hand were standing up like mountain ranges on a relief map. And I figured maybe I hadn’t been wrong after all.
And was it my imagination, or was Stan gulping down his Evian/gin even faster than usual? If Audrey had been having an affair with Quinn, did Stan know about it? Did he care? Or did they have one of those Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell relationships?
I could have gone on like that for hours, musing on the nature of their relationship, but there was a Malibu beach house at stake, so I forced myself to concentrate on the job at hand and think up some jokes for a teacher-cum-goldfish.
At noon we broke for lunch, and Kandi and I headed back to our office.
“Want to go to the commissary?” I asked.
“I can’t face the commissary.” Kandi sighed, stretching out on the filthy plaid sofa in our office. “I don’t want to risk running into Quinn.”
“Kandi!” I said, eyeing the sofa. “What are you doing? Aren’t you going to cover it with a towel? What if you get a yeast infection?”
“Oh, who cares? I’m never going to have sex again anyway, so what does it matter?”
“You want me to get us some sandwiches?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“C’mon, you’ve got to eat something.”
“Okay, bring me a sandwich.”
“Brown or white?”
“You choose.”
I left her lying on the germ-infested sofa and made my way to the commissary.
Kandi needn’t have worried; Quinn was nowhere to be seen. The commissary was practically deserted. The only people there were some extras in cop uniforms from PMS Squad , sitting at a table in the middle of the room. As I walked past their table, I heard one of them say, “…and she wrote Screw You on his windshield with her lipstick.”
Wow. When it came to news dissemination, this place was faster than CNN.
I got two brown sandwiches from Helga the Sandwich Nazi and headed out into the sunshine.
It was such a nice day, I decided to take a little walk. I wandered down to the end of the lot, to the Haunted House set, where Miracle’s blockbuster movie Biker Vixens From Hell was shot. Like the Miracle roller coaster, the Haunted House looked as if it had been made from old popsicle sticks. The only thing that kept it from falling apart, I suspected, were termites holding hands.
I wandered up to the front porch and peered in the windows. I knew the house was an illusion, a false front with nothing behind it. Nevertheless, as I looked inside, I half expected to see candelabras and Persian rugs and old furniture shrouded with cobwebs. Of course, I didn’t see any of that. All I saw were some scaffolds and beyond that, the hookers strutting their stuff on Santa Monica Boulevard.
I sat down in a rusted glider and tried to pretend I was on the porch of a Malibu beach house, gazing out at the ocean, the sea breezes whipping through my hair. Which wasn’t all that easy to do, considering I was looking out at a row of metal Porta Potties.
I was swinging back and forth on the glider, listening to the rhythmic creaking of the old springs, when I remembered my mother’s offer to fix me up with Ernie Lindstrom, the guy who was either a fireman or recently fired. Gad. The last thing I needed was a fix-up from my mom.
My mother means well, but she has this uncanny knack for digging up the world’s most inappropriate men. Like that guy from her chat room who turned out to be a prisoner. And the engineering student from Laos who, when I asked him what he thought of Prozac, said, “She’d be delicious in a stew.”
Besides, I was a grown woman; I could get my own dates. Well, actually I couldn’t, but that was beside the point. I simply didn’t want to go out with another one of Mom’s walking disaster areas. I’d have to write her a very stern e-mail telling her so.
I sat on the glider a few minutes more, watching the sun shine on the Porta Potties. Then suddenly a squirrel came skittering across the porch with a bagel in his mouth. A humungous sesame bagel. Almost as
And was it my imagination, or was Stan gulping down his Evian/gin even faster than usual? If Audrey had been having an affair with Quinn, did Stan know about it? Did he care? Or did they have one of those Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell relationships?
I could have gone on like that for hours, musing on the nature of their relationship, but there was a Malibu beach house at stake, so I forced myself to concentrate on the job at hand and think up some jokes for a teacher-cum-goldfish.
At noon we broke for lunch, and Kandi and I headed back to our office.
“Want to go to the commissary?” I asked.
“I can’t face the commissary.” Kandi sighed, stretching out on the filthy plaid sofa in our office. “I don’t want to risk running into Quinn.”
“Kandi!” I said, eyeing the sofa. “What are you doing? Aren’t you going to cover it with a towel? What if you get a yeast infection?”
“Oh, who cares? I’m never going to have sex again anyway, so what does it matter?”
“You want me to get us some sandwiches?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“C’mon, you’ve got to eat something.”
“Okay, bring me a sandwich.”
“Brown or white?”
“You choose.”
I left her lying on the germ-infested sofa and made my way to the commissary.
Kandi needn’t have worried; Quinn was nowhere to be seen. The commissary was practically deserted. The only people there were some extras in cop uniforms from PMS Squad , sitting at a table in the middle of the room. As I walked past their table, I heard one of them say, “…and she wrote Screw You on his windshield with her lipstick.”
Wow. When it came to news dissemination, this place was faster than CNN.
I got two brown sandwiches from Helga the Sandwich Nazi and headed out into the sunshine.
It was such a nice day, I decided to take a little walk. I wandered down to the end of the lot, to the Haunted House set, where Miracle’s blockbuster movie Biker Vixens From Hell was shot. Like the Miracle roller coaster, the Haunted House looked as if it had been made from old popsicle sticks. The only thing that kept it from falling apart, I suspected, were termites holding hands.
I wandered up to the front porch and peered in the windows. I knew the house was an illusion, a false front with nothing behind it. Nevertheless, as I looked inside, I half expected to see candelabras and Persian rugs and old furniture shrouded with cobwebs. Of course, I didn’t see any of that. All I saw were some scaffolds and beyond that, the hookers strutting their stuff on Santa Monica Boulevard.
I sat down in a rusted glider and tried to pretend I was on the porch of a Malibu beach house, gazing out at the ocean, the sea breezes whipping through my hair. Which wasn’t all that easy to do, considering I was looking out at a row of metal Porta Potties.
I was swinging back and forth on the glider, listening to the rhythmic creaking of the old springs, when I remembered my mother’s offer to fix me up with Ernie Lindstrom, the guy who was either a fireman or recently fired. Gad. The last thing I needed was a fix-up from my mom.
My mother means well, but she has this uncanny knack for digging up the world’s most inappropriate men. Like that guy from her chat room who turned out to be a prisoner. And the engineering student from Laos who, when I asked him what he thought of Prozac, said, “She’d be delicious in a stew.”
Besides, I was a grown woman; I could get my own dates. Well, actually I couldn’t, but that was beside the point. I simply didn’t want to go out with another one of Mom’s walking disaster areas. I’d have to write her a very stern e-mail telling her so.
I sat on the glider a few minutes more, watching the sun shine on the Porta Potties. Then suddenly a squirrel came skittering across the porch with a bagel in his mouth. A humungous sesame bagel. Almost as
Similar Books
