"It's what I call a subterranean sisterhood," says the 89-year-old writer from Cape Canaveral. "It's not countable."

The author of "The Traveler's Reading Guide" is wrapping up an index for her pending book, "Bridge Table, or What's Trump Anyway? An Affectionate Look Back at Sociable Bridge & Ladies Lunch." It contains a surprising amount of history, from the origins of the game in whist to its popularity in the 1930s to the ladies' lunches and couples games in the 1950s -- and its decline when the '60s generation rejected their parents' pastimes.

"It's a classic kind of game, and it's been around for a couple hundred years at least," Simony says. "And it's classy. It always started with the upper crust and drifted down. . . . If you want to spend your life to become an expert, which I do not, but if you did, you'd never exhaust the possibilities."

Her book, which she's publishing herself but already is being praised by big names in the game, has fun exploring the cultural tension between competitive bridge players and social ones.

"What the sociable bridge players routinely do -- they chat and they socialize -- is totally unethical play for the serious people," says Simony, who counts herself among the social players, joining two sessions a week.

To the serious player, bridge is as important as it ever was.

"They always want to go back to the '30s, when bridge really made headline news," Simony says. "People would follow those things like they follow football. But the thing that made it that way were the ladies' bridge clubs."

Given the game's history with women, food became an important part of bridge gatherings, so Simony incorporates explorations of "ladylike" lunch dishes.

She learned to play in the 1950s.

"I can play a pretty good game, but I'm still very whimsical bidding," she says. "I don't know that anybody can trust me."

A widow for more than 35 years and mostly retired as a school secretary since 1980, Simony moved from New Hampshire to the Space Coast in 2003. One of her three children, daughter Maria, lives in the area, and Simony had her in mind when she finally began her book on bridge after gathering sources and clippings for decades.

A confessed pack rat and procrastinator, Simony was told: " 'You're never going to finish that, Maggy, because you might die if you finish it.' I said, well, I never thought of that. I said, my God, what is poor Maria going to do with all this stuff? I've got boxes and books under the bed. I thought, I've got to get this down."

She does her best work between 3 and 11 a.m. Yes, a.m.

"What's the point of lying in bed?" she asks.

Simony says she's too old to start another project, but "I feel fantastic. I don't even know why." She says it might be heredity, or going barefooted a lot, or avoiding carbonated beverages while enjoying coffee and martinis.

She's pleased that Google searches show her first book is still out in the world, and she's happy to know her second should be out by Dec. 1. Each book, for her, is a little piece of immortality.

"I love the idea that I'm in a library someplace forever," she says. "I love that idea."

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