Fifty, Flirty & Flat Broke

Ginger Monroe stepped into the Blue Dahlia with one hand on the door and the other pressed against the place beneath her ribs where panic had begun charging cover.

Music rolled over her - bass first, then trumpet, then the shriek of a woman laughing too loudly near the bar. The air smelled of citrus, perfume, and the sweet burnt edge of spilled liquor. Twenty-five years ago, Ginger had entered this room and made men forget the names of their wives.

Tonight, three women in silver dresses glanced at her, assessed the red dress, and looked away.

Ginger kept her chin high.

She was forty-nine. Not pushing fifty. She refused to use that phrase, mostly because it sounded like a woman being shoved toward a cliff by a calendar.

Her red dress had survived three divorces, two dry-cleaning disasters, and one boyfriend who had borrowed her car and never come back. It clung to her waist with the determined optimism of a garment that had not been informed about middle age. Her platinum hair was piled high. Around her throat, the black diamond collar necklace caught the club lights like a small, expensive threat.

Expensive was the point.

She had eleven dollars in her purse, a nearly empty checking account, and a mission: find a rich man before fifty caught her.

The dance floor pulsed ahead. Ginger put her shoulders back and walked toward it as if the room had been waiting all night for her return.

A young man in a white shirt looked her over. Not discreetly. Not intelligently, either.

Ginger smiled at him.

He smiled back, then turned to his friends.

“Good,” she murmured. “We’ve eliminated the underfunded and the stupid.”

At the bar, bodies crowded three deep. Men leaned over drinks, shouting into one another’s ears. A woman with a rhinestone cowboy hat was dancing in place beside a stool, her boots striking the brass rail on every beat. The bartender moved so fast he seemed to have been trained by a military branch devoted to cocktails.

Ginger found a narrow opening near the end of the bar and claimed it with her elbow.

“Vodka tonic,” she said.

The bartender looked at her necklace. “Premium?”

“Do I look like I came here for budget vodka?”

He poured. The price made her stomach tighten, but she slid over the bill anyway. A rich man did not need to know his future wife had considered ordering water.

She lifted the glass, letting the ice clink once. Control mattered. A woman who looked comfortable in a nightclub looked like she belonged to a life involving lake houses and someone else mowing the lawn.

The trouble was that the Blue Dahlia no longer belonged to her.

The music was louder than she remembered. The floor was smaller. Or perhaps the women had become taller, thinner, and more strategically dressed. Everywhere Ginger looked, there were bare shoulders, glossy hair, and young men whose shirts had been designed by someone with a grudge against buttons.

She took one sip and stepped onto the dance floor.

Her body remembered before her mind did. She found the beat, let her hips catch it, let the red dress move. For three glorious seconds, the room tilted in her favor.

Then a man backing up without looking stepped on the edge of her heel.

The strap snapped.

Ginger lurched. Her drink flew from her hand and landed on the white shirt of a man who had been watching her with the solemn concentration of a man evaluating real estate.

“My God,” he said.

“Your shirt has made a brave sacrifice.”

He stared at the spreading stain.

Ginger looked down. One black stiletto dangled uselessly from her foot. Around her, the dancers flowed on, barely pausing to witness her public collapse.

The man in the stained shirt touched the wet fabric. “This is silk.”

“So is my patience, and it’s wearing thin.”

He walked away.

Ginger stood barefoot on one side, furious on the other. The old confidence she had carried through the door wobbled like a cheap table.

“Don’t move.”

The voice came from behind her - low, unhurried, and irritatingly calm.

A man crouched at her feet. Silver hair, neatly cut. Dark jacket. No flashy watch, no designer belt, no visible sign that he had ever been introduced to money and decided to keep it.

He picked up the broken heel and examined it.

“Are you a shoe surgeon?” Ginger asked.

“No.”

“Then I’m not sure why you’re touching the evidence.”

“Because you’re about to step on the metal shank.”

He said it as though she were a person who might appreciate facts. Ginger looked down. A sharp piece of metal did jut from the sole.

He reached into his jacket and produced a folded handkerchief. With careful fingers, he wrapped the broken heel.

His hands were broad and clean, the knuckles faintly marked. Not manicured. Not soft. The hands of a man who fixed things instead of replacing them.

Ginger disliked noticing.

“You can stand,” he said. “Just not elegantly.”

“I have never stood inelegantly in my life.”

He glanced up at her. His eyes were gray, his expression almost amused.

...