Crazy. She'd gone crazy. That's the first thought that occurred to me when I heard Arlene's voice on the phone. "Make a day of it," she said. "Sort of a little vacation." I couldn't imagine what had come over her. Two kids, both boys for heaven's sake, two jobs, bills to pay, her mother living with her, her husband in prison, just like mine, and she wanted to make a day of it. More than a day of it. She said we could spend the night in a motel, of all things. "Come on, Laura. It'll be fun, and we deserve it," she said. "When's the last time you had any fun since he went inside?" I couldn't remember the last time. "I'm tired of feeling punished, Laura. Tired of living a punished life. What do you say? Women like us don't get too many chances like this." How could she be so irresponsible, given the situation? She had gone crazy. And, like a lot of crazy people, she made a good deal of sense if you took the time to think a little about what she said. I always thought about what Arlene said, always listened to her. I couldn't not listen to her, even if I wanted to. She would actually say the things she thought, say the things I thought but wouldn't allow myself to say, say the things I hadn't even allowed myself to think. I remember the first time I heard Arlene's voice. It was visiting day. My first one. First days at anything always scare me. Stepping into something unknown, I can't know what to expect, so I always overdo it. Over prepare. Just in case. And it's always too much, but I do it anyway. Just in case. I'd put gas in the car the night before, so it would be ready. The drive was a long one, and I would be allowed to see him for only one hour. With an early start, it would take the entire day to drive there and back for that one hour with him. I couldn't afford to waste a minute of it, I thought. After I admitted I wasn't likely to sleep much more that night, I crawled out of bed at four in the morning. My skin shined red from the scrubbing when I stepped out of the shower. I thought I should be bringing him a clean thing, as clean as it could be. I packed food for the day, peanut butter sandwiches, Diet Cokes, apples, and some packs of those little cheese crackers. More than I would normally eat in a whole day, but you never know. I fussed over my hair and make-up, put on new panty hose, and a nice dress, as nice as I could come up with from the closet in the little apartment I'd had to move into. It was up to me to look good for him. I assumed I was all he'd had to look forward to since he'd gone in. I wanted to be just right. I drove the whole way to the prison sitting on a towel I'd spread across the car seat. I was that terrified I'd get a run in those new panty hose. Arlene would laugh herself silly if she knew about that towel. I could see the prison from the interstate as I pulled onto the exit ramp. I'm not at all sure what I expected it to look like, but I wasn't prepared for what I found. A sign at the entrance to the parking lot that said the prison was operated for the state by Capital Corrections Corporation. High, heavy walls, razor wire, guard towers and a guard post at the front gate, armed guards in all of them. Now I was terrified by the prison and my panty hose. As usual, I was early. I couldn't bear to wait in the shadow of those walls, under the wire and the guns, so I drove around the town for a while, rambled really, nothing much to see but fast-food places and a Wal-Mart, then into the McDonald's across the road from the prison for some coffee. I'd finish waiting in there. From the moment I left the interstate, I felt obvious. I was certain that every eye was on me, that each face in the window of a passing car could tell exactly why I was there. It showed through the make-up and the hair and the nice dress and the new panty hose. Convict's wife. How could they not tell? Inside the McDonald's I felt more exposed and kept my eyes on my coffee most of the time. They could all tell, and I sensed their stares pawing me, fondling me. Now I was afraid and ashamed. Embarrassed. By the time I actually returned to the prison and they led me and other visitors down a hallway to the visiting area, I was quivering. I kept my eyes on the floor and on my feet. I was afraid to look. Not until I stumbled into my seat at one of the tables did I lift my head and look around. I think at least four or five of the other people spread around the visiting area had been in the McDonald's with me. I made a complete fool of myself when they led him in. It might have been the blue stripe down each white pant leg of his uniform, the guard holding his arm, the shadow thrown by the walls of the prison, I don't know, something, but it set me off. I started crying and couldn't stop. Blubbering like a baby. Every time I tried to say something, the crying just got worse. I hadn't even been married a year yet, and here was my husband in prison and me sitting across the table from him, tongue-tied and bawling, mascara running down my face. The dress and the new panty hose didn't count for anything. I could have been wearing that towel I sat on for all it mattered. "Jesus, Laura. What you got to cry about?" he said. "I'm the one in prison, not you." He didn't try to say much more to me. It was hopeless. He mostly stared off at the walls or watched the guards patrolling the room. It seemed I was an embarrassment to him, and I couldn't really blame him. I was a mess. This went on for a bit, I don't know how long, when a woman a couple of tables down from ours started shouting. I couldn't understand exactly what she was saying, I was squeaking so myself. But I could understand what was happening. She was having an argument with her husband. Right there. In the prison visitation area. I had been up since well before dawn and had worked myself into a snit to be clean, pretty and perfect for him. This woman had her hair yanked back in a big clip, wearing jeans, sneakers, and a purple sweatshirt. There was always something purple around Arlene. Even through my bawling, I was amazed. Here was a woman who only saw her husband for an hour a week, assuming she came every week, and she spent the one hour a week she had with him, dressed in everyday clothes, arguing. Not over anything big, I could tell that much. But something little, the kind of thing married people have disagreements about all the time. They could have been sitting across from each other at the kitchen table instead of a table in the visiting area of a prison. I was still having trouble getting hold of myself when the visit was over and I found myself back in the parking lot, leaning against my car, still shaking, still crying. I felt a hand settle on my shoulder. "Must be your first visit. Right, honey?" It was Arlene, and she already had a tissue in her hand and started to wipe the mascara from my face. "You really made a mess of yourself." I nodded and tried to smile, but I still couldn't speak. I'm not sure why. Just the whole thing, I guess. I was so silly. "How long's he in for?" she said. I opened out my hand and held it up. Four fingers and a thumb equaled five years in prison. "Well, honey. I've been coming down here for over a year, and I can tell you that you ain't going to be able to stand this if you don't get a grip on yourself. You can't be like this every time. You'll shrivel up into nothing." She pulled a fresh tissue from her huge purse and kept wiping away at my face. "You've only got two choices. You can get used to it. Accept it for what it is because it ain't going to turn into anything else. Or you can stop coming. That's it." That was Arlene. From then on we'd see each other most visiting days, and we'd talk some, waiting to go in, or afterward, on our way out. When we found out that Arlene lived in a town just a little ways north of me and took the same interstate to the prison as I did, we decided that she would pick me up on her way and we would ride together to save money on gas. Arlene called it the convicts' wives' car pool. It started as something simple and sensible. A way for us to share expenses, to share the driving on the long trip. Somewhere along the way, though, during this last year of our car pool, I think it became something else. And now Arlene wanted to make a day of it. A day and a night. Stay in a motel. A little vacation, she said. Take in the sights. As it turned out, Arlene had won some money on the state lottery. Not one of those huge jackpots where people win millions of dollars and then say it won't change their lives. Arlene laughed about those people. They were either idiots or liars, she said. "Would it change my life if I won ten million dollars on the lottery? You bet your ass it would change my life. Change it damn fast." Arlene wasn't one of those winners. She had won just enough on one of those little scratch-cards to do a little something with it. When I told her it all sounded frivolous, that she had kids, bills, responsibilities, she snapped right back at me. "Come on, Laura. Lighten up. Get the bug out of your ass. When will we have a chance like this again?" It was tempting, and I knew full well that we probably wouldn't get a chance like this again for a long time, if at all. Arlene would always say the things I was afraid to say. But I still resisted. When she assured me that she had already used the money to pay off all her bills, to pay the rent ahead for three months, that one of the reasons for the excursion would be to shop for things for her kids, and that there was still enough money for the two of us to have our day of it, I still thought she had gone crazy, but I agreed. "Good," she said. "The convicts' wives' car pool is going to have a little prison-break of their own. It's about time you got some sense about you. I was afraid I'd have to come down there and kidnap you to get you to have some fun. Being responsible and having a little fun, one doesn't cancel the other, Laura, though you'd never know it from listening to you. "All right, already," I said. "It's about time we find out what's outside the walls of that goddamn prison," she said. "Our lives have been punished enough." When Arlene and I made our usual trips south to the prison, we each brought our own food along, me, usually more than I could actually eat that day, just in case, Arlene, usually just the right amount. But Arlene always brought some special little thing, nothing too much, for us to share. A jar of Greek olives, a big chocolate bar with almonds, a small box of Danish pastries, two kiwi fruit, things like that. This trip, she out-did herself. My overnight bag fit snugly beside Arlene's in the back of her hatchback. She must have read the look on my face when I climbed in her car and set my little box of food on the back seat beside a huge picnic basket. "I visited the fancy food section of the supermarket," she said. "Some treats for the trip. What the hell. Maybe we'll have a little picnic later." The basket was jammed full. Besides the usual things, peanut butter sandwiches, potato chips, cans of soda, Arlene had loaded it with things I had seen in the supermarket but never thought to buy. Little wrapped hunks of cheeses, different kinds of thin wafers, breadsticks, all imported, tins of smoked clams, macadamia nuts, big blueberry muffins, avocados, more kiwi fruit, and black raspberries, even a little jar of caviar. And wine, three bottles, dark red in dark green bottles with labels printed in French. "Now I know you've gone crazy," I said. "Stark raving mad," she said, "and loving every minute of it." By the time the sky began to get light and I could see the deep purple color of the enormous plastic loops Arlene wore in her ears, we'd been on the interstate for an hour, watching the road in front of us, munching on muffins and raspberries, talking some. "How are the boys?" I asked. "Fine," she said. "Driving me nuts as usual." I'd never met Arlene's children. She never brought them with her on our prison trips. They always stayed at home with her mother. Too little for the long drive, it would wear them out, and that prison just wasn't something they needed to see right now, not yet anyway, she would say. I wondered if that might have been what she argued about with her husband that first day I heard her. I had asked her once what she told them about where their father was. "No more than I have to," she said. We'd been quiet for a while. Arlene watched the highway and I looked out the window, thinking about those high, heavy walls and what my husband was becoming inside them. I jumped in my seat a bit when Arlene spoke suddenly. "Do you ever wonder just what it is, who it is, we're waiting for out here while they're in there?" "What do you mean?" I said. "Really, Laura. Don't you wonder sometimes? Who is it we keep coming down here to see? What are we waiting for?" "We're waiting for them. For our husbands. Waiting for our husbands to get out of prison so we can go on with our lives. What are you talking about?" "That's just it. Our lives are going on. Now. Every day. And who's them? Do you really think that the same men who walked in there are going to walk out from behind those walls whenever? Really, now. They're different already. Have been for some time. Don't try to tell me you haven't noticed." "Well . . ." "Damn right you've noticed. That's just what I'm talking about. Sometimes I'm not sure I even recognize the face I end up across that table from any given week." She did this to me all the time. Said the things I didn't want to let myself think. Said them right out loud. At least she'd had some sort of a marriage. Two kids, a few years together. Some sort of experience to base things on. I hadn't even been married a year. I'd never been with another man. Now that Arlene made me think about it, I'm not even sure that I knew him all that well the night he went into that convenience store and changed everything. I guess I didn't know him. I certainly didn't know he'd ever do a thing like that. I had seen the changes in his face, his voice, the words he used, the new scars on his hands, the one over his eyebrow. More and more lately we talked less and less on visiting day. The things she would say scared me sometimes, especially when they made sense. "Whatever," Arlene said. "We got plenty of time to worry about that later. So tell me, honey. How often do you masturbate these days?" I could actually feel the red flame across my face as I turned to her, wide-eyed and stunned. Even for Arlene, this was a mouthful. "Arlene." "Oh, come on, Laura," she said. "Don't tell me you don't." I didn't. I didn't tell her that for the last month or so I'd touch myself sometimes at night, in bed, under the covers. By accident, mostly, I thought. But every time a shiver spread through me, I felt dirty, ashamed, and jerked my hand away and buried my head under the pillow, gritting my teeth until I fell asleep. I couldn't tell her. I couldn't say it. "For godsakes," she said. "Take advantage of the little pleasures, Laura. What with my mother living with us, the boys running wild, and everything else there is to fret about, why, I think I'd go berserk if I didn't lock myself in the bedroom and diddle that thing every now and then." "Arlene." "Hell, honey. It's better than a man most times. At least your fingers don't peter out and pass out on top of you." Red-faced and shocked as I was, I had to laugh with her. I couldn't help myself. Arlene had that effect on me. At the end of the exit ramp, jammed in between the interstate and the prison, two motels face each other from opposite sides of the road into town, a Holiday Inn and a Days Inn, and Arlene had actually made a reservation for us at the Holiday Inn. We'd left so early that morning and Arlene had driven her little hatchback so fast that it was still well before noon when we arrived. Too early. Our room wasn't ready yet. "I'm afraid your room won't be available for a couple of hours yet," said the desk clerk. "They're still cleaning, but we can go ahead and get you checked in if you like." Arlene signed the registration card, dropped our room key into her purse, and pulled a few brochures describing regional tourist attractions from the display rack by the front desk. "Well, what shall we do?" she said. In front of the Holiday Inn the horizon spread before us, a half-circle that began with the prison and extended across the road, through the band of fast-food restaurants, the Days Inn, and stretched to the huge Wal-Mart and on across the interstate to the hills rising up on the other side. I wouldn't have known where to begin. Making a day of it was something new to me. Without Arlene, I might have just stood right there all day, not having the slightest idea what to do. "A little shopping seems in order, don't you think?" she said. "OK," I said. "Where?" "Where else. Wal-Mart. Seems to be pretty much the only choice anyway, from what I can see." We'd been weaving our way through the crowded aisles inside Wal-Mart for over an hour, and Arlene's shopping cart was crammed full with stuff. She shopped wildly, as if she knew exactly what she wanted and only had so much time to get it all. Her boys were growing, like boys do, she said. The oldest would be starting kindergarten in the fall. This lottery money gave her a chance to get ahead of their growing, and she was going to take full advantage of it, she said. She bought jeans and sneakers, packages of socks and underwear, t-shirts in different colors, jackets, little parkas with hoods on them. She loaded an entire wardrobe into that cart. And she bought everything in two sizes, one for them to wear now, one for them to grow into. When I asked her if she was going to get them any toys, she said no, she had something else in mind. "As far as I can tell," she said, "pretty soon you're not going to be able to take a crap without a computer. I'm getting them one now while I can. I don't want them left out later on." She didn't buy the most expensive one, but it wasn't the cheapest either. Following advice from the young man behind the counter, she selected a few programs for it, too, mostly ones she called educational, but also one with pictures of muscular things on the box that looked to be half human, half reptile, waving weapons that did I could only imagine what. "What can I do?" she said, looking at the picture on the package. "They're boys, after all." We perched the box on top of the loaded cart, I kept my hand on it to hold it in place, and we rolled Arlene's load toward the check-out lanes. I would never have thought you could get that much into one shopping cart. All this and she hadn't bought one thing for herself. "What about you, Arlene?" I said. "Aren't you going to get something for yourself?" She didn't think she needed anything, but I dragged her into the women's clothing section anyway. It didn't take me long to find just the right thing for her. A dress, light and silky, short sleeves, open at the neck, and purple. "Come on, Arlene. Try it on," I said. "You'd look great in this." "Yeah. If I could stretch it over this ass," she said. But she tried it on and she did look good. Her rear end wasn't small, but it wasn't that big either. The purple dress made her look full, lush, alive. I already knew this, but now anyone who saw her in this dress would know it, too. They couldn't help it. I knew the purple would get to her, and she agreed to the new dress, on the condition that I let her pick one out for me. It had been a long time since I'd had a new dress. I wasn't hard to win over. She chose a red one, high-necked and sleeveless. It felt a little racy, but I was caught up in it now, and Arlene insisted. Arlene was a little caught up, too, by now, and we each had new shoes and panty hose to go with our dresses before we made it to the check-out line. "I don't know where we're going to go in these things," Arlene said, "but we'll look good when we get there." Wal-Mart was busy that day, and the girl behind the cash register looked haggard by the time it was our turn and we started unloading the packed cart. She took a deep breath before she began to drag Arlene's mountain of merchandise over the scanner. "Gosh, Arlene," I said. "Look at all this stuff. How much did you win on that lottery ticket anyway?" "Just enough for this, for the rest of our little vacation, and to go back home tomorrow as broke as I ever was. But at least I'll be a little ahead of the game, right?" The check-out lanes were full all around us, and two women leaned on the handle of a shopping cart behind us, watching Arlene's pile slowly move from the cart into a mass of plastic bags. "What do you think?" Arlene said. "Maybe we'll wear those new dresses to visitation day tomorrow. Give the boys a thrill." The smile froze on my face when I heard one of the women behind us mutter to the other one. I knew Arlene heard it, too. "Prisoners' wives. I thought so," the woman said. We'd both heard it, but Arlene was the one who spoke up. I knew she would. The fact that her husband was a convict never embarrassed Arlene like it did me. Him being in prison didn't make her, or him for that matter, any less of a human being, she said. She once said that being a criminal was as much a matter of luck and timing as anything else, really. I barely breathed waiting for what would come out of her mouth. "That's right," Arlene said, turning to the woman behind her. "What's your point?" The woman tried to ignore her, look away, but Arlene wasn't about to let her off that easy. "Let me guess," Arlene said. "Your husband must work at the prison? Only other options are right here or flipping burgers over at McDonald's." "My husband is a guard at the prison," the woman said. "What of it?" "Well, there you go. Not much difference between us." "I beg your pardon. My husband's no criminal." "Yeah, but he works in the same place as mine and keeps pretty much the same hours, works for the same boss. Don't seem to be such a big difference. Both in the punishment business. And I spend my money in the same goddamn Wal-Mart you do. So there you have it." The things Arlene would say. I didn't know what would happen next when a woman in the next lane over chimed in. "That's right. You tell her, honey." I looked around to see where that voice had come from when I heard a second one from the lane on the other side of us. "You go, girl." Were these other women here making a day of it, too? I had always thought I was an intruder here. That what went on here outside the walls of the prison had nothing to do with me. Leave it to Arlene, and now these other two women, to show me it was more complicated than that. I was afraid we might find ourselves in the middle of a brawl when the cashier finished ringing in Arlene's purchase and piped up with the total. Everyone seemed as impressed with the amount of money this woman was spending at a Wal- Mart across the road from the prison where her husband was held as they were with what she had said. They hushed and the girl behind the register looked relieved when Arlene pulled a choking wad of bills from her purse. There was barely room for us in Arlene's car once we packed all the loot in it. We couldn't even see out the rear window, so we decided to unload it all into our room when we got back to the motel. We piled everything in a corner, as much out of the way as possible, and I hung our new dresses up so they wouldn't wrinkle, just in case. Our room was on a side of the motel away from the prison, but if I leaned my face against the window, I could just see part of it off to the right. The glass pressing against my cheek was cool from the air conditioning in the room. "It's still there, Laura," Arlene said. She lay sprawled on one of the beds, flipping through the brochures she got at the front desk. "Arlene?" "Uh-hunh?" "Do you think they would do the same if it was us?" "What?" "Do you think if we were the ones in prison, our husbands would be like us? Do you think they'd come down here every weekend to see us?" "I wouldn't count on it, honey." "Why?" "Don't know. Because they're men, and men and women do things differently, I suppose." "You think?" "Probably. Besides, it's a moot point. We wouldn't handle things like them." "What do you mean?" "No matter how screwed up things got, neither of us would think that robbing a convenience store or trying to make off with a load of TV's and stereos out of the back of an appliance store one night like my dip-shit husband did would fix things. You and I just don't think that way." "That's for sure." "Men take things. We make things. We're different that way." Arlene didn't sound so crazy to me anymore. "One thing's for sure," she said. "They sure as hell wouldn't do what we're doing." She laughed and spread her arms wide, indicating the motel room and the mounds of children's clothing and the computer box we'd just unloaded from the car. "Now, I think it's high time we got cooking here. How about a little picnic in the country?" she said. "Sounds perfect," I said. It did sound perfect. Completely perfect. Arlene scooped up one of the brochures and gave it a little shake. "Well, I think I've found just the place for the convicts' wives' car pool to have a perfect picnic." If it had been up to me, we never would have left that place. Under the roots of a tree overhanging the stream, I would have burrowed out a little cave just big enough for Arlene and I to curl into and stay forever. She had chosen the perfect place for our picnic, up in the hills only a few miles from town, a small state park spread out around an old mill house. I could feel the air grow cooler as we drove into the hills and the trees closed around us. The mill had been restored and actually worked. Water diverted from the stream nearby ran down a series of chutes, turned the old water wheel, and collected in a pond by the mill where a pair of ducks swam. Inside the mill house you could watch the grindstone turning and, at a little counter in the corner, buy bags of cornmeal actually ground there, wildflower honey from hives kept somewhere else in the park, and preserves still put up by people still living in these hills. Arlene and I wandered into the mill house with a few other tourists, watched the huge stone slowly rolling around its circle, and Arlene bought two jars of wild berry preserves. Her boys would love the stuff. Probably dig it right out of the jar with their grubby little fingers and make a hell of a mess, she said. We followed the path away from the mill house, out of the clearing past picnic tables where families sat together, eating lunches out of big plastic coolers. Arlene thought we should find a spot a little farther away. "Let's follow the water," she said. We carried Arlene's picnic basket between us, each gripping the handle with one hand, and soon came to a spot of level ground, out of sight of the mill house, under the trees, beside the stream. The flowing water rushed and gurgled around rocks in the streambed. Perfect. Arlene had even brought along two wine glasses, and we clinked them together, a bit too hard, sloshing wine on our hands. We laughed, licked the wine from our fingers, and drank, toasting our little vacation. The dark French wine was tart, raw, and delicious. It burned my throat going down. The sharp, red liquid trickling down my throat felt like the stream beside us sounded. I wanted to swallow them both forever. Arlene laid out the contents of the basket on the tablecloth she had spread on the ground, and we ate our picnic lunch in the splotches of sunlight filtering through the treetops. The cheese she sliced onto the wafers was strong, pungent. One kind had to be spread on with a knife, and we both said it tasted like it had gone rotten as we chewed it and took another serving. We dipped our breadsticks in the wine, and licked off the green blobs of ripe avocado stuck to our fingers. The smoked clams were rich, oily, and I pressed each one between my tongue and the roof of my mouth before I bit into it. Arlene rubbed the fuzzy outsides of the kiwi fruit against her cheek before she peeled them, and I rolled each macadamia nut between my fingers, noting its feel, shape, smell, before I popped it in my mouth. "Those nuts come from Hawaii," Arlene said. "Maybe next time we'll take a trip there. What do you think?" I thought it would be the most wonderful thing in the world and tried not to think about how it would never happen. "Well, shall we try these little fish eggs?" Arlene held up the little jar of caviar, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. "Oh yes," I said, and sipped more of my wine. She spooned two heaps of the shiny black goo onto a wafer, one for each of us. We observed each other closely as we chewed. "You ever have this stuff before?" she said. "No. You?" "Nope. Kind of salty. It's OK, but I don't see what all the fuss is about." "Me either," I said. "Can I have some more?" Peanut butter sandwiches and potato chips didn't seem to go too well with all this, so we left them in the bottom of the basket for later. Just in case. By the time we'd eaten enough of Arlene's special things, our wine glasses held the last of the first bottle of wine, and we drank from them as we set the remains of our lunch back in the basket. I felt warm and new. Perfect. The cool, high air, the scent of the trees, the grass poking through decaying leaves, the quivering sunlight through the branches overhead, the sound of the racing water, Arlene beside me, all of it coated my skin and oozed into my flesh. I was afraid it could all wash away too easily, like a cricket sucked through a bubble and driven down the current of the stream running beside us. Being with Arlene made me think like that. I thought I heard a fish jump in the stream as I closed my eyes, wrapped myself in it, and held on tight. My hand was clenched around the stem of my wine glass when I opened my eyes again. I gripped it so tightly that my knuckles were white dots on a red fist. I was surprised I hadn't snapped the glass in two. For how long the French wine and flowing water had put me to sleep, I couldn't tell. Arlene sat cross-legged beside me, her eyes closed, her head tilted back. I had never seen her so still, so quiet. "I'm afraid I'll get used to this," I said. "It's too perfect. I don't want it to end. Ever." Arlene didn't budge as she answered. "Well, honey. Drink it in. Every bit of it. This isn't our life. Today comes compliments of the state lottery, and it only lasts one day." We followed the trail further along the stream until it veered through the trees and curved back to the mill house clearing and the parking lot. At the last bend an opening in the trees revealed the valley at the foot of the hills and the little town in the middle of it. Even at this distance, from this height, we could make out the Wal-Mart, in the middle of its enormous parking lot, the roadway feeding out of that lot, through the string of fast-food places, across the road into town, and directly on over to the prison, set on a rise, well back from the road, surrounded by its own parking lot and the walls. "Neither one looks all that different from the other from up here, does it?" Arlene said. Just then I couldn't understand how I'd ever thought Arlene could be crazy. We clinked our wine glasses together again, more carefully this time, because we remembered the mess we'd made earlier in the day and didn't want to spill anything on the white tablecloth in the restaurant. Truth be told, we were a little drunk and we knew it, so we just barely touched the lips of our glasses together and grinned. When we returned to our motel room after our picnic, we had opened the second bottle of wine and watched free HBO on the TV and took showers and used all the little soaps and shampoos and conditioners in the little basket on the shelf above the toilet. Arlene said she wished she had something to mend just so she could use the little sewing kit in the basket, too. While we were dressing for dinner, sliding into our new dresses and shoes and panty hose, I told Arlene the story of that first visiting day, how I'd fussed over my appearance so and sat on the towel the whole trip down for fear of tearing my hose. She laughed so hard that wine came out her nose. I knew she would. Standing beside each other at the mirror, we fixed our hair and make-up, helped each other with stray strands, offered suggestions, poked fun, and finished that second bottle of wine. Arlene looked at our reflections, her in purple, me in red, and declared that we looked pretty damned hot, if she did say so herself. We were beautiful. A blind man could have seen it. That blind man could have also seen that we were getting fairly drunk and had no business driving a car anywhere |