Cape May Read Online Free

when I need to ask you something.”
    “Ask, but yell so I can hear you,” Joanna said, checking her watch again.
    Cynthia loudly whispered, “I can’t. I’m in the shop.” She was standing behind the reproduction Louis XV desk in her antiques store on Madison Avenue. “Are you sure about this realtor? Did you check her credentials?” Cynthia’s disapproval always added up to more than two cents worth of opinion.
    Joanna said, “Yes. Cynthia, I have to go. The bus leaves soon, and I have to get through this wall of tourists.”
    “Keep in touch. You need your older sister now. I can help. I have business savvy. You don’t.”
    As Joanna continued walking, she tried to make sense of the assaulting theme park that the street had become. Funny that she missed the way it used to be. In the seventies and eighties, Forty-Second Street was slummy, with porno shops and bums, and movie theaters you wouldn’t take a kid into. Now it was an outdoor strip mall of chain restaurants and attractions, from Applebee’s and McDonald’s to RiteAid and Duane Reade to Madame Tussauds and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. “ Give me a head shop over this anytime ,” Joanna thought, laughing to herself, she who had smoked marijuana a grand total of three times.
    By the time she got to the front of the Port Authority building, Joanna was exhausted. Hundreds of people entered the travel hub or exited with luggage and confused looks on their faces. Some people browsed counterfeit merchandise laid out on tables, others glanced at the statue of Ralph Kramden. Her inner core craved quiet.
    Safe inside where it was slightly less crowded, Joanna slowed down and followed signs to her gate. She was winded from walking so fast but she’d made it in time. The huge clock over the archway read 2:17. Nearer her gate, she went into the ladies room, assuming it would be slightly less awful than the one on the bus. She fluffed her hair and checked her general appearance. Her preferably chin-length hair, neater for business and easier to control, was getting a little too long. Time to make an appointment at the salon. It still looked good, though, with waves that, she hoped, softened her aging face. She peered a little closer: yes, maybe that new miracle moisturizer was, indeed, “erasing” some fine lines. Heavens, she hoped so. Although the thought of a face lift made her feel queasy, so did the sags, wrinkles, and other joys of being fifty-nine.
    At the Starbucks near her gate, she bought a cup of peppermint tea. Although there were empty seats at tables, she stood, leaning against a column, having just recently read that sitting too many hours a day was fatal. Tomorrow she’d probably read that drinking hot tea was fatal. Or breathing.
    She drank slowly, trying to calm down her insides, which were still racing from the hectic sprint to the Port Authority. No need to rush to the bus. Her prepurchased ticket guaranteed her a seat and, after all, how many people would be going to New Jersey midday on a Thursday? She glanced at the other customers around her. Would Cape May offer such extraordinary people watching? No. Joanna had done her research—Cape May was almost ninety percent white; New York was thirty-five percent white, almost twenty-seven percent Hispanic, and about a quarter Black. After growing up in multiracial Queens, and living in Manhattan all these years, that disparity was unnerving. She had hopes of making her own inn—IF she bought one—somehow more welcoming to all. The thought of being surrounded by white, middle-aged people for the rest of her life didn’t thrill her. She gulped. That was her , wasn’t it? When and how did that happen? And what came between middle-aged and elderly? Older aged? Ugh. She felt young inside, and still looked pretty good on the outside. Her pale skin kept her out of the sun, which cut down on the wrinkles she might’ve had at her age. A few extra pounds refused to leave her average-sized frame,