Barb and I sip our steaming cups of tea and recount the events from the night before.
The party had started out tame enough. We both agree the cute couple was charming and attractive. We note how sweet it was for the millionaire husband to make sure the anorexic billionaire wife was fed a well-balanced meal. We laugh at the late-night-antics of the guests which make me uneasy as dim memories of the evening come to the fore.
I think the trouble started with Barb and I rushing to the kitchen to get another place set for Sabrina. She had arrived, assessed and announced she would be staying for dinner. The cute husband was in the kitchen pouring a drink and in a comradely manner offers Barb and me each a shot of tequila. I dislike tequila, and I think it’s unbecoming for a middle-ag…for a mother of three to be standing around knocking back shots. I look to Barb for guidance, but she’s rushed out of the kitchen mumbling something about needing to set the table.
Not wanting to appear unfriendly (or old) I take my shot. I even wipe my mouth with the back of my hand to show how much I enjoyed it, a decision I immediately regret. Feeling a bit slutty, I try to throw the cute husband off-balance by downing Barb’s shot as well. We then go in to dinner where I slowly sip some lovely red wine and have sparkling conversation with my dinner partners. Or at least that’s the way I remember it.
Barb has an alternate version that, between screams of laughter, she relays to me. In this version I am knocking back red wine, behaving inappropriately with my dinner partner, stealing her cousin’s roadie and loudly demanding to know what he did with that bottle of Haut-Brion.
This is obviously a gross exaggeration, but I do have a foggy vision of my shin being stroked by the shot-pushing husband. Remembering my mother’s instructions to be at all times lady-like, I respond with a prim, “thank you” to his lavish compliments on the smoothness of my legs. I must admit, though slap-dash about many things, I am vigilant about hair-removal. I vaguely remember Beloved furiously glaring at me from across the table…no, no, not because of the shin stroking, but because he had just eyed my new pair of sensible, nude, patent leather, Jimmy Choo pumps that go with everything and will certainly see me through multiple seasons. I really do regret hiking my leg up on that table.
I have flashes of the rest of the evening’s hijinx that need to be confirmed by Barb. She assures me that, no, the millionaire husband was not breast-feeding the billionaire wife (as I loudly accused him of doing) just coaxing her to eat her vegetables. Yes, her cousin did hide his bottle of Haut-Brion, but only because I kept waving my glass in his face and demanding sips. And she swears Beloved stopped me in the nick of time from calling Oldest and requesting he run down the hill to bring us another bottle of tequila as Barb had somehow run out.
I wait until Barb has settled down from her hysteria (a bit of an exaggerater that Barb) and coolly sip my tea. She finally gets herself together, turns on Apple TV and for the next few hours we doze in and out while watching Four Weddings and a Funeral.
