“What are we waiting for? Hand me my lipstick, Doll.” She did and Blah applied it–flawlessly, without a mirror–while telling Adaku, “Don’t go anywhere without your lips. You never know who you’ll run into. Or kiss, for that matter.”
When they went downstairs, Adaku moved toward a corner table in the half-filled lounge, but Blah said, “The bar, hon. Stools. Shows off the gams.” So they commandeered three of the four stools and ordered martinis, Adaku unhappily abstaining for the sake of her regimen. Blah crossed her legs and ran an elegant hand along her thigh as if straightening a gown’s high slit instead of smoothing the beige polyester of her elastic-waisted pants.
“Two martinis, one dirty with extra olives, just the way you like it, Blah,” the orderly-cum-bartender said, pushing their glasses toward them.
“Thanks, Dan,” Sewanee replied, sliding the special one to her grandmother. “Blah, Dan gave you three olives. It’s normally two. Something you want to tell me?”
“That’s between me and Dan,” Blah simpered. She saucily slid one off the toothpick, then winked. “That’s why the extra one.” She turned to Adaku. “I hope you’re taking notes.”
Adaku laughed. “Always.”
Sewanee took the opportunity, while Blah was sipping her drink to, once again, reinforce the impending move to memory care. “So, I was thinking, when it comes time to move to your new room, I’ll bring over some roller suitcases and make it easy.” She’d been repeating this every time they talked for the last two months, but she wasn’t sure it had stuck. Or, if it had, if Blah completely understood the implications.
Blah merely nodded and sipped her martini. “Whatever you want, Doll.” She jerked her chin at Dan. “Let’s get Popeye here to help. He looks more than capable.”
Dan smiled. “Where are you moving to, Blah?”
Blah’s smile froze. She glanced at Sewanee. “Where am I moving?”
“Just to another wing,” Sewanee answered, smiling at Dan, infusing her voice with calm for Blah’s sake. “She’ll still be here every Friday so keep those olives stocked.”
This seemed to mollify Blah, who raised her glass to her lips and looked out into the room, casing the door, as if this were the bar at the Roosevelt Hotel and Gregory Peck might walk in.
He didn’t, but Mitzi did.
When Mitzi entered a room, orange preceded her. Orange lipstick, orange fright-wig-looking hair, even the tennis balls on the feet of her walker were electric orange. All gracefully wrapped in a leopard-print stole. None of it, however, was meant to outshine the enthusiastically applied blue eye shadow that went all the way up to her drawn-on eyebrows. It was about balance, you see.
“Look who came to visit!” Mitzi’s voice was a handsaw cutting a 2x4.
“Mitzi. So good to see you.” Sewanee leaned into Adaku and murmured, “I apologize in advance.”
“Ooh, noted,” Adaku whispered back, grinning.
Mitzi did her best to climb onto the bar stool next to her. “Why are these goddamn things so tall? And who are you?” she groused. Loudly.
Blah winced, rolled her eyes at the girls, and said, “Mitzi. Turn your hearing aids down. You’re shouting.”
“What?” she shouted.
“Your hearing aids! You’re shouting!”
“You don’t have to shout!”
Mitzi adjusted her hearing aids as Dan said, “What can I get ya, Mitzi?”
“Two cents plain, I’m off the sauce.” Her volume decreased to an acceptable level. She turned to Adaku. “So, mystery woman. Nu?”
“I’m Sewanee’s friend, Adaku.”
“AdaWho? What is that?”
“Nigerian. Igbo.”
“IgWhat?”
Sewanee caught Adaku’s eye, mouthed: “Apologizing.”
Adaku waved her off and answered, gamely, “It’s an ethnic group in–”
But Mitzi’s attention–short-lived at best–diverted to the glass Dan put in front of her. “What’s with the fruit? Two cents plain is two cents plain. You should bartend in jail.” She lifted the lime wedge from her glass and put it to those Day-Glo lips.
Blah leaned over to look at Mitzi as though they were two old miners down the pub after a long day in the shafts. “You usually get a 7 and 7.”
“You remember her drink?” Sewanee exclaimed.
Blah shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you.” Back to Mitzi. “Why the change?”