“Oh, I don’t know,” Tami responds. For a while before meeting Ronnie, Tami had a half-time gig working over at Taliesin West. Mostly the register in the gift shop, but she’d lead tours, too, when the volunteer docents couldn’t manage to make it in. That’s no problem, ma’am, someone will cover for you, she’d say when they called to cancel twenty minutes before their shifts. And, Of course, dear, we’ll see you in May. Have a lovely time in Paris, when their vacations got in the way of the “mandatory” eight hours a month of volunteering. Talk about Snots-dale, Tami thinks, remembering those haughty women swaddled in their linens and silks. She knows as much about Frank Lloyd Wright as any of those wrinkled old bags. The difference between her and them? Less linen, and she has to work for her money.

“You working?” she says, licking a sticky finger. Yesterday she got her nails done, a bright pink called Bachelorette Bash.

“At two,” Joanne says. Neither particularly wanted careers down here—who moves to the desert for a job?—so they lean on their alimonies and try to keep their overhead low. But when things got tight for Joanne’s ex, which meant they got tight for Joanne, she landed three days a week at the Whole Foods on Pima. Thirty percent off everything but the meat. It’s great for Joanne and her battery of life-preserving supplements. Tami told Joanne that she could do better, that no one would miss a little something more, but Joanne got all flustered and said she’s too good for funny business. Tami knew she meant too scared, but didn’t push. Joanne keeps Tami in grapefruit.

She spreads the wedges around a plate and walks over to a set of French doors. “I was thinking I’d go see the Lions game. Check out the new stadium.” This season, the Los Angeles Lions are moving from Scottsdale Municipal—one of the dumpier places a major league team could spend their spring season—into a brand-new complex, just down the road from Tami. Salt River Fields, they’re calling it.

“Really?” Joanne says.