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The Ladies of Eden Roc

"He did what?" Teda Fineberg asked her nearly constant cohort, Lilly Rosenthal.
      "Umbrellas," Lilly replied. Both women had solid, stout, New York accents.
      "What?" Teda rejoined.
      "Umbrellas," repeated Lilly.
      Teda and Lilly sat under a pale blue and white striped patio umbrella on the deck around the pool at Eden Roc Hotel on Miami Beach.
      "Umbrellas," Teda repeated the word of her friend, pointing directly upward at the canvas contraption covering them both from the sun's late morning rays.
      "Not umbrella-umbrellas," Lilly explained, raising her hand in front of Teda's face while holding her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. In a slightly lower voice Lilly added: "Umbrella-umbrellas."
      Teda mimicked Lilly's hand gesture and said herself: "Not umbrella-umbrellas but," and in a lower voice, "umbrella-umbrellas."
      "Right," Lilly chirped, smoothing a hand over her shellacked bouffant hairdo. She kept her hair dyed fall apple red. A widow for five years, and in her sixties for seven, Lilly spent a month each winter at Eden Roc with Teda.
      Teda, like Lilly, had a puffed and well teased hairdo, hers dyed jet black. At sixty-six, Teda was a year younger than Lilly, although she had been a widow for a year longer.
      Teda asked: "Do you mean umbrella-umbrellas?"
      Lilly nodded.
      "Like the tiny paper things in drinks?" Teda asked.
      "Uh-huh," replied Lilly. "That's right."
      "And he invented them? This fellow you met invented them?" Teda, part impressed, part skeptical, enquired.
      "Uh-huh, that's right."
      "Those little umbrella-umbrellas in drinks?"
      "That's right," replied Lilly. "Uh-huh."
      Solemnly, Teda noted: "I like those umbrellas."
      Equally somber, Lilly herself remarked: "Oh my, so do I."
      "They're swell," Teda said.
      "Swell," Lilly concurred.
      "And he's here?" Teda asked.
      "Uh-huh. That's right."
      "At the Eden Roc?"
      "At the Eden Roc."
      "I get those umbrellas a lot," Teda stated, almost to herself and not so much as a conversational point. In the same tone, Lilly quite agreed.
      "He must have made a fortune, with those little umbrellas and all," Teda suggested.
      "A fortune."
      "A fortune?"
      "A big one."
      "A big fortune?"
      "We should get lunch," Lilly suggested.
      "Lunch?"
      "Lunch."
      "Now?" asked Teda.
      Lilly nodded.
      "Where?" asked Teda
      "For lunch?"
      Teda nodded.
      "Wallace's?" Lilly replied, referring to a twenty-four-hour diner down Collins Avenue about ten blocks from Eden Roc.
      "Walk?" Teda asked.
      "Walk," Lilly returned.
      "Walk, then?"
      "Let's walk," Lilly affirmed.
      "Now?" asked Teda.
      "Now," Lilly replied.
      The two ladies, each carrying an extra twenty or thirty pounds apiece, eased out of their respective chaises longue with noticeable effort.
      "Diets," Lilly remarked. A mumbled statement.
      "Yeah, yeah," Teda rejoined. In a mutter.
      Once they were both standing, they each smoothed and patted their heavily hair-sprayed hairdos and sauntered across the pool deck to the entrance into the rear of the hotel's lobby. A thin-legged easel stood directly inside the rear doors that connected the lobby with the pool deck. On the stand perched a picture of the President-elect, John Kennedy, the man who inched to victory in the nation's election two weeks earlier. Both women had voted Kennedy and each took second glances at the handsome gent every time they passed to and from the passageway to the pool.
      "Don't slip," Lilly cautioned Teda as she always did when they crossed the high buffed, shiny tiled floor.
      "Pool water!" Teda shook her head, scowling and scanning the lobby floor looking for errant drippings. They never found any during their stays at Eden Roc as the staff of regulars, a group of mostly Central American and Cuban immigrants, and a scattering of Jewish college age boys and girls working the holiday season, kept well-minded the gracious landings of Eden Roc.
      Upon reaching the elevator, the women punched floor seven on the console and were back at their two-bedroomed suite in little time. The ladies changed out of their lacey and ruffled bathing suits, reworked makeup and hair, and were ready to depart for Wallace's for lunch a little over an hour later.
      "What's the time?" Lilly asked Teda as they adjusted hemlines in the sitting parlor of their suite.
      "It's one o'clock, that's what it is."
      "One o'clock?" Lilly sounded surprised at how much time they spent redressing and re-primping for lunch.
      "One o'clock," Teda firmly replied, squeezing into a pair of size six shoes, two points too small. "My feet are swelling."
      "They are not," Lilly retorted with an air of mild disgust. "They're the wrong size. You always buy the wrong size. You can't fit those sausages into a six, Teda Fineberg, or I'm Lauren Bacall."
      "You're too old to be Lauren Bacall," Teda shot back.
      "And your feet are too fat to squish in sixes."
      As though none of the exchange had occurred, Teda happily said: "Ready?"
      "Ready," Lilly replied.
      Teda wore a crisp, starched navy linen dress with gold buttons the size of small fists. Lilly chose a cotton two piece outfit, pale yellow with quarter-coin-sized dots in red. They each donned matching straw sunhats bought a couple of days earlier at a boutique on Ocean Drive.
      "Where are we having lunch?" Teda asked as the two ladies made down the hallway to the elevators.
      "We decided Wallace's," Lilly snipped.
      "Well, that was an hour ago. I thought you'd change your mind like always," Teda snapped.
      "Uh-huh. That's right," Lilly sarcastically rejoined. "It took an hour because of your fat feet."
      "My feet?" Teda tersely queried as the lift doors slid open and the women joined two men inside, not pausing their conversation for a solitary pulse.
      "Uh-huh. That's right."
      "My feet?" Teda repeated.
      "If it weren't for your trying to shove your fat feet into those tiny, tiny shoes, we'd been ready to eat at eleven."
      "Eleven?"
      "Eleven."
      "We weren't even in from the pool at eleven," Teda replied.
      They reached the lobby where Teda asked Lilly if they were walking.
      "Yes, let's walk."
      "It's ten blocks," Teda reminded.
      "Ten?"
      "Ten."
      They stepped outside and stood directly at the front of the hotel. A youthful bellman tipped his head towards the ladies with a smile.
      "What's the temperature?" Lilly asked the boy.
      "Almost ninety." The smile he wore drooped in the heat the moment he uttered the mark.
      "Ninety?" The ladies retorted together. "Oye Vey!" they exclaimed in unison. They asked for a taxicab.
      "Right away," the bellboy responded, motioning for the first of four idling on the curb to pull into the hotel's roundabout to pick up guests.
      "Tip him," Lilly whispered to Teda.
      "Who?"
      "Him." Lilly pointed at the bellboy.
      Teda scrounged into her purse and pulled out a couple of quarters, which she handed to the eagerly helpful young man.
      Inside the taxi they directed the Cuban at the wheel to ferry them to Wallace's.
      "Da' stars, de' et der," he said, believing he was providing useful and tip enhancing information to tourists.
      "What did he say?" Lilly asked Teda.
      Word for word and syllable for syllable Teda precisely mimicked the man. Lilly groaned, irritated.
      "Just go straight down Collins. We've been here a lot and don't need any running around. No foolishness," Lilly told the cabby.
      The driver, whose English was limited, understood little of what Lilly said and responded with: "Yeah, yeah. Berry heated out, berry heated."
      Teda began: "He said berry …"
      Lilly slapped her friend on the knee and scolded: "Quiet, just quiet down."
      In a few minutes, the yellow-colored cab pulled up next to Wallace's twenty-four-hour café, emblazoned with a neon sign that announced: 'Where The Stars Eat.'
      Lilly and Teda piled out of the cab, Lilly grabbing the fare and tip on that trip. Lilly kept running calculations of who paid for what and when in an effort to keep balance between the two of them. Teda paid no never mind to who spent what for what.
      The women had been seated a couple of minutes when a tall, silver haired gentleman, slim and trim and in his sixties, appeared at their table. Neither Teda nor Lilly noticed the gent's approach as they were well engrossed in another bout about Teda's feet.
      "Miss Rosenthal?" the man interrupted.
      She looked up, as did Teda, instantly. In a second the women locked gazes with each other, Lilly speaking as if no one stood next to their table.
      "It's him," Lilly advised.
      "Him?"
      "Him."
      "Who?"
      "Him."
      "Who's him?" Teda asked.
      Lilly gritted her teeth, leaned in and whispered as best she could: "The umbrella-umbrellas man."
      Teda's eyes opened wide as she knowingly nodded. Lilly blushed, realizing at the same instant that she'd forgotten the man's name.
      "Hello," Lilly greeted, looking up at the lanky fellow.
      "Hello," he gallantly replied. "And this must be your friend?"
      "I'm Teda Fineberg," Teda responded. "Are you here for lunch?"
      "Of course he's here for lunch," Lilly snapped.
      "I meant," Teda retorted, directing her remarks squarely at Lilly, "Have you had lunch?"
      "I just arrived," the man explained.
      "Join us, then," Lilly eagerly invited.
      "Please do," Teda echoed. "Introduce us," Teda directed Lilly, near certain her friend did not recall the gent's name. An awkward silence followed during which the man extended his manicured hand to Teda.
      "I'm Richard Therese," he said, speaking in the flat tone of a Midwesterner. Teda imagined Chicago, perhaps Omaha. Certainly not a Jew, she thought.
      The women eventually ordered corned beef sandwiches and home fries while Richard Therese chose a patty melt with potato salad on the side.
      "Lilly tells me you're at the Eden Roc," Teda said between bites on her corned beef on rye.
      "I am."
      "First time?" Teda asked.
      "It is," Lilly responded for Richard, not wanting to get or even feel shoved out of the conversational flow for a moment.
      "We go every winter. Five years now," Teda volunteered.
      "Since both our husbands passed," Lilly added as Teda nodded.
      "We both, with our husbands … we all came to Miami Beach every winter for at least a month for years," Teda expanded.
      "But since both our husbands passed, Teda and I come down together in November every year," Lilly continued.
      "We stay through New Year's," Teda noted.
      "We stay through New Year's," Lilly confirmed.
      "Well, it's lovely here," Richard remarked. "Hot, but lovely."
      "Today's especially hot," Lilly replied.
      "Not normally so hot this time of year. Usually high in the eighties, but not ninety," Teda expanded.
      "Not like today," Lilly remarked.
      "Not like today," Teda echoed.
      The conversation over the course of the nearly two-hour luncheon at Wallace's meandered expansively. Richard ended up picking up the tab, over the firm and continuing protestations of both Lilly and Teda.
      As they rose to depart, Richard explained that he planned to head down to Ocean Drive to do some window-shopping and invited the ladies along. They both declined in unison, bowing out because of their impending mid-afternoon naps.
      "If we don't get our naps," Lilly whispered as if confiding a great secret, "if we don't get our naps, we can hardly move at dinner time, you see."
      "She's right," Teda concurred.
      "Uh-huh," Lilly herself added.
      "Well, then, how about joining me for dinner then, tonight at Eden Roc?" Richard invited.
      Lilly and Teda looked at each other and shrugged, then agreed to accept.
      "About eight then? At the hotel? I'll meet you both in the lobby."
      The ladies again agreed.
      "Then it's a date," Richard Therese said in parting.
      Outside Wallace's, Richard first flagged down a taxi for his companions and then one for himself. During the cab trip back to Eden Roc, Teda asked: "When did you meet Richard?"
      "Yesterday."
      "Yesterday?"
      "At the pool," Lilly noted.
      "At the pool?"
      "At the pool."
      "I was at the pool," Teda remarked, a spritz of irritation in her voice.
      "So was Richard."
      "And why didn't I see him?" Teda asked.
      "You went in."
      "Went in? In where?"
      "In the hotel," Lilly replied.
      "Into the hotel? When?"
      "Yesterday."
      "Yesterday … But when?" asked Teda.
      "When I met Richard."
      "I went into the hotel?" Teda did not recall leaving Lilly alone poolside. Before Lilly could answer, the taxi pulled up to the Eden Roc.
      "It's your turn," Lilly sternly advised, referring to paying the fare and being the tab calculator.
      Teda snorted, pulled some bills out of her purse and handed them to the driver. Entering the hotel, the ladies retired to the sleeping rooms in their suite.
      Lilly covered her teased red hair in a navy blue scarf before lying back in her bed. Teda sheathed her coal black hair in a similar manner. Each lady kept the door to her room cracked open in case the other needed something during the mid-afternoon siesta.
      Lilly and Teda were in the lobby a few minutes before 8:00pm.
      "Eight o'clock … awfully late for dinner," Lilly remarked, looking at her diamond encrusted watch, an anniversary gift from her late husband, given ten years earlier. Lilly was dressed in an orange summer dress that caused violence with her candy apple red hair.
      "Oh, yes. Eight o'clock. Really, we've missed the good time to eat. We should have thought about that before," Teda agreed. Teda wore a similarly tailored summer dress, but colored in pale blue.
      "And now he's late," Lilly remarked, still looking at her watch.
      "Late?" Teda asked.
      "Late."
      "He's late?"
      "He's late," insisted Lilly.
      "What time is it?" Teda asked.
      "7:58pm, on the dot."
      "He's not late, then," Teda stated.
      "He's late."
      "He's not."
      "He's late, Teda."
      "It's not eight."
      "He's late."
      "Lilly …" Before Teda could speak further she caught sight of Richard Therese stepping off the elevator. She glared at Lilly and pointed towards Richard. Undaunted, Lilly mumbled something or other about their dinner host being late.
      The trio adjourned to the dining room for their planned meal. Lilly and Teda rarely took their meals at the hotel, preferring to dine at the assorted restaurants and diners in Miami Beach that offered specially rated early-seating suppers. Teda figured the last time she actually had dinner at the restaurant at Eden Roc was with her husband before his passing.
      During their dining the ladies learned more of their male companion. He explained that he had been born and raised in Kansas.
      "Kansas?" Lilly replied, sounding as if Richard Therese had advised he was a Martian.
      "Yes, indeed," he smiled.
      "We've never been there," Lilly remarked.
      "Not ever," Teda nodded.
      "Well, I, of course, left after my bride passed on."
      "Oh, my," Teda sighed.
      "Yes, oh … my," Lilly remarked after her friend.
      "We had a daughter and my wife died not long after that."
      "Oh, my," Teda again sighed, as did Lilly.
      "I raised my daughter … all on my own."
      "How tragic," Teda remarked, catching herself by adding: "I mean, that you had to do it all alone."
      Richard nodded. "Indeed."
      "What was your wife's name?" asked Lilly.
      "Hester."
      "Hester," Lilly repeated, as did Teda.
      "How …" Lilly said, meaning 'how did she die', which Richard understood.
      "Cancer."
      Lilly gasped, putting a hand to her mouth.
      Softly Teda said: "Cancer."
      "Yes, indeed," Richard confirmed.
      "How tragic," Teda said a second time.
      "Tragic," Lilly added.
      "Tragic," Richard agreed.
      "Where is she now?" Lilly asked, meaning Richard's daughter.
      Richard, confused, did not respond at once. He finally said: "Well … dead," meaning his late wife, Hester.
      Lilly gasped again. "Oh Lord!" She exclaimed. "Tragic."
      "Tragic," Teda echoed, also believing, wrongly, that Richard was saying that his daughter had also passed.
      Richard, realizing the mess, held up a hand as if to say 'halt'. "Now, now," he began. "I think I have confused you ladies. Hester, my wife, she's gone. But my daughter, she's quite well. She lives on Long Island in East Egg."
      The two ladies prattled about how relieved they were to hear that Richard Therese still had his daughter.
      "Would you dear ladies care for Champagne?" Richard eventually asked, seeming on the surface to want to divert the conversation from the wife he said had died and the daughter he said lived in East Egg.
      "Oh my," Teda replied first. "No."
      Shaking her overly coiffed head, her hair not budging with the movement, Lilly likewise said: "No."
      "Ladies …" Richard tempted.
      "Oh, my, no," Teda repeated all the while Lilly continued to shake her head.
      Teda averted her eyes from the table, looking around the Eden Roc dining room. Teda suddenly was awash with the memory of a quiet dinner years earlier with her husband and remembered the chilled, bubbling Champagne. At once Teda felt happy and ill, delighted by a light memory and pitted by the reality that the long ago night would never be repeated. An overwhelming desire to dash from the splendid eatery swelled over Teda, like the rush of breakers at the beach just beyond the walls of Eden Roc.
      During Teda's wrenching introspection, Richard Therese continued to try and ply Lilly into concurring to a French bubbly order.
      "Oh, what do you think Teda?" she asked.
      "What?" Teda replied, far from the table in her lost thoughts.
      "What do you think?"
      "Think?"
      "Think."
      "What?" Teda asked.
      Lilly nodded.
      Richard said: "Champagne."
      Teda responded with a vague "Oh."
      "So?" Lilly asked, looking firmly at her friend.
      "Oh," Teda repeated, still diffuse.
      "Then it is," Richard definitely stated.
      "What?" asked Teda.
      "Champagne. Then it is," he said. He motioned for the server, quickly ordered and before long a bottle of decent vintage was tableside.
      Before glasses were filled, Teda advised she needed to powder her nose.
      "Me, too," Lilly chimed back and the two ladies adjourned.
      "Hasn't this been fun?" Lilly twittered as they both stood in front of mirrors in the women's room. She rummaged through her purse as she spoke, looking for lipstick.
      Teda, clutching onto a wash basin tightly with both hands, stared into the mirror directly in front of her tanned and freckled face. She did not respond to Lilly.
      "Huh?" Lilly said, a lipstick pressed at her mouth, encouraging a response from Teda.
      "Hasn't this been fun?" Lilly repeated, after spreading a rich red coat on her lower lip.
      Nothing from Teda.
      "Teda!" Lilly snapped, her upper lip without freshly applied color.
      "Huh?" Teda responded, looking down from the mirror and into the basin.
      "Teda, are you listening to me?" After making her terse toned query, she dashed the red stick over her thin upper lip.
      "Yeah." Teda sounded noncommittal.
      "Hasn't this been fun?" Lilly asked again.
      "Yeah." Teda's tone did not change.
      Lilly turned to face Teda directly.
      "Well," Lilly stated.
      "Huh?" Teda replied, keeping her glance turned down into the basin bowl.
      "Aren't you going to freshen?" Lilly waived her hands over her own face to indicate she meant 'retouch makeup.'
      "I'm sick," Teda flatly responded.
      "Sick?" Lilly immediately placed the back of her hand on her friend's forehead.
      "You're burning!" Lilly exclaimed, blurting precisely what she would say whether or not Teda actually felt unusually warm to the touch. In Lilly's mind, a complaint of sickness coupled with a hand to a forehead always equaled imminent illness.
      "Yes." Teda's inflection, tone remained flat, like morning grated and leveled beach side sand.
      "Go to the room. You must go to the room. I'll come to the room. You're ill. You're sick." Lilly spoke with the clacking intensity and short flicks of a gambler's playing card clipped into bicycle spokes.
      "No, you stay," Teda replied, looking at her lady friend for the first time since entering the women's room. "I'll go up, though."
      "I'll come."
      "No."
      "I'll come."
      "No."
      "You'll need me," Lilly protested.
      Firmly, Teda replied: "Lilly, go … go back and have Champagne. We can't just both leave Richard. He'll think we're rude."
      "I'll come. You'll need me. You're ill."
      "Lilly, I'll be fine." Placing her hands on Lilly's shoulders, Teda added: "I'll be fine. I just need to lie down. It's probably just something I ate, something not agreeing."
      "I knew it," quipped Lilly. "I knew it."
      Pulling back her hands, Teda asked: "What?"
      "We ate too late, now you're sick."
      In spite of herself, Teda smiled. She then led Lilly out of the women's room and motioned for Lilly to carry on back into the dining room. Before separating, Teda snugly hugged Lilly. "I'll be fine."
      Lilly returned to the table the ladies shared with Richard as Teda walked from the restaurant into the lobby. Teda stopped short in the middle of the lobby, turning to look at the glass-paneled doors that led out to the pool. Beyond the pool lay the beach and the cool winter waters of the Atlantic. Shifting her direction, Teda walked towards the exit doors and passed through to the pool deck.
      "Oye," she mumbled to herself, finding the evening air oppressively damp, humid, especially after the cool setting of the Eden Roc restaurant and lobby expanse. She shuffled across the poolside patio, populated by a couple of couples sipping wine and speaking at low pitch, the murmured, muffled sound of young lovers on holiday. In the dense night, and hearing the warble of the couples perched on the brink of adult life, Teda suddenly felt old. Plainly old.
      Reaching an iron gate in a fence that separated the pool area from the hotel's claim of beach front, Teda sighed. She fumbled with the latch. She rarely walked out to the beach from Eden Roc, and always with Lilly or her husband; they had managed the latch before now.
      Eventually Teda succeeded in releasing the iron slider holding the gate in place but not before tears started pouring from her eyes and over her cheeks. She let loose with a deep sob, so significant that she snared the attention of the two previously preoccupied twosomes. Teda hurried off the patio and down a flight of wooden steps that led to the sandy shore of Miami Beach.
      As best she could, she trotted across the sand away from the hotel, losing a slip-on shoe not far from the gate. Not bothering to stop and snare the errant footwear, Teda shook the remaining shoe off her left foot, continuing to move as quickly as her legs would allow. All the while, Teda continued to cry.
      The winter swells of the Atlantic against the shore were particularly intense that November night. She reached the last slip of dry sand in less than a minute, trying to stop short to avoid hitting the beach at the breaker's edge and keep her feet dry.
      The attempt to abruptly halt proved futile and resulted in Teda losing balance and toppling forward into the wet sand. She groaned at the impact, the force of the fall socking the breath from her lungs. She rolled over onto her back and rapidly panted trying to restore air to her chest.
      The desire to fill her lungs hit up against her sobs, her real and plaintive tears fell in the sand.
      Still struggling with air, a ripping breaker swung to shore, dousing her feet and legs with chilly night water. After being dampened by the crisp wave, Teda managed to pull herself to a seated position. At that moment, she heard the slap of bare feet, running on the wet sand, a growing sound heading in her direction. She looked to her right, in the way of the approaching runner. She barely made out a figure she thought to be a man.
      A shiver went up her back, the result of the stranger closing in at her side. Before she could move any further, the runner, who indeed proved to be male, called out to Teda. "Are you okay?"
      He repeated the question again in quick speed.
      "Oh, well …" Teda mumbled, planting her hands, palms down, onto the sand to push herself up. She was tottering to her feet as the runner slowed to her side. He reached out, taking hold of Teda by the arm to steady her.

Back inside Eden Roc, in the restaurant, Lilly and Richard Therese were well into the bottle of Champagne.
      "So, you invent … things?" Lilly asked of Richard.
      "My whole life, my dear," he replied, with the dashing grace of a full gentleman.
      "Oh my, how interesting," Lilly nearly gushed.
      Richard leaned in closer to Lilly across the dining table. In a somber tone at low volume, Richard said: "I invented bouillon cubes …"
      "No!" gasped Lilly, her eyes splitting open wide.
      "And cocktail umbrellas."
      "No!" Lilly repeated her astounded rejoinder after which Richard once more nodded.
      "I also invented the gas-powered Victrola years ago … but that did not take off well."
      Lilly looked befuddled and uttered a baffled "Oh … oh … umm."
      Richard carried forth with dribs and drabs of his life story, Lilly taking in less and less. She found her attention drifting to Teda. As the minutes ticked on, Lilly became preoccupied with Teda and her friend's well-being.
      "Listen, Richard. I've had just a lovely time, really. Hopefully we can get together again, even tomorrow. But … you see … as I mentioned, as you know … Teda's sick. I really need to get back, back to our room."
      Richard smiled his understanding and gallantly bid Lilly goodnight with a kiss to her hand. Lilly scrambled out of the restaurant, took the elevator and made her way back to the hotel suite she shared with her friend. Lilly burst into the suite directly behind Teda, who had entered the room only a couple of moments earlier.
      "Good heavens!" Lilly exclaimed, looking Teda over from head to foot. "You're wet, Teda, all wet."
      "You must be spritzing something horrible," Lilly wrongly noted, bringing a slim grin from Teda.
      "I fell," Teda explained.
      "Fell?" Lilly asked.
      "Fell, in the water."
      "Fell in the water?" questioned Lilly. "In the bathtub?"
      Teda's smile broadened, in spite of herself. "No, Lilly … not in the bathtub."
      Lilly's expression slipped from surprised to befuddled.
      "I went outside … to the beach … to get some air," Teda explained. "I slipped in the sand, fell in the water."
      "Your hip!" Lilly blasted. "You could have broken your hip!"
      "Lilly, I'm fine," insisted Teda. "Fine."
      Lilly fussed about Teda getting out of her wet clothing. "Put on your pajamas, your robe," she insisted.
      In a short time, both ladies were wrapped in their bedclothes, covered with thick terry cloth robes, matching and rose-colored. The two old friends strolled out onto the balcony, overlooking the beach, and the black water of the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
      "Lilly?" Teda asked as they both gazed out into the night.
      "Yes, Teda?"
      "What's to become of us?" asked Teda.
      Lilly stood silent for a moment.
      "I'm not sure, Teda," Lilly cautiously replied.
      "Me neither, Lilly," Teda concurred, in a matching tone of voice.
      "I do know one thing, though, Teda," Lilly remarked.
      "What's that, Lilly?"
      "You and I, Teda … you and I … we'll never be alone."
      Teda and Lilly hugged and then turned back to look across the great sea.

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