"Most people settle on this coast instead of West Palm and Boca because they want to live in a real town instead of a strip mall," she said. "So when they get here, what do they do? Turn it into the East Coast. We’re going to turn into another Palm Springs if we’re not careful."

"Palm Beach," Patty said. Ilene waved her hand to say Yeh you know I meant that. Patty and I were used to Ilene’s habit of mixing up names. We knew she meant Palm Beach, as in Florida, not Palm Springs, as in California. Or is it Arizona? I’m not much better than Ilene.

"Unbelievable, isn’t it?" I said as I repinned my hair, trying to tame the curls that kept flying in my eyes. "People move here for the climate and then use their air conditioning from February to November. They love nature but rip it all up to plant lawns that suck up what water we have."

"Only God can make a live oak," waxed Patty, on her third Mai Tai. "But only developers can put an English etched glass door on a Spanish Mediterranean house with a made-in-Mexico Italianate fountain out front."

Ilene fished the fringe of her scarf out of her beer, blotted it with her napkin, and reached for another shrimp. As she peeled it, she sighed. "I know I make my living off of people moving. I just wish that the bulldozers weren’t idling in their driveways, waiting to rip up the palmetto to build a house four times as big and ten times as pretentious as the original one."

Since it was so muggy, the patio at Marina Jack’s wasn’t crowded. Most of the patrons were inside in air-conditioned comfort. But some of us were enjoying the sea breeze that always comes at sunset, the breeze that made Bird Key and Lido ideal places to live.

We three were doing our Monday-night girl-bonding bit, and as usual our fourth, Chloe, was late. Sure, she lives way inland, so her herbs have sprawling room, but still, you’d think she’d figured out by now how long the drive in takes. It was hard, sticking to the promise we’d all made when we started meeting: no talking about whoever’s absent. We had no compunctions about talking about each other to our faces, and we’d had some doozies of discussions when all of us were there. But Chloe’s late arrival always cut into our dishing time.

We’d wandered off into fashion: boring for me since it was shop talk, of little interest to Patty who insisted she was just grateful to find anything to cover her ample body, and beneath contempt to Ilene, whose vintage wardrobe refused to answer to fashion’s dictates. So why were we bothering? Might be because we were trying so hard to not talk about Chloe, who had told us, last time, that she was finally going to own her land. We were dying to find out how she was going to manage that. She had a small income from the house sales she ran on a sporadic basis. Other than that, Chloe had no income we knew of except for her little herbal business, which couldn’t be terribly lucrative. Maybe someone died and left her money. Bite your tongue, Wendy Sam, I said to myself. What a terrible thing to think.

"There’s Chloe, finally," Patty said, who always chose the chair facing the entry. Ilene and I twisted in our seats and started to wave but stopped when we saw a trim, well-dressed man waylay Chloe and manoeuver her into the far corner of the copper-sheathed bar. He had his hand on her forearm and was leaning in to talk into her ear. His silk shirt and draped twill trousers whispered money.

"Aha," said Patty, peeling another shrimp. "I deduce a budding romance, what say you?" Patty talked that way a lot, thinking it made her sound more like a detective and less like a collection agent. Sherlock Holmes, not the Repo Man.

"God, I hope not," said Ilene. "That guy’s scum. And married scum at that. That’s Barry Cobb."

Huh. Barry Cobb. I’d seen his picture on the society page, generally half-hidden behind his wife at some expensive fund-raiser. She was Sarina Jefferson Cobb, grande dame of Sarasota billionaires, leader of the Botox Brigade of do-gooders, board member of a dozen charities. On top of all this she was also head of the Cobb Foundation, which donated money to the arts, and Too Good to be Threw consignor #1156. Barry was a land developer who built megahouses on spec, thus Ilene’s description of him as scum. His latest project was an enclave of six Godzilla houses shoe-horned in on one oversized lot where a 1950's ranch had sat gently on the shoreline for fifty years. Each of the six was listed for more than $3 million, turning a $450,000 lot into over $18 million. That $450,000 he paid the elderly couple was probably twenty times what they’d bought their little snowbird house for way back when, so they were undoubtedly happy. I hoped the money was enough to see them through their lives in assisted living. And that they didn’t have any kids to see what had happened to their childhood paradise with the rickety dock, now dredged out and awaiting air-conditioned yachts no one would use because they were too busy paying for it all to enjoy life.

"You’d think the man had enough money," Ilene went on. "But no, he always wants more. God, I hate him. He was even nosing around a sale this last weekend, trying to scope out the land. He always shows up whenever there’s a house sale on waterfront property. Gives me the creeps."

We all goggled with no shame whatsoever as Chloe shook her head at Cobb and said something short and emphatic. He replied with force and shoved what looked like a business card into her hand. Chloe’s shoulders slumped as she tucked it into her pocket. With downcast eyes she made her way towards our table. Almost to us, she glanced back at the man, but he was heading inside to the air conditioning.

"Looks like he was waiting for you," Ilene said as Chloe dragged a chair over from another table and we rearranged glasses and shrimp shell piles to make room.

"Who? Oh, Barry? Nah, he just said something about the farm. He’s my landlord, you know."

No, I didn’t, and from the looks on Ilene’s and Patty’s faces, they didn’t either. We knew Chloe leased her herb farm but she had never mentioned from whom. Besides, that little scene didn’t look like a landlord-type discussion to me. More like a lovers’ quarrel if my romance radar was working.

We ordered another round and enjoyed the bay breeze. Even with the construction cranes looming on the ever-taller skyline, this was still enough of a small town that we could spend the evening at a waterside café for the cost of a few drinks and a platter of shrimp.

Patty and I were discussing whether the Key lime pie here was worth the calories when Chloe’s voice got loud enough to interfere with our debate. "You haven’t seen what I have," she was saying to Ilene. "Old ladies who don’t know what day it is, old men who’ve given up on their own health. They can die just because they’re alone. You know that."

Ilene nodded. "Yes, we both know that’s happened. There’s that service now, though. I saw a note on the fridge at the sale Saturday. But you still have to realize that these people have to have the choice. It’s not for us to force any decision on them."

Chloe was shaking her head. "Listen, sometimes they can’t make that choice on their own. They won’t come to grips with the fact that they’re failing. They simply don’t know what’s best for them."

Ilene stared at her. "If they don’t know, how can anyone else? It’s not for us to say."

"We have the responsibility," Chloe insisted. "We’re the ones who see them, who deal with them. You can’t say you haven’t seen old people who’d be better off some place where people could watch them."

Ilene shook her head. "We’re never going to agree, Chloe. Let’s skip it."

"Alright, then, but don’t you come crying to me again like you did Saturday. That woman was a menace to herself." Chloe gathered up her handbag, threw some bills down on the table, and said, "Good night all, it’s a long trip inland."

"Well," said Patty as Chloe swept out of the restaurant. "What started all that?"

Ilene didn’t answer. She was bent down towards the floor, and straightened up with something in her hand. "Nothing, just that we ran into each other and, oh, never mind. We had words, I guess you’d say." She looked down at what she’d picked up.

It was the business card Chloe had taken from Cobb. It must have fallen out of Chloe’s pocket when she made her flamboyant exit. Ilene read it and her face got hard. Avoiding our eyes, she palmed the card and called for another round.

"Not me," I said. "Three’s my limit."

I should have wondered what could be on a business card that would make Ilene so mad. I didn’t. Maybe if I had, I’d still have my friend. Alive and healthy.