“So, finding everything okay?”
The manager managed to treat me like a human being for our whole interaction, and in the end, I ended up buying so much stuff that most of it had to be shipped to my new address: shoes, dresses, almost every single item that had reminded me of what Portia had worn to our lunch date (I was going to outclass that icy bitch if it gave me hypothermia and I died), and a whole boatload of thanks-for-being-such-a-good-friend gifts for Kate, including about seventy pounds of lingerie that she was intending to cut up and analyze for research. Weird girl, but I love her.
I was just dithering over a potential gift for my mom, a necklace of emeralds cut and polished into the shapes of leaves—on one hand, she might feel that it was just a representation of capitalist alienation and oppression, but on the other hand, emeralds were supposed to resonate with positive energy and help align her aura or something—when I heard my name called in a voice like a puppy being strangled.
Only one person had ever called my name like that, and I’d really hoped to never run into her again.
“Laaaaaaaaaacey!”
Annabelle Featherstonehaugh bleated my name again, like a sheep in gastric distress. She spread her arms wide in what could have been delight, but was probably just a calculated gesture to show off her exquisitely woven merino wool jacket.
“Oooooooh, it is you! I saw you and I thought,‘could that be Lacey Newman? Oh it just couldn’t be Lacey Newman! It’s completely impossible that it could be Lacey Newman!’But just look at you, Lacey—it’s you, Lacey Newman! This is too, too thrilling!”
She’d only been talking for thirty seconds and already I wanted to strangle her with my mom’s emerald necklace.
“Oooh, Lacey, you are just looking too gorgeous,”she gushed.“You finally grew into that fuller figure of yours—”because why compliment someone without taking the opportunity to draw attention to your relative slimness?—“and that dress you were wearing last night was divine! Wherever did you get it? You must tell me your secrets.”
Hard to believe that this was Annie Featherstonehaugh, the girl who had marked up all the girl’s restrooms in our high school with such witty aphorisms as‘Lacey’s parents take welfare money’and‘Lacey gives blowjobs for cash.’
She’d ended up going to the same college as me—thanks to her mother’s money and regular donations, not any academic standing—where she’d refined her techniques; instead of out and out telling any potential friends or boyfriends that I was an ugly, desperate, money-grubbing loser, she just insinuated it.
Kate and I exchanged looks, and like the telepathic best friends that we are, formed an evil plan.
“My dress?” I echoed.“You’d have to ask my fiancé, he got it for me.”
“Oh, whatever have I been thinking, congratulations! Such a catch, with that jaw-line, he reminds me of when I was dating Chris—you remember Chris, from that superhero film? They have the same jaw-line, don’t you think? Oh, same taste in men! We’re practically twins!”She giggled. “What are the wedding plans? Chosen a honeymoon yet?”
“Paris,”I said. Thank heavens for that seventh grade scrapbook.“Or possibly the Caribbean. It’s so difficult to decide. Grant wants to do both, but I said to him, sugarplum, just because you have the money doesn’t mean you have to flaunt it, and we’re already planning to go to Tokyo for a fashion show the week after, I’ll be absolutely exhausted.”
“Tough luck with that break-up with Chris, though,” Kate jumped in. “It got pretty ugly when he accused you of stalking, didn’t it?”
“That never went to court,” Annabelle said, her smile going down a notch. She turned to the side, trying to block out Kate. “So, how did you meet him?”
“Oh, that is quite a story,” I said. “So there I was, crying in the office parking lot because some complete bitch had Facebook-stalked me just to message insults at me—” Annabelle’s face froze for a second here, and she blinked rapidly, presumably trying desperately to remember whether she was the one who had done that to me—“when Grant came along. I didn’t want to talk about it at first, but he insisted on treating me to dinner at this lovely local restaurant—Rama, have you heard of it?”
“You got dinner at Rama?” Annabelle interrupted, the look on her face as though I had claimed to have grabbed some nectar and ambrosia at Mount Olympus.