Killer WASPs (20 page)

“I can’t tonight,” I moaned. “I’m exhausted.”

“Holly’s lonely!” said Joe sternly. “She’s in the middle of a divorce, and she’s trying
to shop her way out of sadness. She’s spent seven thousand dollars on bathing suits
since April. She needs you. And what do you go and do? You have a date with some
veterinarian
”—­he pronounced the word as if I’d gone out to dinner with Ted Bundy—­“which we had
to find out about from Bootsie, and you didn’t even call Holly first about what to
wear.”

I felt terrible. I hadn’t spent much time with Holly lately, it was true. Had she
really spent seven grand on
bikinis
? That was scary. And I probably should have consulted with her about the right outfit
for my date. “But aren’t you living with her for the summer?” I asked him.

“That doesn’t matter. Just because she’s a gorgeous chicken-­nugget heiress with drawers
full of Chanel bikinis doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any problems,” Joe informed me.
“So you need to make time for us tonight. Holly and I already stopped by your house,
got your key from under the flowerpot, and packed a bag for you.”

I nodded, mentally calculating that I’d have plenty of time to sneak home for a nap
after work and show up at Holly’s around eight, in time for dinner. Unless I could
weasel out of the whole thing.

“And you can forget sneaking home before you come over, because you’ll fall asleep
and never make it over,” said Joe, whose powers of intuition are way better than Bootsie’s.
“I’m picking you up there at six. You can leave your car behind the shop tonight.”

“But what about—­”

Joe knew where I was headed, and cut me right off.

“That mutt can come, too.”

A
LL DAY,
I
’D
been determined not to wonder whether the cute vet would ever call me again, and since
by 5:45 p.m. he hadn’t, I decided it was a good thing that I was going to Holly’s.
I could hopefully discuss her relationship with Howard during a quiet moment. Truthfully,
I was feeling a little discouraged about the vet being married to Lilly Merriwether,
and Joe and Holly
are
my closest friends: If you can’t count on a chicken-­nugget heiress and her decorator
to be there for you through thick and thin, who can you count on?

I never heard back from Bootsie about what Officer Walt had to say about the chef,
Jessica, and Channing being AWOL during Gianni’s opening party, which was just as
well. I could use a night off from that whole mess.

As Waffles, Joe, and I got to Holly’s, a torrential storm exploded over Bryn Mawr.
Sheets of rain were drenching the tented roof of Holly’s fabulous outdoor living room,
and blowing sideways onto her weatherproof white furniture, so we moved the party
into Holly’s indoor living room.

The painters’ tarps had been removed, and the result was amazing. As Martha brought
out a massive platter of shrimp, I surveyed the room: There were three modern white
couches, a giant gilded antique mirror, and a sleek, pale gray rug. The coffee table
was a slab of beige marble, and over by the entrance to the kitchen, a simple white
table was loaded with buckets of ice, bottles of wine, and a huge arrangement of calla
lilies in a silver vase. It was all very simple and totally chic.

I had to admire the snacks Martha had set up: olives, shrimp, and some fragrant cheese,
with beautiful little plates and linen cocktail napkins at the ready. You never just
get, say, a Snapple at Holly’s house.

The only eyesore was Waffles, who tromped in ecstatically, drenched in rain and gazing
hopefully at one of the white sofas. Luckily, he flopped down on the floor near Joe’s
feet. This modern decor was amazing, but not exactly dog-­friendly. The Binghams would
need some extra white zinfandel when they saw this, I thought.

“This is gorgeous!” I told Holly and Joe.

“I know,” said Holly, popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. “It’s totally
Architectural Digest
, in a Bianca Jagger kind of way.”

Despite her customary air of fabulousness, Holly did look a little down. Her outfit
was on the conservative side for her—­okay, the blue and purple Pucci jumpsuit she
had on wasn’t all that conservative, but her only jewelry was a Cartier watch, and
she wasn’t even wearing heels. I started to feel concerned: Holly always swans around
with such bravado that sometimes even I forget that under her carefully honed exterior
is a girl who was teased in high school for wealth accrued by breaded poultry. Ah,
cruel youth.

“So why didn’t you tell us about your date last night?” Holly asked sadly, passing
around the champagne glasses and tucking her feet underneath her on a sofa. “Bootsie
knew. Are you hiding something from us?”

I still hadn’t told them about Mike Woodford, either, but since I was already getting
scolded for not mentioning the veterinarian, this seemed like the wrong time to bring
up Mike.

“Well, I didn’t really tell anyone, because the date was kind of a last-­minute thing,”
I said. “And I guess I was afraid that you’d tell me that he wasn’t the right kind
of guy, or that I was wearing the wrong thing . . .”

“What
did
you wear?” asked Joe, with a pained glance at my shorts and wedge sandals.

“I wore that white linen dress Holly gave me with the ruffle down the front,” I told
them.

“That’s all wrong for a first date,” Holly said, shaking her head.

“Bootsie also told us that the vet is
married
to Lilly Merriwether,” added Joe ominously.

“But I didn’t know that when he asked me out!” I protested. “And he’s legally separated
from Lilly.”

“Separated is still married,” Joe noted.

“One time my mother beat Mariellen Merriwether in bridge at the club. Mariellen wouldn’t
speak to her for two years, and then tried to get her blackballed from the Symphony
Women’s Board. What you did last night is basically throw down the gauntlet to one
of the oldest families in Philadelphia,” Holly told me in an infuriatingly wise manner,
as if she were suddenly the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of local societal mores. “I mean,
to go out to dinner with a Merriwether husband . . .”

“It’s not like that at all!” I shrieked. “I didn’t know he was a husband when I agreed
to dinner!”

One thing I’m not is a gauntlet thrower. Especially not with pearl-­wearing, patrician
ladies I’m terrified of, like Mariellen. “You see, this is why I didn’t tell you guys!
Because I would never—­”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Joe soothingly. “If you’re comfortable going out on a limb
like that, more power to you. I kind of like that you’ve got the balls to stand up
to the most prominent matriarch on the Main Line.”

“I
don’t
have the balls! That’s not what I’m doing!”

Ding-­dong
chimed the front doorbell. Joe got up, peered through the window, and said, “Oh boy.”

He opened the door and Sophie scrambled over the doorstep, looking like a Yorkie who’d
gotten drenched in the rain. She was clutching a brown paper bag in one hand and an
enormous Gucci handbag in the other. Her outfit was purple from head to toe, including
a pair of purple Versace jeans and a tight purple shirt with the Chanel logo stamped
all over it, and mud was sadly caked on her bejeweled shoes. She looked disheveled,
drippy, and slightly frantic.

“Thanks!” she bleated to Joe. Sophie paused to wipe her shoes on a beige mat in Holly’s
Carrera marble front hallway, then appeared in the living room behind Joe, and shrieked,
“I hope you don’t mind me coming over here like this, but I just can’t take it anymore.”

She paused for emphasis, and then in her tiny squeak, erupted: “You know what? Fuck
Gerda!”

Sophie was dripping on the newly refinished living room floor, and since Holly seemed
frozen in her position on the couch—­her champagne glass was halfway to her lips,
and she seemed incapable of getting the glass all the way there, or of putting it
down—­I went into the kitchen to get a towel so Sophie could mop herself dry. I rooted
around in the modern white cabinets—­which was difficult because there were no handles;
apparently having handles isn’t chic at the moment—­and came up with a ­couple of
fancy white dish towels from a drawer in the marble kitchen island. The tags were
still on them: eighty-­five dollars. Each. Handmade in Italy, from Neiman Marcus.
For dish towels?

“Here’s what happened,” squawked Sophie as I handed her the towels and she started
mopping herself off. “I was feeling hormonal this afternoon, and I was
starving
. And I haven’t eaten anything except tofu and kale in months! So when Gerda went
down to her computer room, I snuck over to Chef Gianni’s. I figured the coast was
clear, because Gerda’s usually down in her office for hours!”

We all nodded. Holly’s arm had finally unfrozen, and she was gulping her drink. Joe
was pouring himself a refill.

“I’ll have some of that, if ya don’t mind!” said Sophie, still dabbing at the hem
of her purple pants and pointing at the champagne bottle. “So, anyway, Gianni wasn’t
open for dinner yet, but Channing was there, and he packed me up a pasta Bolognese
in a take-­out carton. And he gave me this little half bottle of merlot . . . which
he uncorked for me, thank goodness! So I got home, and I was sitting in my car at
the end of my driveway eating my pasta and drinking the wine, because Channing remembered
to give me a straw, when Gerda popped up out of nowhere and started banging on the
car window!

“And I got out of the car in the rain and started yelling at her, and then she started
yelling back at me about toxic American meat. I just couldn’t take it anymore. So
I got back in the Escalade, gunned it, and here I am!”

“Did Gerda follow you here?” asked Holly. We all swiveled nervously toward the front
door.

“Nope!” said Sophie triumphantly, still standing dramatically just inside the living
room, dabbing at her Versace jeans with the dish towel and clutching her various bags
and her purse. “She can’t drive when I’m not with her, ’cause she only has a learner’s
permit! Plus I took the keys to the convertible, so she’s screwed!”

Waffles, who had been sacked out on the floor, suddenly looked up, sniffed the air,
ran over, and tackled Sophie, knocking her off her spiky sandals onto the pearl-­gray
rug. Somehow, since the first moment he’d seen Sophie, I’d known this was coming.

“I still have some Bolognese in this bag,” said Sophie, who was unhurt and sitting
up as I ran over, apologizing. She held up the brown bag, which Waffles was wagging
at and nosing furiously. “I guess your dog sniffed it out. Here, doggie, go ahead
and eat it. I kinda lost my appetite when Gerda screamed at me.

“By the way, Holly, I love your house!” Sophie added, scrambling up off the rug and
looking around as she took a seat on the couch. “Hey, Joe, maybe we could do some
of this modern crap at my place!”

In the kitchen, I put the rest of Sophie’s pasta onto a plate, and Waffles hoovered
it up. Meanwhile, Holly stared at Sophie with a mixture of exasperation, curiosity,
and disbelief that this person was sitting on her white mohair sofa.

“Sophie, where did you come from?” Holly finally demanded.

“I told ya, I just came from my house, and before that, I was at Gianni’s,” said Sophie.

“No. I mean before that. Before you married Barclay,” Holly clarified patiently. She
rubbed her temple, as if trying to keep a migraine at bay.

“Oh! I came from Joisey,” said Sophie. “Cinnaminson. It’s not too far away from here,
maybe forty-­five minutes. Just over the bridge from Philly. I moved here after I
met Barclay when I was selling cement. It’s a family business. My parents started
it, and me and all my brothers were the sales­people. You might not believe this,
but I was really good at the cement biz. Our motto was, ‘We stick with our customers!’
Get it?”

We all nodded dutifully, then Holly disappeared for a moment and then returned with
a bottle of aspirin, which she handed around to me and Joe. I looked at my watch,
wondering if I could go to bed. Since it wasn’t even seven-­thirty yet, I didn’t think
so. Maybe Gerda would show and up and force Sophie to return to the Shields stronghold.

“It’s kind of a romantic story,” Sophie rattled on, “because Barclay liked me right
away. He took one look at me, and told me something was getting hard, and it wasn’t
the cement, if you know what I mean. So we had a whirlwind romance. And you know,
Barclay was a lot thinner then. He was under two-­fifty, which is pretty good, considering
he’s big-­boned.”

“Did you know Chef Gianni back in his pepperoni days?” Joe asked Sophie.

“You know about Gianni’s pizza parlor?” she shrieked admiringly. “Barclay always told
me to keep that quiet. That way, he had some power over Gianni. But really, who cares
if Gianni used to run a pizza joint? I’m all for ­people making something of themselves!”

“And Gerda?” Joe asked. “Why, uh, exactly is she living with you?”

“Gerda saved my life!” said Sophie. “We were on our honeymoon and we went all over
Italy—­that’s Barclay’s favorite country, for obvious reasons. They have something
like three hundred different kinds of pasta there. And that’s where I discovered Versace,
my favorite designer, in Rome and Milan.

“So at the end of our trip, we went to Venice, and I was leaning out over one of those
canals, because I thought I saw a Versace boutique just across the water, when, boom!
—­
my heel slipped, and I almost went into that really slimy water. It was Gerda who
caught me! She was on a vacation with her twin sister, who looks just like her. Honestly,
they’re identical! Her name’s Gunilla, the twin.”

We all swigged more champagne, except Holly, who was frozen again at the mention of
another Gerda somewhere out in the world, possibly sailing the canals of Venice.

“So we took Gerda and Gunilla out for coffee afterward to thank them, and then Gerda
came and gave me a Pilates lesson the next day at the Gritti Palace. Two weeks later,
we were home and moving into our house when Gerda showed up in Bryn Mawr! She said
her sister was getting married and her parents had both died, and she was alone in
the world, so she tracked down our address on the Internet. She took a cab from the
airport. I didn’t have the heart to tell her to leave, so she’s been here almost three
years,” Sophie finished.