Lilly and Fran II

What they said was true, Fran spent a disproportionate amount of time with her knees up around her ears. Lilly was pragmatic in her assessment of her cousin. Fran did what she did. There was no preventing the nuclear fallout from her actions. Lilly sighed, looked at the clock, grabbed her wallet, and went to get coffee for her break.

Fran could be best described as a serial spouse. She perceived that other women’s husbands fell desperately in love with her. In fact, she ended up with other women’s cast offs; husbands they were happy to pass on. The most recent had been a bald plumber named Maurice. Who runs off with the plumber? Every time Lilly saw him all she could think was, “Some people call me a space cowboy, yeah. Some call me the gangster of love. Some people call me Maurice, cause I speak of the pompitous of love.”

Before him there’d been an electrician named Wendell, preceded by a, trumpet playing, used car salesman, all of them augmented by the continuing presence of the blind woman’s, alcoholic, husband. It made her head spin to think of the manically revolving door to Fran’s bed, heart, and now her purse. The Gangster of Love had conned her into putting her house in his name and adding him to her credit accounts as an authorized signer.

Fran was broke but hardly naive. The door to divorce court was second, only to her bedroom door, in complete rotations.

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