Three

I’m having an out of body experience. That’s the only plausible excuse for the situation at hand. I’m having cocktails (happy hour and someone else is buying) with people who have secure, good-paying jobs. I oh-so-vaguely remember being in a similar position. Anyway, these humanoid-looking aliens are posturing about recent economic events in the same way I might discuss the melting glaciers of the Antarctic. It’s a concern, but it’s happening over there. Meanwhile, I’m smiling, nodding and drowning.

Joe is two beers into a discussion about why his former employer folded. Joe managed ad sales for a string of magazines extolling the good life of luxury homes, yachts and high-end cars, aimed at those who very recently achieved that good life and at those who aspired to it. Why did the magazines fold? Simple: The people who recently left their stucco bungalows for fancier digs stopped acquiring new toys and in some cases lost the toys they had. Those who bought the magazines to dream a little dream of wealth had to go back to spending that $5 a month on groceries. Oh, and throw in the fact that half the advertisers—those highly-leveraged developers who built mini-mansions in zero-lot-line trailer parks—went out of business when the nouveau riche went back to being the vieux pauvre. However, it will take Joe at least one more beer to disclose these simple truths to his rapt thrall, a petite blonde with a newly-minted EdD and an expensive rack. Right now, he’s busy expounding on the publisher’s lack of vision.

A cute waiter named Todd (aren’t they all named Todd?) hands me a double Glenfiddich on the rocks. “It’s from the gentleman at the corner table,” he says. I take a sip, thrill to the smoky, smooth taste and turn to face my benefactor. There at the back of the room, glass raised in my direction, sits my ex-husband. Well, that’s what he calls himself. He’s really a former housemate from my lovely misspent young adulthood. One night in a cocaine-and-Scotch fueled haze we allowed a neighbor who had been recently ordained as a minister in the World Stewardship Ministries Outreach to practice his marriage ceremony chops on us. We dutifully consummated the marriage and, having satisfied the curiosity, felt little need to have much to do with one another again, save the occasional innuendo-studded conversation. I haven’t seen him in years and probably wouldn’t have recognized him except for the fact that his face is plastered on TV ads and billboards all over town. Colby Horner in your corner. Ho-Ho, short for his nickname Horny Horner, is a personal injury law factory magnate. We locked eyes and I started to stroll over to his table to catch up, but before I could grab my purse a young lovely in a black sheath and 4-inch heels returned to his table.

Just as well.