What To Keep. Mary Schramski

Чтение книги онлайн.

      “You have a house here. You could do something else.”

      It seems like years since I stood at my apartment window and looked over the parking lot, read the pink slip from the Golden Nugget.

      “What did your mother think of your husband?”

      I look at Tildy. She’s smiling. It’s amazing how her mind slips from one subject to another. Maybe she does have a screw loose.

      “Ex-husband. And she died before I met him.”

      I met Bill one night with some people from work. We went to the Paris Hotel to eat at the buffet. The Paris is supposed to make visitors feel like they’re in France. Bill was dealing blackjack. The man had great hands, a great body. As he was shuffling the cards, he looked at me, winked. Twenty minutes later on his break, he walked around the table and started talking, and that was the end of my life as I knew it. Before Bill, I paid the rent, the gas, the lights; after, my overdrawn checkbook tells the story.

      We went out the next night and Bill told me he was dealing blackjack until he could get his computer company started. Claimed he had a degree in computer science. Right!

      Three months later we were married. He charged things on my credit cards, didn’t pay one goddamned bill, then split with everything I owned.

      “What do you think she would have thought of your husband?” Tildy asks, smiles again.

      “Who?”

      “Your mama.”

      “She probably wouldn’t.” I look around the kitchen. “My mother didn’t have much use for husbands.”