Old Boyfriends

“If he was so great, why didn’t you just marry him?

“M.J. sighed. “I wanted to. But he went away to college on a football scholarship, and Mama had me on the beauty pageant circuit. That was when I really believed I could have a future in the movies. I guess he and I just sort of drifted apart. You know how it is at that age.”

I slipped on my shoes and let the subject drop. But her remembered high school passion reminded me of my own. He’d been a skinny Cajun boy and our favorite date had been to go fishing. At least we always took fishing gear when we set off in his flatboat. But we never did catch anything. We were too busy making out.

Despite my cynicism, I couldn’t help smiling at the memory. God, how I’d loved that boy.

“Anyway,” M.J. went on. “Not to change the subject, but I thought of something, or maybe I dreamed it. Anyway, we have to go back to the house.” She smiled like an impish kitten. “Frank kept mad money. I don’t know exactly where, but I remember last year when his grandson had a DUI and they wouldn’t take credit cards at the jail. He went upstairs and came down with a fistful of cash.”

“Is there a safe?”

“Yes, but it’s downstairs, and I already checked it.”

While Bitsey fed her demanding husband, M.J. and I took my car to her house. She’d padlocked the gate so we knew Frank Jr. hadn’t been in yet. But it was only a matter of time. Two hours and twenty minutes later we found a false bottom in the humidor in Frank’s study. It was a large, freestanding piece made of beautiful English oak.

Big humidor equals big hidden panel equals big, big payoff. Frank might have let M.J. collect art, but it was obvious that he collected money. Packets of twenties, fifties, hundreds and five-hundred-dollar bills. In his desk drawer we found three collections of the new state quarters and an odd bag of felt-wrapped coins. Old ones.

M.J.’s eyes lit up as she snatched the bag from the drawer. “These must be valuable or he wouldn’t have kept them.” Then she grabbed a few more of her clothes, filled a garbage bag with boxes of shoes, and we left.

“Aren’t you going to padlock the gate?

“Nope. And I didn’t lock the house, either. I’m outta here, and I’m never coming back.”

“Maybe someone will break in,” I said, “and burn it down. Wouldn’t Bitsey be pleased.”

“Me, too.” M.J. snapped her seat belt on.

I gave her a sidelong look. She meant it. Since Frank’s death, M.J. had spent over a week drunk and less than a day sober. But I could sense some sort of change in her, as if she’d turned a corner, from shock to sorrow to really pissed off. I steered my VW onto the boulevard that led to the gate house for the exclusive neighborhood.

“So. Are we heading back to Bitsey’s?” she asked.

“No. Not there. Tonight you can stay with me. Tomorrow we’ll figure out your next step.”

Bitsey came over around eleven the next day. I was working from home, mostly phone stuff, and I had a meeting at a client’s home at two. M.J. was in the shower. She’d already exercised for an hour and a half, made us a healthy breakfast of OJ, cracked-wheat toast, organic boysenberry jam and melon balls. Bitsey had a Krispy Kreme napkin in her hand and a sprinkle of sugar on the stomach of her olive-green jumper.

Bitsey flung her hobo bag onto the kitchen counter, stepped out of her shoes, then plopped down in my window seat. I looked at her over the rim of my red polka-dot Peepers. “Have you been crying? What did he do?”

She shot me a belligerent glare. “Why do you always assume it’s Jack? You never give him a chance.”

Tread lightly. “Well, since it’s only you and him at home now…” I raised my brows and trailed off.

“I talked to Margaret this morning.”

Margaret was the middle of Bitsey’s three perfect daughters, the one with the most potential for not being perfect. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know.” Bitsey heaved a weary sigh. “You know she transferred to Arizona State. Well, it turns out she hates it there.”

“The state or the university?” I asked. “Or maybe the state and the university?”

She ignored me. “What if she drops out? Jack says if she does she can’t come home.”

I sat down next to her. “That’s not much of a threat anymore. At her age she probably won’t want to come home.”

Bitsey looked down at her lap and plucked at the Krispy Kreme sugar. She needed a manicure, I thought, then immediately hated myself for noticing. Sometimes I can be so shallow. The last thing Bitsey needed was her friends magnifying her insignificant flaws. Jack was more than up to that task.

She let out another deep sigh. “I wish I didn’t have to go home, either.”

Uh-oh. This didn’t sound good. For all the ups and downs in her marriage, the one thing Bitsey had never done was consider abandoning it. At least not out loud. I might not like Jack Albertson all that much, but I’d been divorced twice and I knew just how hard the process could be. I wasn’t so sure Bitsey was up to it.

“What’s wrong, Bits?”

She was blinking hard. “What if…” She swallowed hard, then turned to look at me. “What if Jack’s having an affair? If Frank could cheat on M.J.—you know how beautiful she is and he was just this wrinkled old man—if he could cheat on her, then what do you suppose Jack is doing to me?”

“Oh, Bitsey, I’m sure he isn’t doing anything of the sort,” I lied. For friends like Bitsey, you lie even if it tastes like gall.

She stared me straight in the eye. “You’re lying. I know you don’t like Jack. He’s critical and demanding, and he takes me for granted. You’ve pointed that out a hundred times.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s cheating.”

She pressed her lips together and blinked several times. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

M.J. came into the kitchen, her hair in a towel. “I don’t think Jack’s the type to cheat,” she said. Obviously she’d overheard our conversation.

Bitsey heaved that same, desolate sigh. “Did you think Frank was the type?”

M.J. shoved her hands deep into the robe’s pockets and shrugged. “I tried to pretend he wasn’t, but I knew he was. After all, he was married when we met.”

M.J. had been a trophy wife. Before that she’d been a twenty-three-year-old beauty pageant winner and aspiring actress, working as a hostess in Frank Hollander’s restaurant. He had kids almost her age, and when he’d dumped wife number one for her it must have been as bad as any cliché out there: a middle-aged man and his sex kitten.

Of course, I can understand why he’d fallen for her, and it’s not just how she looks. M.J. is one of those good-hearted, loving women who always tries to please the people she loves. And she’d really loved Frank.

There’d been no pleasing Frank’s kids, though. Some would say she’s getting what she deserves now, and I admit I even thought it. But not for long. To know M.J. is to love her. And I do love her.

“I used to be thin,” Bitsey said. “When Jack and I met I wore a size eight. Then I had all those kids.”

“I wish I had kids,” M.J. said in a quiet voice. “Tight buns and great abs are no substitute for a real family.”

“What about me?” I put in. “I don’t have kids or tight buns. By rights y’all should be feeling sorry for me.”

Neither of them laughed. Bitsey made coffee and we went out into the courtyard.

“That’s new,” Bitsey said of the plant nestled beside the pond.

“Louisiana Blue Iris,” I said.

That made M.J. smile. “There used to be drifts of those back home in the marshy area behind our house. Where’d you get it?”

“That specialty florist on San Pedro Avenue.” I stroked the deep purplish-blue flower. “A little taste of home, but without all the aggravating people.”