Paula arrives looking sharp, as always. At seventy-two, she could pass for forty-two—those calves deserve their own fan club. I tease her about them, and she grins like a schoolgirl caught passing notes.

She sets her camel tote on the chair beside her, like it’s a guest of honor. The leather gleams—supple, worldly, almost smug. I pat it, lift it, even give it a little hug. Surely it came from a Cairo bazaar, bargained for over mint tea.

Two Capricorns, we talk numbers. Paula has guided me for decades. She and Robert spoke the same language; now I’m the novice, fumbling through what he once carried with ease. She studies a photo of Robert and me, back when I was still a glamour girl. “What a kind face,” she says. “Such a good man.”

I confess my fear: ending up a bag lady, rattling my life down the street in a cart.

Then—magic. Colby slips in, silent as mist, and climbs onto the camel tote. Seventeen pounds of ginger majesty, he kneads once, curls into the leather, and shuts his eyes as if the matter is settled.

We giggle until the numbers vanish.

If Colby could speak, he’d drop it clean:

This tote? Finally, a throne worthy of me.

Alexis Rotella

has published 43 books; her latest, Milkweed (Brooks Books Haiku, 2024), received a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award in 2024. Alexis is reinventing herself as a widow and lives with the ginger cat Colby in Greensboro, NC.