The Wilder Widows by Hastings Katherine

Author:Hastings, Katherine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flyte Publishing
Published: 2020-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

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MARGE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“You ready, Doris?” I called through the bathroom door of our hotel room in Pamplona.

“One second!” she sing-songed back, her new joyous outlook on life highlighting her tone.

“Hurry up! I need to touch up my makeup.” Alice shouted over my shoulder, then grumbled under her breath. “The last time I had to share a bathroom with three other women was back when I was a showgirl. And even then, I got my own bathroom at the end when they chose me as the lead.”

After spending a week in our luxury hotel rooms in Paris, Alice hadn’t shut up since we arrived in this rundown hotel last night.

“Cripes. Can it, Alice. You’ll survive a few days shoved in this sardine tin with us. It’s a hell of a step up from the accommodations back in ‘Nam. This may as well be the Ritz in comparison. You’ll live.”

She answered with an eye-roll. Since finding out this was the only room we could get in Pamplona during San Fermin Festival on such short notice, and at a price as high as our suites in Paris, it seemed like her eyeballs were in a constant state of rotation, and her breathing reduced to only long sighs and huffs. What a pansy.

Looking around the tiny room, I felt more at home here than I had this entire trip. Alice’s insistence on luxury hotels and fine dining every step of the way was a far cry from the life I’d spent seventy-three years living. Between growing up in a two-bedroom apartment with my Italian immigrant grandparents, my parents and older brother, and my tent in ‘Nam, I was used to cramped quarters. This dingy hotel with the stained orange carpets and two twin beds taking up most of the space made me feel at home. In fact, the carpet was the same shade as my mother’s, so maybe that was why it felt so familiar.

Sylvie sat on the edge of the tiny bed, picking a piece of lint off her white pants. The room was so small with our bags of luggage crammed inside, she used my suitcase as a footrest.

“Sorry I took so long. I wanted to put on a little extra make-up for the party,” Doris said, emerging from the dilapidated bathroom.

Doris wearing make-up. It still looked odd to me to see the Old Maid I’d known for years sporting her fashionable new hairdo, eyeshadow, and pink rouge on her cheeks. While the other three widows enjoyed their makeovers from Las Vegas, I was still content to look the way I always had. I’d never swiped a make-up brush across my face before, and I wasn’t about to start now. Even when they’d told us we needed to wear makeup in Vietnam to help perk up the soldiers, I’d railed against it, relying on my nursing skills and winning personality.

“Took you long enough.” Alice pushed past her but paused before stepping into the bathroom. Lines crinkled along the bridge of her nose while she tipped it up in disgust at the sight of the less-than-ideal space.

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