miffed at something, maybe miffed that I had doubted her. But then I realized it was something else that had her going.
“Pfft.” She dismissed Papa with a wave of her manicured hand. “Ernie wasn’t such a big deal. All he used to do was go on and on and on about that goddamned fish.”
Before I knew it, Elizabeth Hepburn was telling all, everything about Ernie and everything about several of the other famous people she’d ever met or been with over the years. This might have seemed strange to some and I guess it was strange, but I was kind of used to it. I don’t know if it was that I was a former Psych major who had flunked out, or that Hillary’s own psychologist instincts had rubbed off on me by association, but whenever I found myself in similar situations, whenever I was done before the rest of the crew, whoever’s house we were doing wound up spilling the beans to me like I was Delilah Freud.
And, yes, it did turn out that Elizabeth Hepburn’s biggest problem was that she was lonely….
“There’s almost no one left in the world,” she said, “who shares the memories I do, nobody who can testify that the things I remember really happened or not. Why, when Ernie and I—”
“Yo, chica, get the lead—” Rivera skidded around the corner of the house but stopped talking abruptly when she saw me sitting, eating cookies with the client.
“Oops,” she said, “sorry to interrupt. But we’re all finished and we need to get to the next—”
“That’s quite all right,” Elizabeth Hepburn said, rising. “I’ll just go get my checkbook.”
A moment later, we were still packing up the van and tying down the ladders, when Elizabeth Hepburn met us out on the gravel drive. That drive was so perfect, I’d have bet money someone regularly raked the gray-and-white pebbles.
“For you.” She handed a check to Stella. “And for you.” She handed one crisp ten-dollar bill each to Conchita and Rivera. “Gracias.”
I wondered if the girls were going to hit her. Anytime someone tried to speak Spanish to them they got all hot under their penguin collars. “We’re Brazilian, you know? What do you think, that everyone who speaks with a certain kind of accent comes from the same country or speaks the same language? We speak Portuguese in Brazil, not Spanish. If you want to thank us, say obrigado, none of that gracias shit, obrigado very much.”
I found their reaction a bit extreme, especially in relation to me but also because it was often Stella’s customers they were going off on and it seemed like the people were just trying to be polite. I know I was. But then I would think how I would like it if someone came to America from, say, Germany, and started talking to me with a Texan accent because that’s what they mostly heard on TV, and I wouldn’t like that at all.
But perhaps they saw the same vulnerability in Elizabeth Hepburn that I’d seen earlier, because they let the ostensible insult pass, merely muttering “Gracias” in return.
Elizabeth Hepburn turned to me. “And for you.” She handed me a large paperback book.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “you said you were out of reading material.”
“But what is it?” I asked.
I’d never heard of the author, Shelby Macallister, nor the title, High Heels and Hand Trucks: My Life Among the Books. And the cover, on which was one perfect blue-green stiletto, was pink pink pink.
Elizabeth Hepburn’s famous blue eyes twinkled as she answered, “Chick Lit.”
“Chick Lit? But I’ve never—”
“Go on,” she said, “treat yourself. They’re tons of fun. Myself, I’m addicted to them.”
Addiction was something I could well understand…
“Go on.” Elizabeth Hepburn nodded her chin, as if she were trying to persuade me to try crack cocaine rather than just a book outside of my normal realm of reading. “Try it. I swear to God, you’re going to love it and want more and more. And, oh—” she put her hand to her face in awe “—those Choos.”
“Choos?” I said. “Did you say ‘Choos’? Don’t you mean to say ‘shoes’?”
“Oh, no,” she said, awe still in her eyes, “those Choos, those Jimmy Choos.”
I had no idea what she was talking about and my expression must have said as much, because she reached out a hand, placed it reassuringly on my arm.
“A girl needs more than a fish in her life for fun, Delilah. Now don’t forget to come back and visit me sometime—” oddly enough, she was not the first customer to thusly invite me “—and don’t forget to tell me what you think of those Choos. I’d bet both my Academy Awards you’re going to love them!”
3
“How’s that Michael Angelo’s Four Cheese Lasagna working out for you?”
Startled, I dropped my fork, causing some of the red sauce to splash up, speckling my wrist and the open pages of the book I was reading. I’d been so engrossed in High Heels and Hand Trucks: My Life Among the Books, which was about an underachieving independent bookseller who takes a job as the lapdog to a publishing bigwig, that I hadn’t even heard Hillary come in.
“What’s that you’re reading?” she asked.
See what I mean? People always ask me that question.
Before I could answer, Hillary flipped the book over to the jacket to look for herself as I wiped at the red speckles on my wrist.
Hillary sniffed. “Not exactly Hemingway, is it?”
“It’s better than Hemingway!” I enthused.
Hillary cocked one perfect blond eyebrow in my general direction, an eyebrow that was waxed and sculpted regularly by the nice Asian ladies at Nail Euphorium, a place I’d never set foot in but heard tell of from Hillary.
“Okay,” I conceded, “maybe it’s not Hemingway, but this book is fun!”
She still looked skeptical as she opened her refrigerator, the one on top, and removed fresh vegetables. I had no doubt she was going to make some kind of amazing homemade sauce, but my Michael Angelo’s really was working for me just fine.
“As a matter of fact—” I enthused on “—after I finish this one, I’m going to—”
“Don’t say it.” Hillary stopped me cold, brandishing a sharp knife. “You’re going to go down to the bookstore and buy everything else this woman, this Shelby Macallister has ever written…right?”
“Wrong,” I said, a touch snottily, but it was so nice to uncover someone else’s wrongness for a change. “You are so wrong.”
“Oh?”
“Shelby Macallister hasn’t written any other books before, meaning I can’t get any more of hers until she writes them. So there.”
Hillary shrugged, contrite, and went back to chopping. “Then I stand corrected.”
It was a good thing her back was to me, so she couldn’t see my blush when I said, “But I am going to go to the bookstore and buy a stack more of this kind of book.”
“I knew it!” She slammed the knife home so hard that poor little green pepper didn’t stand a chance. “Every time you get going on something—”
“Hi, honey—” it was my turn to cut her off “—how was your day?”
This was how Hillary and I plugged along in our merrily dysfunctional way, had done so since back in our college days, at least before I flunked out: I was wacky, she called me on my wackiness, I sidetracked that call by being solicitous, and on we went.
Hard as it was to tear myself