at Fantastic Sam’s or got out the kitchen scissors, which might be why my shoulder-length ’do often ended up in a ponytail.
It drove Cissy nuts.
May be part of the reason I did it.
I saw the red light blinking on the Caller ID, indicating voice mail messages, but I wasn’t going to deal with anything more until I’d had a shower. I kicked off my party shoes and peeled my shirt off for starters, dropping my sweaty clothes in a pile on the floor.
The water felt great after the sticky hundred-degree air I’d been swimming through, and I stayed beneath the showerhead until my skin pruned, letting the lukewarm spray of water wash over me. I emptied my mind of all the thoughts that had accumulated along with the grime, and, by the time I stepped onto the bath mat and wrapped myself in a towel, I felt better about myself and the world in general. Enough to smile and hum a favorite Def Leppard tune as I pulled a comb through my hair and wiggled a Q-tip in my ears.
Amazing how something as simple as a shower can make you feel like a new woman, but it had and I did. So much so that I actually started to think that tonight might not be so dreadful, after all.
I dared to check my voice mail while I let my hair air-dry a little, finding a “call me” message from Brian Mal-one followed by four panicked rants from Marilee, wondering when I’d be arriving, asking if I’d remembered to do this, that, or the other. I pressed the “3” key to delete the lot of it, and then I dialed Brian’s number.
“Hey, Kendricks,” he said, picking up on the second ring, knowing it was me thanks to his own Caller ID. Little chance of anonymity in our brave new world, huh? “You still planning on going to that shindig tonight?” he grilled me right off the bat. “Or can we do dinner at Dragonfly and a movie after?”
Shindig?
It sounded like a Midwesterner’s idea of how Texans talked, though Malone was a Midwesterner, I reminded myself. He hailed from St. Louis, Missouri, the “Show Me State,” which explained why he always had to see something to believe it. He was a budding defense attorney with the prominent and enormous firm of Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt, better known as ARGH around these parts. They covered the law from all angles: corporate, criminal, wills, and divorce. It was a one-stop shop for well-to-do Texans who found themselves in need of expert counsel.
The brain trust at ARGH had handled the legal work for Daddy’s pharmaceutical company, on whose board Mother remained to this day. J.D. Abramawitz was a close friend of Cissy’s and had arranged for Brian Malone to take on Molly’s case when my friend had been accused of murder. As I’d later found out, Mother had requested Brian handle the matter in order to throw us together, hoping for a love match.
While there were definitely sparks, it wasn’t a fullblown fire. Not the kind that made either of us want to say, “I do.”
Not yet (much to Mother’s chagrin).
We’d both agreed not to rush into anything serious, though we were sure having a good time doing the getting-better-acquainted routine.
It was definitely the most successful of any of Cissy’s crazy matchmaking schemes, the vast majority ranking right up there with Hurricane Andrew in terms of disaster quotient. Like the time she’d set me up with the son of an oil magnate and GWH (Great White Hunter) whose fun idea for a date was to go to the shooting range. While he’d squinted an eye at the man-shaped target and squeezed off quick shots from a 9mm Beretta, he’d hissed through his teeth, “ Take that, Daddy! And that and that and that! ” I’d feigned a trip to the ladies’ room, had made a dash to the parking lot, and burned rubber getting out of there.
Even the bluest of blue bloods could be freaks.
“Andy? You doze off on me?”
“Am I going to the shindig,” I repeated, putting aside thoughts of the blind date from hell and getting back to Brian’s
It drove Cissy nuts.
May be part of the reason I did it.
I saw the red light blinking on the Caller ID, indicating voice mail messages, but I wasn’t going to deal with anything more until I’d had a shower. I kicked off my party shoes and peeled my shirt off for starters, dropping my sweaty clothes in a pile on the floor.
The water felt great after the sticky hundred-degree air I’d been swimming through, and I stayed beneath the showerhead until my skin pruned, letting the lukewarm spray of water wash over me. I emptied my mind of all the thoughts that had accumulated along with the grime, and, by the time I stepped onto the bath mat and wrapped myself in a towel, I felt better about myself and the world in general. Enough to smile and hum a favorite Def Leppard tune as I pulled a comb through my hair and wiggled a Q-tip in my ears.
Amazing how something as simple as a shower can make you feel like a new woman, but it had and I did. So much so that I actually started to think that tonight might not be so dreadful, after all.
I dared to check my voice mail while I let my hair air-dry a little, finding a “call me” message from Brian Mal-one followed by four panicked rants from Marilee, wondering when I’d be arriving, asking if I’d remembered to do this, that, or the other. I pressed the “3” key to delete the lot of it, and then I dialed Brian’s number.
“Hey, Kendricks,” he said, picking up on the second ring, knowing it was me thanks to his own Caller ID. Little chance of anonymity in our brave new world, huh? “You still planning on going to that shindig tonight?” he grilled me right off the bat. “Or can we do dinner at Dragonfly and a movie after?”
Shindig?
It sounded like a Midwesterner’s idea of how Texans talked, though Malone was a Midwesterner, I reminded myself. He hailed from St. Louis, Missouri, the “Show Me State,” which explained why he always had to see something to believe it. He was a budding defense attorney with the prominent and enormous firm of Abramawitz, Reynolds, Goldberg, and Hunt, better known as ARGH around these parts. They covered the law from all angles: corporate, criminal, wills, and divorce. It was a one-stop shop for well-to-do Texans who found themselves in need of expert counsel.
The brain trust at ARGH had handled the legal work for Daddy’s pharmaceutical company, on whose board Mother remained to this day. J.D. Abramawitz was a close friend of Cissy’s and had arranged for Brian Malone to take on Molly’s case when my friend had been accused of murder. As I’d later found out, Mother had requested Brian handle the matter in order to throw us together, hoping for a love match.
While there were definitely sparks, it wasn’t a fullblown fire. Not the kind that made either of us want to say, “I do.”
Not yet (much to Mother’s chagrin).
We’d both agreed not to rush into anything serious, though we were sure having a good time doing the getting-better-acquainted routine.
It was definitely the most successful of any of Cissy’s crazy matchmaking schemes, the vast majority ranking right up there with Hurricane Andrew in terms of disaster quotient. Like the time she’d set me up with the son of an oil magnate and GWH (Great White Hunter) whose fun idea for a date was to go to the shooting range. While he’d squinted an eye at the man-shaped target and squeezed off quick shots from a 9mm Beretta, he’d hissed through his teeth, “ Take that, Daddy! And that and that and that! ” I’d feigned a trip to the ladies’ room, had made a dash to the parking lot, and burned rubber getting out of there.
Even the bluest of blue bloods could be freaks.
“Andy? You doze off on me?”
“Am I going to the shindig,” I repeated, putting aside thoughts of the blind date from hell and getting back to Brian’s
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