Dinner and a Show (Rachelle)

        I’m agog at the vastness and splendor of our digs. The bedroom Gretchen left for me is Barbie Dream House perfect: two, count ‘em, TWO enormous walk-in closets, mirrors everywhere (well, okay, not the ceiling. This is the Deep South, after all, not Vegas…), a wall of tasteful ocean-themed oil paintings of varying shapes and sizes, arranged into the shape of a sailboat, and a spa room! This writers’ life is definitely for me. Sign. Me. Up

         I take a half-hour to unpack then join Gretchen in the kitchen, where she is already hard at work chopping onions and browning some ground beef.

         “Mmm. That smells so good,” I tell her.

         “Basic, but satisfying,” she says and brings out a hefty bottle of wine from one of the shopping bags. “What do you usually make for dinner?” she asks.

         It’s not often I get handed such a perfect opportunity for a cheap joke.

         “Reservations,” I tell her with my best Jewish-American Princess accent.

         She laughs, and I immediately add this to my ever-burgeoning list of why I adore this woman. Even when I tell an obnoxious old joke, she still shows the decency to laugh like she means it. Oy! Such a keeper, this one!

         I extricate the cork, hear the satisfying Pop!  and, as I over-fill our glasses, relay some of the back-and-forth I had with Slap McKeester,starting with him licking his glass as alcohol slipped over the edge. We raise up our vessels, clink them, and toast to a productive week.

         “Are we going to let the FS members in on our gig here?” I ask. “With as much as we post, I worry that, if we go radio-silent for a full seven days, someone might alert the police in our towns or something.”

         Gretchen swigs down her wine then says, “Naaaah. We don’t want premature feedback or potential suggestions.”

         “True,” I say, and swig down my full glass, as well. I’ve flown in an airplane today for the first time in over thirty years. I’ve earned the luxury of letting loose.

         This should probably be the point at which I mention that when it comes to alcohol, I am the all-time cheapest date ever since the world began; NO hyperbole.

         Three-quarters of a glass is my limit. After that, I giggle Muffy-the-Head-Cheerleader style: high-pitched, warbly, and incessant.

         I also become REALLY LOUD, and the right side of my upper and lower lips take on the appearance of a Novocain-riddled dental patient. Not. Attractive.

         “Hold the spoon,” says Gretchen. “I swear I just saw something outside that was not a bird.”

         I hear her gasp, then she races back inside, breathless. “You have GOT to come see this!” she says.

         Before we head onto the deck, though, Gretchen re-fills our glasses, and we both take a long pull for courage.

         Gretchen points to the neighbor on our right, and all I can do is think: ‘Oy! This wine is affecting me already! There is no way this is real.’

         It is a vision only Anna Nicole Smith could appreciate: a bona fide geezer, with skin so fish-belly white I guarantee it glows in the dark, who is positioned in a hubba-hubba pose while clad in a canary yellow banana hammock swimsuit. WHERE is the Women’s League for Decency when you need them most?

         I gulp down my wine and ask Gretchen, “WHO IS HE POSING FOR?” Then, when I see the iPhone, I add, “NOOOO! HE’S TAKING A SELFIE?”

         She gapes at me and stage whispers, “Be quiet!! Why are you shouting?”

         “FIRST OF ALL, GRETCHEN HARGIS, I AM NOT SHOUTING. AND SECOND, HE’S, LIKE A HUNDRED YEARS OLD. I DOUBT HE CAN HEAR ME FROM THIS DISTANCE!”

         Then we see him start to turn toward the sound of our voices.

         “Get down!” Gretchen hisses at me and yanks me to a crouching position.

         She does the universal sign for ‘follow me’ and squat-walks us, Mama-Duck-and-Baby-Duckling style back into our house.

         We close the sliding glass door then sit on the floor and howl. She snorts, “Let's write a romance novel instead. Slap McKeester for you; Free Willy for me!”

         As we unfold back to a standing position, Gretchen’s wine sloshes over the side of her glass and makes a lovely purple Rorschach-like splotch onto the granite island.

         “IF SLAP MCKEESTER WERE HERE,” I tell her, “HE’D BE LICKING THAT UP!”

         And once again, we’re off on another laughing jag, mine high and giggly, hers like a braying donkey. We promptly glug down another glass, though a sizable amount of mine does trickle out the side of my now droopy lips.

         “Listen,” says Gretchen, “I think you’re right about letting the members know why we’re going to be incommunicado this week.”

         She’s returned to the stove now, spoon in one hand, her re-filled wine glass in the other. How the sauce has not scalded or burned is nothing short of a miracle.

         “OKAY,” I say and open my laptop. “YOU DICTATE, AND I’LL TYPE.”

DEARRRR FANNYSTERY FIENDS:

WE’RE ARE IN NUTH CARULINE WRITTING OURE BOKKK FORER CONDOM HOUSE PUBLISHINGER THIS WEK. DONUT WORRIED ABUOTT UZ. WEE-WEE AR OKEY-AY!

LOVE,

GRETCHN AND RACHELLLLE

xoxoxoxox