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"Do you ever wonder," Lenny asked in a drowsy, half-dreaming voice, "what it would be like to have a life that wasn't completely fucked up?"
"I already know," Midge said, at the same time that Susie said, "Why the fuck would I wonder something like that?"
The three of them were lying on their backs on the roof of their latest hotel, sharing a cigarette and staring up at the stars, which were much better and brighter than the kind you got in the city, exactly opposite to how everything else worked. Midge had been staring, anyway, until Lenny and Susie turned to her with expressions of compassionate (in Lenny's case) and downright disparaging (that would be Susie) disbelief.
"Please explain," Lenny instructed, drawing a burning line in the air with the ember at the end of the cigarette. Midge grabbed it off of him before it could drop ash on her dress.
"What's to explain? I had the perfect life. You know all about it -- you know all about it, at least," she said, turning to Susie. "You were there when it was falling apart!"
"Of course I was there when it-- Are you even listening to yourself?" Susie nicked the cigarette before Midge could take a drag, apparently just so she could gesture vehemently with it. "What part of 'perfect' and 'falling apart' fits together in your head?"
"I didn't say it stayed unfucked. But I remember what it was like back when it was."
"Fucked up you don't know about is still fucked up," Susie said. When she looked over at Lenny for support, Midge stole the cigarette back. "Fuck!"
"She has a point," Lenny said, wriggling onto his side to gaze earnestly at Midge. "Having a fucked up life and not knowing it is equivalent to knowing what it's like to have a life that's not fucked up. You went to college, Mrs. Maisel -- how's that logic work out?"
Midge held the smoke in her lungs for a long moment and blew it out in a slow stream that smudged up the stars just a little. "Well, if you put it like that, I think it works out to fuck you both."
Lenny plucked the cigarette delicately from her fingers and handed it ceremoniously back to Susie. He settled back down with his arms folded over his chest before he murmured, "Ambitious."
"Nah," Susie said, and kicked Midge's calf lightly. "She knows we're a sure thing."