gasped. “Oh, my stars. It must be something to live here in New York and be around famous people all the time.”
“I’m sure it’s not that different than living in Dallas,” I said, enjoying Hank’s giddy enthusiasm. “It’s not like I have breakfast with Jennifer Aniston and Oprah each morning.”
“Oprah’s based in Chicago,” Tiger said with such a tone of disgust, you’d think I’d plopped SpaghettiOs on her sleeve. I was beginning to see why people called her Tiger.
“Right. I was just flipping you an example.” I pushed my chair away from the table and crossed my legs off to the side. Although my waist and hips may have softened with three pregnancies, my legs remained my strongest physical asset, and at the moment I was tempted to use them for a karate kick right to Tiger’s prominent chin.
“Speaking of famous,” Elsa said, her eyes wide in her chubby cheeks, “I understand we’re sitting with a real, live author this very minute.”
When the others looked around, she nodded at me. “Ruby is a writer. Romance novels, right?”
I nodded, pasting on the publicity smile. “That’s right.”
Hank gaped, clapping his hands frantically in mock applause. “Author! Author!”
“I can’t imagine how you do that,” Desiree said with a strangled gasp. “I could never write so many words.”
You said it yourself. “I enjoy writing. I’ve been taking notes since my fingers were strong enough to hold a crayon.” I recrossed my legs, trying not to appear smug. Most of the people in my world could care less that I was a published author; those who did care seemed to glaze over and salivate like a baby pterodactyl waiting for a meal. At the moment, everyone at the table had that baby-dinosaur look, everyone except Tiger, who was staring down at the floor, as if searching for a place to spit out a mouthful of aspic.
Hank clasped his hands together delightedly and fired off a barrage of questions. “When did you start writing? How many books have you published? Where do you get your ideas? Am I asking too many questions? Do you write under your own name?”
I laughed. “I write under my maiden name, Ruby Dixon, and I’m happy to talk writing with you, Hank.”
“I’ve always been a writer, too,” CJ said. “I write in my journal every day.”
“That’s a great—”
“You’re running,” Tiger interrupted me.
I squinted at her. “Come again?”
“Your pantyhose.” She nodded down at my fair legs, where a hideous glare of pasty white shone through a run that shot up from my ankle along my shapely calf.
I groaned, quickly concealing the run behind my other leg. “Thanks.” Not.
“Just take them off,” Tiger ordered. “Pantyhose are passé, quickly becoming a fashion faux pas. Tights would have been okay, but it’s a little late for that. You want to go to the ladies’ room and get rid of them.”
“Maybe I will.” With as much dignity as I could muster I rose from the table, pretending that torn stockings and SpaghettiOs stains didn’t matter.
“Ooh, Ruby! Don’t leave us!” Hank begged. “We want to hear all about the life of a famous writer.”
“I’ll reconnect!” I promised, showering the love right back at him, over Tiger’s head, of course.
Darting to the restroom, I caught sight of Jack lingering at the edge of the bar with his boss. He nodded as Numero Uno Laguno gesticulated wildly, her flailing arms nearly spilling her martini. Phoebe Laguno was probably half-crocked, but under the best of circumstances that woman was one olive short of a martini, anyway. Poor Jack, a party going on all around him and he gets stuck sucking up to Numero Uno Laguno. It looked like his evening wasn’t going any better than mine was.
As I peeled off my pantyhose in a stall, I wondered why I was always feeling like my wardrobe and my life were held together by a broken safety pin. Here’s one of the many ways in which I differed from the heroines in the romances I wrote—they were barely flawed women. A mechanic with dimples showing through the axle grease on her creamy cheeks who struggles to prove herself to the guys in the pit. A gourmet chef without an ounce of flab on her slender frame who fights to keep her restaurant open with competition from franchises. A magazine model who tries to dumb down her beauty but cannot hide her amazing beauty under hats, scarves and sunglasses.
Ha! I should have such problems.
Stuffing the ball of stockings into the trash, I smoothed the skirt of my dress and thanked God that I’d worn closed-toe shoes to cover my chipped pedicure. Okay, my pasty-white legs did not have the same sex appeal as they’d had in sheer black stockings, but the party was far enough along that no one, save Tiger, would remember.
Back inside the ballroom I tried to save Jack from Numero Uno. “Excuse me, Phoebe,” I said. No one dared call her Numero Uno to her face. “But Jack and I haven’t had a chance to dance tonight.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet. It is!” she gushed in her whiney Jersey accent.
“Great idea, Rubes.” Jack set his drink on the bar and touched my arm.
“But we’re talking business, right now,” Numero Uno added. “So you need to disappear. Be gone! Off with you.”
The desperate look on Jack’s face made me pause, but I knew it didn’t pay to argue with Numero Uno Laguno.
“Vamoose! Split!” Numero Uno went on, waving her arms to cast me off to distant places. “Scotty, beam her up!”
I tinkled my fingers at Jack and turned toward the cluster of familiar faces from the New York office. I was feeling alienated and needed a hometown fix. I took a seat beside Judith, hoping to absorb some of the intrepid mettle that oozed from her advice. In Judith’s view, there was nothing she couldn’t fix with a strong dose of chicken soup and a stern talking to. Decisive, wise and, okay, bossy as hell, this woman had kept the New York office grounded for nearly twenty years.
“You’ve got no stockings on,” she croaked as I sat down.
“Tell me about it. Big run.”
“You should think about self-tanning,” she said. “I do it every Sunday.”
Somehow, the image of Judith stripped down to her underwear and rubbing in tanning lotion was not going to help my lack of connection at tonight’s party. “I’ll have to add that to my list of things to do,” I said. Right between “shop for Christmas gifts” and “scrub toilet.”
“Really, dear. Just because you have little ones doesn’t mean you can let it all go to hell. I know, believe me, I’ve been there. My two are grown, of course, but when they were little I refused to let myself go, and my Irving, God rest his soul, was never turned away.”
I nodded, feeling more bedraggled and out of control than ever.
“But your skin is so lovely. Isn’t it lovely?” she asked the rest of the table, where the sales team Jack worked with sat nursing scotches and leaning forward conspiratorially. I smiled at the crew, the high-energy, the highly agitated. Spokesmodels for anxiety medication. Jack said you needed to keep your edge to stay ahead in this business. “If you’re not swimming, you’re shark bait,” he always told me. I tried to remind them that they were selling air. Air time. Commercials. If that isn’t the Emperor’s new clothes…
“Ruby is happenin’.” Byron Smith held up a hand for me to give him a high-five. With his gravelly voice and Jelly Belly persona, Byron was definitely the coolest brother at the station.
I smacked his palm and leaned into the group. “What trouble are you guys stirring up now?”
“We’re just taking bets on who’s going to become Numero Uno’s next scapegoat,” said Britta Swensen,