Iris Rosenberg

Short Fiction

You girls know a place with a good crowd. Have a big steak. Couple martinis. Cigarette smoke like in the real world. Don’t you think. Ditch all this beige. Grab a lipstick, you two’ll come with. Fill’er up. Then we go dancing. I still got the hips for it. See. Dip and turn. Call a taxi up to the front door so we can move fast, before nursie over there sticks her nose in. Not that she can stop us, righty-o. We’re the paying customers. Besides, what’s she know about anything. She ever been to Paris. Rome. One time Reg took me to Japan. I was his secretary those days. teaching him to do it with the lights on. Sorry, no disrespect. Then boom. Wife drops dead, leaves him with two crazy kids. One’s popping pills, screwing anything moves. Other’s crying all the time. A mess he don’t need. I handed him back his life. Shipped those girls to boarding school. Dumped the house in the burbs, anything smelled of missus. Even the furs. Let him buy me new. Men always think you’re dying to give up your life for them. It’s better other way round. Am I right. Makes them feel heroes. Reg was that. Whatever I wanted. Paid his girls to stay away. Everything for us by us. Like those clothes the kids wear. Bet he’d laugh his ass off. See me sitting here waiting for the bingo cart to roll in. I gave him such grief when he had the heart attack. Yelled at him to try harder. But he gave up. Not me. I always get myself situated.

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Iris Rosenberg writes fiction and poetry in New York City. She has also written widely for businesses and news organizations; taught business communications at Baruch College (NYC); and served as a poetry reviewer for Library Journal. Her poems have appeared in Rust & Moth, Right Hand Pointing, Club Plum, and Ekphrastic Review.