Chapter 3
The brown frayed jacket kept riding up her ribcage, making Flo laugh every time Alice started pulling it down.
“Will you quit with the tuggin’! They’re called ‘mini’ jackets for a reason!”
“W-what if Gloria’s in a meeting?” Alice stammers.
“So what if she is! That’s where you come in and make the time to see her!” Flo exclaims.
Alice gives the folk singer a hopeful smile inside the backseat of a cab they had been traveling together. The driver thought they were quite an odd pair, but remained silent behind the wheel.
Gloria was in a meeting, and when she stepped out of the conference room and saw Alice standing there in thirfty shop clothes, she had to smile with her hand grasping on the door handle.
“Hey, Al,” she glances briefly past her towards Flo flipping through a magazine in a chair.
“...I really dig the new wardrobe…” she stepped forward to one-arm hug the frazzled housewife planting a small kiss on her temple.
Alice took in Gloria’s earthy scent and stopped herself from hyperventilating. She opened her mouth to speak, not sure how to say her words the right way.
“I wanted to see you.”
“…Yeah…?”
Gloria had brought the door to close shut behind her, knowing Betty, Bella, and the rest of the ladies were eavesdropping.
Alice stared at the cord necklace Gloria wore around her neck. It was a silver pendant of a bare tree with branches outstretched and welded inside the circle it displayed.
Gloria speaks delicately,
“We had fun, Alice, but I have work to go do now. You should probably head back home to your family.”
Her eyes were soft and genuine behind the purple tinted aviators.
Alice couldn’t hide her disappointment. Flo slowly peered up from the brim of her powder blue suede cowboy hat and snorted at the both of them exchanging another awkward embrace in the hall.
Riding back to the hotel, Alice wouldn’t look or say anything to Flo Kennedy on Gloria’s dismissal. She sadly gazed out her side window with Flo whacking her on the wrist.
“Well that was a total bust! Wha’re you goin’ to do now?”
“Go home, I guess,” Alice answers sullenly. She had to book a flight for the trip back.