Better Luck Next Time by Julia Claiborne Johnson

Author:Julia Claiborne Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Custom House
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

“He was smote,” Mary Louise said to me when I hustled into the house to find out what was going on with Emily and Portia. She was in the front hall at the phone table by the stairs, her fingertips resting on the receiver she’d just returned to its cradle and a single tear trailing cinematically across her lovely cheek.

“Who was smote?” I asked.

“My husband. He had a heart attack while he was breaking one of God’s commandments.”

“Which commandment?” I asked.

“‘Thou shalt not cover thy neighbor’s wife.’”

The urge to laugh bubbled up inside me while I fought to maintain my poker face. “Cover” was just a consonant away from “covet,” after all. Instead of laughing I managed, “Your husband—is he all right?”

“If by all right you mean dead as a doornail, yes, he’s fine. I’ve been wishing that old fool would die ever since he threw me away so he could marry that harpy he’s been covering once our divorce goes through. A schoolteacher. In her forties. Now that he’s dead I don’t know how guilty I’m supposed to feel about it. Him up and dying is my fault, after all.”

“Whoa there, ma’am,” I said. “It is not your fault. Hearts give out. Particularly older ones.”

“It is my fault,” she insisted. “Remember the barnstormer? And the girl in line who was so sure she was going to marry him? I wished them both dead, and look what happened. All I have to do is pray on it and the Almighty takes over for me. Dammit.” Then she let loose a flood of tears that the Boulder Dam itself would have been challenged to contain. “I’m going to miss that old fool,” she wailed.

“Now, now,” I said, and patted her shoulder. “The Almighty has his hands too full with war and pestilence to drop everything to smite one fornicating old man for you.”

You’re right. I didn’t say that last bit. Only thought it.

Mary Louise wiped her face with her palms. “At least now I get all his money, instead of just some lousy settlement. He was too busy slipping it to the neighbor to change his will and I wasn’t about to remind him. I can afford to marry anybody I want to next time. Heck, I could marry you.”

Portia tore past us then and pounded up the stairs. She must have been sprung from Margaret’s office, because Emily and Nina came out the office door soon after. “Which way did she go?” Emily asked.

I pointed upstairs just as clothing started raining down the stairwell like manna from Saks Fifth Avenue. I recognized some of Emily’s dresses and blouses as they fluttered into the stairwell. A pair of peach silk panties settled themselves onto the newel post and tilted jauntily to one side, a lingerie beret.

“Portia isn’t wasting any time helping you move out of Coyote,” Nina said.

“I guess I should go talk to her,” Emily said.

Nina laid a hand on her arm, shook her head, and went upstairs instead.

Mary Louise, meanwhile, plucked Emily’s drawers from the newel post and peered at them.

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