch of old hags,” the man says.
Oh, dear. That’s not going to go over well.
“Of course you would defendher. You men! Always chasing around the young tarts!”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Just let it go, woman.”
Tight White Curls scowls at him. “You don’t actually think those arereal, do you?”
I find myself glancing at her boobs, even though part of me is screaming that it’s a bad idea. They’re pretty much what I’d expect eighty-nine-year-old breasts to look like—two oranges in a pair of socks.
“Pathetic,” Blue Hair says, shaking her head. “Those are dentures if I’ve ever seen them!”
Oh, herteethare fake.
Tall Thin Lady shuffles closer to me and cups her hand over the side of her mouth. “Don't mind them. His wife died two months ago, so the race is on to snag him before it’s too late.”
