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said.
    “Who wants a man for more than the length of a cruise?” Estelle asked. “Especially when they’re old? All those farts, the horrible breath, like they ate a possum for lunch.”
    “And they’re babies. All men are babies. Whining about their hemorrhoids, their gas, their bones creaking. Who wants to listen to that?”
    “Do I look like I want to be a caretaker to an old man? Do I look like I want to spend my golden years waiting hand and foot on an old coot, hearing about his bladder and weak prostate? No, I don’t!”
    “We want amusement for a while and then we send ’em home.”
    The ladies took several cruises a year, but not to normal places like the Bahamas. No, they went to Alaska to see the glaciers. They went to Antarctica. They went to Vietnam, China, and Hong Kong. They were adventurous and fun.
    Maritza, Juanita, and Valeria are also sisters, from Mexico. We have two women, a mother-daughter team from Ethiopia; their names are Lele and Tinsu, and they wear head scarves and bring dessert every other Friday. No one is absent on Dessert Friday.
    We have five African American women, all sisters, maiden name Latrouelle: Delia, Gloria, Sharon, Toni, and Beatrice. When there’s a family reunion, wedding, or anniversary, we lose all five at once.
    We also have six women working here who were, tragically, former prostitutes. I know who they are, and so does my grandma, but no one else. You would never guess which ones they are. Never. One leads our toy drive at Christmas, the other is head of her church’s women’s ministry program.
    I watched our employees, most working so hard, except for an ex-employee, Mrs. Wolff, who was wandering around with a pink hat, smiling vacantly. She is a friend of Grandma’s and she has early onset Alzheimer’s. Her daughter brings her in now and then and stays with her while she visits with people she can no longer remember. It’s safe. She likes being here. When Mrs. Wolff ran out of money, Grandma started paying for her care.
    I watched Lance Turner. He had worked for us as a manager, one of our only male managers, before his unit was called up and he went to hang out in the hell of Afghanistan. He came back with part of his head dented in from an IED. He only works two-thirds time. When he first came back he was a mess, physically, mentally and emotionally, but month by month we see improvement. We pay him for full-time work.
    Lance, Tory, Lacey, and I went to high school together. He is a kind and gentle soul. He was homeless for part of high school because his father was in and out of jail and his mother was nonexistent. He lived with Grandma for a long time.
    He has the kindest wife, Marina, and four kids. The oldest is seven. As Grandma said, “I will not abandon that man ever. Meggie, you are to see to this. See to it that Lance is taken care of.” Like all of her longtime employees whom she loves, Lance gets money from her personal estate when she dies, enough to pay off his house, although he doesn’t know it.
    The employees fifty and older were the ones I worried most about if we closed. I’m sure that was my grandma’s worry, too. They know the business inside and out. They’re loyal. They’re of a generation that believes in production and working hard. But ageism discrimination is alive and well in America, and if we went out of business, they would be in a world of hurt quick.
    “I have one more thing to tell you, and you are not going to believe this, Meggie.” Lacey finished off the green yuck.
    “What is it?” I returned to my desk and drank my beer.
    “I’m knocked up.”
    Dang, but I choked again. “You’re pregnant? ”
    “Yes. That’s what knocked up means, doesn’t it? Hello?” She threw her hands up. “One time, one time! Matt and I went for dual massages at a spa, then we hung out in the hot tub and he got all frisky. He drove us to our favorite place overlooking the city, the place we always went to mess around when we