Free The Girls by Helen Yglesias Page A

it weren’t funny, because he’s desperately in love with me.”
    Any of those the love of Flora’s life? And what if there were no such thing as the love of one’s life? If Jenny’s own sexual existence had been nothing but romantic illusion? How about those geese who mated for life? Was she the only monogamous human being on earth? (Leaving aside her first marriage, when she was too young to know which end was up.) Because she couldn’t swear for Paul, naturally. She knew Paul had loved her. But apparently exclusive love could be a straitjacket. There were no open signs of others in her husband’s life. She had never asked. She was afraid of the answer?
    And then there was Naomi’s love life. Women, men, old men when she was young, young men when she was old, at least one black and one Asian (but who was counting colors?), a gay man offering companionship and marriage but no sex, a husband of twenty years, a pickup on the boardwalk when she was in her eighties, of a suave Italian con man looking for marriage, the whole stormy relationship complete with sex, lies, professions of love, theft of a diamond ring, betrayal, and an operatic breakup. Two long-ago abortions, illegal. Two marriages, one annulment. No children. The love of Naomi’s life? Another question Jenny didn’t ask. Naomi would probably name Sam, her handsome musician husband.
    Sleep, sleep, if only she could fall asleep. She lit the dim lamp over the bed and propped up the slippery pillows, hoping that the two current magazines she had brought with her would tire her eyes enough to put her out. Instead everything she read stirred her up. The newsweekly bits were horrifying—unthinkable killings, scandals, betrayals personal and public, national and international. She switched to the slicker magazine. She couldn’t understand most of the cartoons—their references were a mystery. I’ve lived too long, she thought, and dropped the periodicals over the side of the bed.
    When Jenny came back to the funky motel after a good enough breakfast at a health-food bar, there was a message from Flora to call her at once. She didn’t. She would do the research into Naomi’s bank accounts first.
    She took a bus that was filled with passengers, though it was after nine o’clock. Her white hair immediately earned her a seat given up by a young woman tourist. The breezy, sunny morning had lured the foreign tourists out in their vigorously sporty outfits, newly tanned legs and arms bared, noses burned red, light-colored eyes opened wide to the wonders. Across the aisle was a very old Jewish woman in an all-black outfit, her scrawny legs exposed in black tights, her scrawny ass barely covered by a black skirt, her face masked by makeup, her hair drawn up into a wide-brimmed felt hat, her poor feet stuffed into papery boots with stiletto heels. A Flora type, but worse. There were a couple of the usual seedy men who seemed to be perpetually coming from or going to the track, and there was the usual mix of languages, colors of skin. The bus driver was black but didn’t speak. Unidentifiable. Two middle-aged women deep in a lively conversation in Spanish sat near a group of quiet youngsters, male and female look-alikes, toting backpacks. A young man in a yarmulke leafed through Esquire.
    Their route took them along a wide boulevard skirting a waterway lined with yachts, some for sale, some private, some large excursion yachts available for day trips. On the opposite side of the boulevard the condominiums and hotels soared in their fantasy shapes and embellishments: pyramids of Egypt, camels, swans, immense carved giraffes, a building whose huge pillars supporting the entranceway were the draped bodies of slaves. Fun and pleasure. Miami life was all about eating, drinking, loafing, swimming, boating, driving, tanning, conning, fucking, shopping, dancing, praying.
    And dying.
    The bus made a sharp right across a bridge into an area of chic little shops, restaurants,