Wish You Were Here by Rita Mae Brown

Harry walked into the house she found enough food to feed the Sandanistas, and was glad she’d brought flowers for the table. She was not glad to see Fair but damned if she’d show it.
    BoomBoom sat in a huge damask wing chair by the fireplace. Drained and drawn, she was still beautiful, made more so, perhaps, by her distress.
    Harry and BoomBoom, two years apart in school, were never close but they got along—until last year’s Hunt Club ball. Harry put it out of her mind. She had heard the gossip that BoomBoom wanted to catch Fair, and the reverse. Were men rabbits? Did you snare them? Harry never could figure out the imagery many women used in discussing the opposite sex. She didn’t treat her men friends any differently than her women friends and Susan swore that was the source of her marital difficulties. Harry would rather be a divorcée than a liar and that settled that.
    BoomBoom raised her eyes from Big Marilyn Sanburne, who was sitting next to her, dispensing shallow compassion. Her eyelids flickered for a split second and then she composed herself and held out her hand to Fair, who had just walked up to her.
    â€œI’m so sorry, BoomBoom. I . . . I don’t know what to say.” Fair stumbled verbally.
    â€œYou never liked him anyway.” BoomBoom astonished the room, which was filled with most of Crozet.
    Fair, befuddled, squeezed her hand, then released it. “I did like him. We had our differences but I did like him.”
    BoomBoom accepted this and said, “It was correct of you to come. Thank you.” Not kind, not good, but correct.
    Harry received better treatment. After extending her sympathy she went over to the bar for a ginger ale and to get away from Fair. What rotten timing that they had arrived so close together. The heat and the smoldering emotion made her mouth dry. Little Marilyn Sanburne poured a drink for her.
    â€œThanks, Marilyn.”
    â€œThis is too awful for words.”
    Harry, ungenerously, thought that it might be too awful for a number of reasons, one being that Little Marilyn’s impending wedding was eclipsed, temporarily at least, by this event. Little Marilyn, not having been in the limelight, just might learn to like it. Her marriage was the one occasion when her mother wouldn’t be the star, or so she thought.
    â€œYes, it is.”
    â€œMother’s wretched.” Little Marilyn sipped a stiff shot of Johnny Walker Black.
    Mim’s impeccable profile betrayed no outward sign of wretchedness, Harry thought to herself. “I’m sorry,” she said to Little Marilyn.
    Jim Sanburne blew into the living room. Mim joined him as he walked over to BoomBoom, whispered in her ear, and patted her hand.
    Difficult as it was, he toned down his volume level. When finished with BoomBoom he hauled his huge frame around the room. Working a room, second nature to Jim, never came easily to his wife. Mim expected the rabble to pay court to her. It galled her that her husband sought out commoners. Commoners do vote, though, and Jim liked getting reelected. Being mayor was like a toy to him, a relaxation from the toils of expanding his considerable wealth. Since God rewarded Mim and Jim with money, it seemed to her that lower life forms should realize the Sanburnes were superior and vote accordingly.
    Perhaps it was to Marilyn’s credit that she grasped the fact that Crozet did not practice equality . . . but then, what community did? For Mim, money and social position meant power. That was all that mattered. Jim, absurdly, wanted people to like him, people who were not listed in the Social Register, people who didn’t even know what it was, God forbid.
    A tight smile split her face. An outsider like Maude Bly Modena would mistake that for concern for Kelly Craycroft’s family. An insider knew Mim’s major portion of sympathy was reserved for herself, for the trial of being married to a super-rich vulgarian.
    Harry