Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven?

MAFIA CHIC

“The author of
Diary of a Blues Goddess
and
Divas Don’t Fake It
scores again with a charming heroine and a winsome tale.”

—
Booklist

SPANISH DISCO

“Cassie is refreshingly free of the self-doubt that afflicts most of her peers.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“This fast-paced and funny novel has a great premise and some interesting twists…”

—
Romantic Times

DIARY OF A BLUES GODDESS

“With a luscious atmosphere and a lively, playful tone, Orloff’s novel is a perfect read for a hot summer night.”

—
Booklist

THE ROOFER

“Orloff’s characters are wonderful, most particulary Ava, who is resilient enough to take a chance on love.”

—
Romantic Times

“
The Roofer
is a fantastic novel…fans of urban noir romances will appreciate the contrast between glitter and grim and hopelessness and love in a deep, offbeat tale….”

—Harriet Klausner

As always, I thank my agent, Jay Poynor, who has felt an affinity for this book from Day One.

To my brilliant editor, Margaret Marbury, for her insights and her friendship; the cover design team at Red Dress Ink; Dianne Moggy; Isabel Swift; Donna Hayes—an absolutely empowering team at my wonderful publisher.

To J.B., C.C., M.K.N., and all survivors of cancer I know, as well as all the ones I don’t.

To Writer’s Cramp—Pam, Gina and Jon—without the push to “bring pages” every two weeks, I am certain I would go six months without producing a lousy paragraph.

To my wonderful family and friends: Maryanne, Walter, Stacey, Jessica, Pam, Kathy J., Kathy L., Kerri, Gloria, Joey, Alexa, Nicholas and Isabella. And finally, to J.D. for understanding that this writer was never meant to cook, visit a grocery store, or keep her mouth shut.

Lily

M
y phone rang, and I reached a hand out into the blackness and fumbled for the receiver.

My best friend’s voice spoke, singsong. “Is this the decrepit old hag?”

I groaned and looked at the clock on my nightstand. “Payback’s a bitch, Michael. Just remember that.”

“Happy birthday, ancient troll.”

“It’s five-thirty in the morning.”

“But you know the tradition.”

Ever since Michael and I discovered, nearly twenty years ago, that our birthdays fell a week apart, the tradition has been to be the first person to wish the other a happy birthday. Somehow, with Michael’s latent gay frat-boy sensibility, this has disintegrated into phone calls at 5:00 a.m. and relentless teasing and Over The Hill black balloons. Rather than maintaining my dignity, of course, I have gone birthday for birthday with him, each of us escalating the idiocy. By the time we’re ninety, I am sure he will be hiding my false teeth, and I will be sending buff male strip-o-grams—like the “cops” who yank their tear-away pants off—to the nursing home. If I hadn’t answered the phone, he would have let himself into my house with his key and likely dumped ice water on my head. It’s been done. The year I turned twenty-seven.

“Like I said, my bestest friend, payback’s a bitch.” I smiled despite myself. “And I live for revenge.”

“We’ll see.”

“We will indeed.”

“And how does it feel…being the big 4—”

“
Don’t
say it.”

“Four-oh. I said it.”

“Fuck you, Michael,” I laughed. Then I hung up on him. Three seconds later my phone rang again.

“Forty. Forty. Forty. Forty.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.” I hung up on him again. And once again it rang. “Shut up!” I snapped into the phone before he could speak.

“Now, Lily…I mean it sincerely. Because you’re so much
older
than I am, you need to tell me how it
feels
to be so hideously ancient.”

“First of all, I’m thirty-five. Second, you’ll know how it feels soon enough. In one week, specifically.”

He hooted into the phone. “I’ve
seen
your driver’s license. Thirty-five. This is the big one, my dear old—and I do mean old—friend. The one you’ve been fretting about since you
actually
turned thirty-five. Enjoy the day.”

I let out a half laugh and hung up the phone, then rolled over and tried to fall back to sleep. It was Saturday. Ever since my son Noah discovered PlayStation
and
grew tall enough to get his own apple juice from the fridge—albeit while leaving sticky juice residue on the kitchen counter—I have rediscovered the joy of sleeping until eight-thirty. Saturday has taken on a quasi-religious status. It is sacred. There was a time, of course, P.K. (prekids), P.M.A.D (premarriage and atomic divorce), when I would think nothing of staying over at a lover’s apartment, sleeping in, having lazy Saturday sex, showering together, and then heading off to a late brunch—which would usually include spicy Bloody Marys and reading the
Times
—before going back to the apartment for more lazy Saturday sex…and then a nap. I let out a mostly silent groan at the thought. Yet another reminder I am no longer twenty. Well, that and breasts that have gone through a combined total of nearly two and a half years of breastfeeding. They used to be perky enough to go braless. No more.

I rolled over in bed. It sucks being a grown-up. It also used to be that I could easily fall back to sleep once woken. Mothers lose that ability, and thanks to Michael, I was up for the day. I climbed out of bed and padded into the bathroom. I shut the door and flicked on the light. Squinting as my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I surveyed my body in the full-length mirror—and suddenly felt something akin to panic.

Racing out of the bathroom, I grabbed my phone and dialed Michael. He answered on the first ring. Obviously he hadn’t gone back to bed either—if he even had
gone
to bed. He had no kids. He still got to do things like that.

“Yeah?”

“It’s the end of life as we know it.”

“I know. You’re forty. I can hear your hips creaking.”

“No. Worse.”

“What can be worse than that?”

“I just discovered my first gray pubic hair.”

“Might as well commit suicide. Can you dye down there?”

“I don’t know. I never gave it a thought. Just like I never gave it a thought that one day I might not
want
a tattoo of a pink flamingo on my ass. You do know asses sag, don’t you?”

“Yours is still firm.”

“I know. But I’m picturing seventy-year-old flamingo-ass. Like I’m now picturing completely gray granny pubic hair. I think I need to get drunk today.”

“Which is why I’ll be there in a matter of thirty minutes, with the fixings for Bloody Marys and a box of Krispy Kremes.”

“I’m going to pluck it.”

“Good. I think you should. Then we should get drunk.”

“Krispy Kremes?”

“Warm. Fresh out of the oven. Screw Atkins. Life is too short not to eat carbs.”

“You know, if it wasn’t for your being gay, I’d consent to your being my second husband.”

“I thought you swore off marriage as a matter of principle.”

“I did. But we’re talking Krispy Kremes.”

“See you in a few. Shower. Put on your makeup. Then tell yourself that flamingo-ass of yours is still hot.”

“See you in a few.”

I hung up the phone. I knew why Michael was driving over. It was the same reason he always spent my birthday with me. Because left on my own to ponder gray hair and another year, I’d wallow in self-pity for days.

As I showered, I thought about why. When I was younger, it was the concept of milestones. When I turned twenty-eight, I decided I could no longer lay claim to being in my “mid-twenties,” and therefore had to say I was in my “late-twenties.” And with each passing year, I felt something else slip away. Now, at forty-pretending-to-be-thirty-five, I knew that this birthday, in particular, meant the end of sex.

It’s not that I thought I would never have sex again, but with aching clarity, growing older is a reminder that at some point—some line of demarcation—you will never again put on a little black dress and a pair of stilettos, walk into the room, be wanted by any man in it with a pulse, make eye contact with a tall, dark and handsome stranger and know if you wanted to bed him, you could. You cease to be a sexual being in the same way you were when you were twenty-two, when something about the very air you breathed, your scent, made you an object of desire. At forty, you can still be desired, but it requires more intimacy. More effort. When you are desired at forty, it is for the whole exhausting package—your mind, your looks, the connection of two souls. But when you’re wanted at twenty-two, it’s because, frankly, you’re a hot lay. And with age comes wisdom that while the whole package is a more intense experience, there’s still a mourning for what you once were. What you once could have just because you wanted it.

I finished showering, pulled on my silk robe, put on my makeup—deciding that Chanel red lipstick was a forty kind-of-color—blew-dry my hair and went downstairs to start the coffeemaker. I heard a car in the driveway, and went to my front door and opened it for Michael.

And there, in my robe, I was greeted by the sight of forty (I counted later) large pink plastic flamingos stuck like a hungry flock into my yard. Michael climbed out of his black Spyder convertible.

“Like ’em?” he grinned, holding a shopping bag and a box of Krispy Kremes.

“When did you do this?”

“At 3:00 a.m.”

“Do you know how juvenile you are?”

“Absolutely.”

“I think this is the start of a very long day.”

“Baby…” He smiled at me. “You have no idea the things I’ve planned.”

“Come on in.” It was then I turned around and got a good look at my dog, Gunther, who came lumbering in from his sleeping spot in the laundry room. He was wearing a doggie T-shirt that read, My Bitch Is 40.

I rolled my eyes.

A long, long day calling for many, many Bloody Marys.