“You aren’t going to skin her and wear her, are you?” Diana asked.
Trey started to retort but then he stopped rubbing sunscreen on his shoulders, took my hand, and said, “You havegotto be kidding me.”
I looked up. Diana was in a faded one-piece that was starting to fray at the edges. But she was hot. I mean,hot. She was tall, probably five-eight, and had this gorgeous hourglass shape. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ve been hidingthatunder those T-shirts? No, ma’am. No more.”
She held up today’s Root Cafe T-shirt. It looked innocent enough. “But, honey, you don’t understand. Carl was the weirdest one yet. He had this foot fetish.” Diana shuddered. “Let’s just say it’s in everyone’s best interest if we leave it at that.”
“Foot fetishes are more common than you would think,” Marcy remarked. Then she added, “Diana, your boobs are amazing. Who did them?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I was sleeping in my car last week, but I’ve had my boobs done.”
“I saw you in that Taylor Plastic Surgery T-shirt last week,” Marcy retorted. “Don’t lie to me.”
Diana lay back on her chair as Trey whispered in my ear, “Do you think she’s going to sue us for sexual harassment?”
“Probably,” I said, thinking that that would just be one more thing to add to the shitstorm.
“That shirt was from Ken, the phlebotomist.” She turned to Marcy. “When you find about a hundred vials of blood hidden in a man’s laundry basket, you don’t stick around to find out why they’re there.”
“Damn,” I said. “You really have some stories, Di. I only have Greg stories. It’s pretty boring.” I felt a familiar anxiety grip my throat as I said his name.
“Yeah, but your Greg stories are worse than all my ex stories combined.”
“Speaking of ex stories,” Trey said, “you’re never going to be telling ex stories about Andrew if you don’t call him. Like I said, upper hand, sister.”
Before I could retort, Marcy was calling, “Hi, Stafford,” waving to a handsome man in the pool with three kids in Puddle Jumpers.
“Hi, Marcy. Hi, Gray,” he replied.
“Hi, Stafford,” I called sunnily. “I can’t believe how big the kids have gotten!”
“I know,” he said, “happens fast.”
“So what did you hear about Stafford and Alice?” I whispered as soon as he was out of earshot.
“I heard that she had an affair.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
“But,” Marcy said, “I heard she had an affair because he was a little more interested in his business partner than his wife.”
“No!” Trey said. “I heard she left him”—he paused dramatically—“for her dealer.”
“Oh, Lord,” Diana said. “Oldest story in the book.”
“Is it?” Trey responded.
I lowered my sunglasses to study Stafford while he was throwing his three kids in the pool. “So, what do you think about him?”
“I don’t know,” Marcy said. “He’s cute. He’s nice. His kids are pretty. I could probably sport them around.”
“So you don’t mind the kids?”
She shrugged. “I mean, not really. I guess it’s just one of those things. If I loved him enough, we’d work it out—and I could keep my figure.”
I already knew Marcy didn’t consider divorce a negative. In fact, she thought it was a plus. According to Marcy, a divorced man knew what commitment was all about. In her mind, a man’s second marriage had a brighter future than his first. Statistics would disagree with Marcy, but once she got something in her head, that was it.
“Should you go talk to him, you think?” I asked.
