Page 6 of Happy After All

In addition to Elise and Alice, there’s also ninety-one-year-old Ruth Moore, who told me that back in her cocktail waitress days she’d had to hide a knife in her girdle to keep handsy men in check. She’s still petite and feline, her movements as precise and cutting as her dark gaze.

Then there’s Albert Feynman, who is a playwright, or so he says. His hair is always slicked down, his glasses black framed and thick. He has a rotating collection of pastel button-up shirts, all with small embroidered palm trees on them. He’s always a little indignant that I earn money writingdown-market smut, while he can’t sell his masterpieces.

I’m not entirely convinced he isn’t on the run from the law and the whole frustrated playwright thing isn’t a shtick.

Mostly because that’s what Ruth told me one night while giving me a hard candy from her purse. I have no reason to doubt her. It gives me something interesting to think about while I clean out the pool, and I’m always looking for something interesting to think about when I clean out the pool.

Albert is nothing if not snide about genre romances, and while it annoys me, fighting with him about it gives me life.

I actually do like Albert, even if sometimes I’m not in the mood for disapproving eyebrows and snide asides.

I amalwaysin the mood when he’s being snide about others, of course.

All my long-term residents—except Elise and Emma—are over sixty. There’s also Jonathan and Joseph Stevens-Fielding, and the cribbage ladies—Lydia, Wilma, and Gladys, who I think of as my personal Golden Girls.

I try not to let myself get roped into cribbage games because they destroy me every time without mercy, and sometimes they play for money, and frankly I haven’t got any extra to lose.

The motel is my life, and it pays for itself almost entirely. My books pay for me, modestly. Somehow it all fits together, even if it’s a bit rickety.

Idefinitelydon’t need to lose money to some canny old ladies who will only spend it on booze and cigarettes. I don’t feel bad thinking this because I’ll tell them to their darling faces.

“You’ll only spend your winnings on booze and cigarettes,” I say as I settle at the table, full from our barbecue dinner and a little sweaty from the lingering heat in the air. The sun is behind the mountains now, and it’s finally starting to cool down.

“I am shocked, Amelia,” says Wilma, her southern accent suddenly coming on much thicker than usual. “I am a lady.”

I’m powerless against them. They’re too cute. I love them too much.

I’ve spent the past year making a family here, and they’re certainly better than any of the family I’ve left behind. I decide to join, resigned to losing my hair salon budget.

It’s not a big budget. I’ve scaled back. I used to get my hair cut and dyed every six weeks. My natural hair color is a very dull brown (my mother calls it that), and Chris called itmousy. I didn’t want to be a mouse in LA. I wanted to be glossy. I wanted to stand out. Even though I never had aspirations of being in front of the camera, I knew that my looks mattered.

The role of Amelia in LA was played by a fancier version of me.

But now my looks only matter to me, and I don’t mind mousy, I decided.

The game immediately becomes hostile in the best way, with Gladys hurling insults at Wilma, and Lydia and I hooting with laughter.

Then I hear a door open. I look and see Nathan Hart walking out of room 32. He must be having an emergency, because if he leaves the motel, he certainlyhas never done sowhile we’re sitting out here.

He doesn’t seem bothered or seem to notice as he locks the door behind him.

“Oh, the handsome man is back!” Lydia says, her eyes going wide.

Lydia manages to look young and innocent despite being eighty-seven. I don’t know how she does it.

“If I were younger . . . ,” Gladys begins.

“I don’t need to be younger,” Wilma says, squaring up her shoulders in a way that emphasizes her assets. “I just need him to have mature taste.”

It takes me a second to realize they’re talking about Nathan. And his hotness. Which is apparently a universal thing, regardless of age.

“Ameliais just the right age,” Lydia muses, that innocent tone not seeming so innocent to me now.

“Amelia runs the motel,” I say, “and therefore can’t fraternize with guests.” Guests who are famous authors and who alsohate me.

Hatemight be a strong word. Maybe. But he certainly doesn’t like me or want to be charmed by me in any way.

Wilma shuffles the cards in her hands. “What’sthis, then, sugar?”

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