“Me too!” I say and wonder what Gloria Peacock could possibly have that we need.
Maybe it’s a million dollars.
Ha.
25
I put my cut off sweat pants and AC/DC shirt back on, plop down onto the sofa, and feel a cold, damp lump under my ass.
Lima beans.
Great.
I order a pizza from Pier 57 and flip thru my DVR in search of something funny to watch because I desperately need to be cheered up.
I think about getting all dolled up and rolling into Ethan Allen’s looking like a fox. Then I could sweep Mason McKenzie off his feet and bring him home to love and hold on to for the rest of my life. Or at least have some red hot sex with. Ha.
My mind spins a million “what if” fantasies and after ten minutes, I snap back to reality and remind myself that I am too old to be so pathetic.
The doorbell rings and I jump up and run to the kitchen door, but no one is there so I run to the front door only to be greeted by the smiling face of a nice young fellow in my 3rd period Art class who is, of course, wearing a Pier 57 Pizza tee shirt and matching visor.
“Hello, Ms. Jones,” he says politely and I get the feeling he is trying real hard not to stare at my shorts. “How you doin’ tonight?”
“Oh, I’m great Davis,” I say, “hold on a second.” I run to the kitchen, grab a twenty, run back to the door, and give him the money. He starts digging in his pocket for change and I tell him to keep it for a tip.
“But, Ms. Jones,” he protests, “the pizza was only $12.95.”
“Yeah, Davis,” I say, smiling, “that’s for not telling everyone at school about these atrocious cut off sweat pants.”
“Can I tell ‘em about your AC/DC shirt?” he asks. “Cause that rocks!”
“Sure,” I tell him, taking the pizza box and stepping back into the house. “Just make me sound way cooler than I actually am.”
He pockets the money and smiles. “No problem, Ms. Jones. Thank you and have a good night.”
As he walks off the porch, I suffer a wave of disappointment that my evening caller was not Mason McKenzie. Then I suffer a wave of being pissed-off at myself for being disappointed and remind myself, yet again, that I am not and cannot be so pathetic.
So what if he said he wants to marry me?
Who cares?
I’m not falling for that one again.
I eat half the pizza, drink three beers, and fall asleep on the couch with Buster Loo in the bend of my knees. I get up at 3 a.m., put the leftovers in the fridge, and stumble back to my bedroom. My cell phone is laying face down on my night stand and I tell myself not to pick it up.
But I reach right over and I pick it up. When I do, I see that I have seven missed calls from J. Mason McKenzie. All received after midnight.
“I am too old for 2 a.m. booty calls, Buster Loo,” I say to my little dog as he nestles into the covers. “Too freakin’ old.”
26
On Saturday, I change dresses and shoes and hair-dos and earrings and bracelets and necklaces and scarves about forty times each. It’s a rare occasion when I worry about what someone might think of how I look, but this is Gloria Peacock we’re going to see today.
The most stressful part of getting ready is finding something to wear that doesn’t piss me off because it makes me look like a balloon-butt old biddy getting dressed to go to Mardi Gras or an overdone reject from a Men in Black casting call.
After I pile enough clothes on the floor to put a Lane Bryant store out of business, I go to the closet and dig out a dress that I snagged off a sale rack last year and haven’t even tried on yet. It’s high-waisted white sundress that has a turquoise sash with a big, fluffy flower sewn onto the left side. I put it on and, much to my surprise, it looks pretty decent. After checking all the angles, I decide to call it my magic dress because it covers everything that needs to be covered in the area of jelly rolls, cleavage, and thighs and has the added bonus of matching a pair fabulous sandals I bought on clearance last year. Hell yeah. Problem solved.
Having beat my hair to death with a hundred different styling attempts, I have no choice but to roll it up in a bun, but at least I have a nice white ribbon to tie around it. I twirl around like a school girl in front of the mirror and smile at myself because I like what I see. And that almost never happens.
The doorbell rings and I strut down the hall to the living room and find Mason McKenzie standing in my kitchen looking like a hot mess on humid day.
“You look great, Ace,” he says, giving me a shy smile.
“Where’d you get the weed eater?” I ask snidely.
“What?” he asks, squinting at me like I’m talking way too loud. “Weed eater?”
“Yeah,” I shout, “the one you fixed your hair with.”
“Oh, that’s really funny,” he says without laughing. “Where you headed?”
“To The Waverly Estate,” I answer, thinking that will really impress him.
It doesn’t.
“Oh,” he says, “Mrs. Peacock and my grandmother are really good friends. Nice place.” He pauses. “Why are you going out there, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Because Gloria Peacock invited me,” I say with no small amount of pride, “and Lilly.”
“Well, how nice,” he says flatly. “Where were you last night?”
“What are you,” I ask sarcastically, “my parole officer?”
“Why are you always such a smart ass?”
“Why do you think you can keep showing up at my house unannounced and uninvited?”
“You are impossible,” he says and turns to leave, “and you said you would be there. That’s why I asked.”
“Lilly said she would be there if I remember correctly.”
“So we’re back to this already?” he says as he pushes open the door.
“Back to what?” I fire back.
“Not speaking.” He slams the door shut and Buster Loo rocket launches himself out the doggie door and I can hear him outside barking his fool head off.
I run back to the bathroom and start fanning myself so the tears won’t run down my face and ruin my make-up. I look out the window and see Mason petting Buster Loo and scold myself out of the mood to cry.
I watch in complete agony as he puts down the little dog and disappears around the corner of the house. Buster Loo starts running speedy-dog crazy eights, stopping at every turn to throw his little chiweenie body against the fence and my heart breaks for my poor daddy-less dog.
Time slows to a snail’s pace and I sit on the edge of the tub fanning myself like Scarlett O’Hara. After what seems like hours, I hear a horn blow so I get up, do a quick mirror check, and run out the front door where Lilly is smiling and waving. I stuff my heartache back in that place I’ve kept it for the past three years and I’m all smiles as I climb into her red BMW.
“Damn,” she says, “we look good!”
“I concur,” I say smartly. “Love that dress!” I lean over to get a look at her shoes. “Oh good word, those are beyond fabulous.” And probably cost more than that set of tires I put on my car last week.
“Thanks!” she beams at me. “Ready?”
“Am I?!” I exclaim. “Am I?! You bet your sparkly little purse I am!”
I ask her how it went with Dax and she talks about him all the way to the gates of The Waverly Estate and that’s fine with me because I am more than in the mood to sit with my mouth shut and listen to her ramble about her handsome lover.
27
The iron gates of The Waverly Estate look like they were hand crafted by Michelangelo himself. We sit in the shade of this gigantic work of art and wait for the gate guard, sleek and sporty in starched white shorts and a blue polo, to make his way from the guard house to the car. He asks to see our identification, scribbles something on his clip board, pushes a button on a device attached to his belt, and the glorious gates begin to move.
“Welcome to Waverly, my pretty ladies,”
he says with a deep southern drawl. “Miss Lane, you can park right over there in any one of those spots and a gentleman will pick y’all up and take you around to the pool where Mrs. Peacock is waitin’ .”
“Thank you so much, sir,” Lilly says. “Have a nice day, sir.” She rolls up her window and looks at me in a panic. “Are we supposed to tip these people?”
“Oh my word, Lilly, you are such a dumb ass! We are at a private residence, not the freakin’ Peabody Hotel!”
“Well, you’re supposed to tip anyone who provides you with a service.” For all her many travels, she obviously only carried her passport. I guess beautiful women don’t get much experience tipping because they’re always on the arm of a benevolent man.
“Well, take him twenty bucks if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Twenty dollars,” she yells, “are you crazy?”
“No,” I say quietly, “but you sure as hell are. Now shut up and let’s at least pretend like we have sense enough to be here.”
We get out of the car just in time to see a shiny blue golf cart pull up to the curb. Instead of straps to secure clubs, it has a seat on the back emblazoned with a majestic blue peacock in all its feathered glory. The driver appears to be a clone of the gate man and I start having visions of Mr. Deeds in that mansion with that sneaky butler fellow.
“Ladies,” the gentleman says with a friendly smile, “it would please me greatly to give y’all a ride.”
“We’d love that,” I say and try to smile big enough for the two of us because Lilly has lapsed into some kind of idiotic stupor and is looking around at all the trees and flowers with her mouth half open and I worry for a second that she might start to slobber.
I elbow her and nod to the cart and she walks over and gets in, the whole time looking like a stupid ass robot with long, tan legs and expensive heels. When the gate-clone-servant man hits the gas, I lean over and whisper, “Hey globe trotter, what the hell is wrong with you? You’re acting like you’ve never seen an azalea in bloom.”
“There’s just something about this place,” she says dreamily, “I can’t explain it.” She looks at me, wide-eyed. “Don’t you feel it? It’s like an aura or something.”
“Have you been smokin’ weed?” I ask and I’m dead serious.
“No,” she looks at me like I’m the moron. “It’s magical. This place is absolutely magical!”
“You are a freakin’ fruit loop.” I whisper, but she isn’t listening.
“Look, there’s a peacock!” she squeals. “A real live peacock!”
I roll my eyes and wonder if she’s upped her daily dose of crazy meds.
After a winding tour through what could easily pass for a privatized Garden of Eden, we roll to a stop next to a clover shaped pool fit for a Hawaiian beach resort. Lilly is still thoroughly intoxicated with the loveliness of The Waverly Estate and has counted seven real live peacocks roaming the grounds. I bite my lip and tell myself now is not the time to call her a dip shit.
Lilly slides off the back seat of the shiny blue golf cart, walks over and hugs Gloria Peacock like the petite little lady just saved her from being eaten by piranhas. Gloria Peacock hugs her back and smiles that thousand watt smile and I wonder for a brief second if her teeth are real or if they’re dentures. Very expensive dentures. Like made of ivory or something.
“We haven’t officially met,” she says, offering a hand laden with jewels more valuable than my house. And probably my life. “Gloria Peacock.”
“Graciela Jones,” I say, shaking her hand and trying not to stare at her rings, “but everyone calls me Ace.”
“And why is that?” she asks quickly and I’m caught off guard by her question so I stand there like a deaf mute waiting on a phone call.
“Because she’s always been so great at sports,” Lilly gushes, “ever since she was a little girl, she could play any sport she wanted and never even needed to be coached. She’s a natural athlete. Very talented.”
My face is burning from embarrassment and it only gets worse when Lilly goes from gushing about what a prodigy I was fifteen years ago straight into gushing about how The Waverly Estate is more magical than Disneyland. We are standing directly in the hot summer sun and I think I might pass out from the painful combination of heat and humiliation.
Gloria Peacock is kind enough to notice that I’m having a near death experience so when Lilly stops to catch her breath, she invites us both to sit down. She waves her bejeweled hand toward a shaded little hut adorned with four oscillating fans.
Thank you, Jesus.
A female version of the gate-keeping-golf-cart-driving-servant-clone glides into the hut and places a glass pitcher of sweet tea in the center table. She disappears, but returns in a flash with a bowl of lemon wedges and some tiny silver tongs. Another servant clone appears and presents large, clear glasses filled with square chunks of ice and some kind of weird plates that look like they’re made out of bamboo. Yet another servant presents us with a platter loaded with tea cakes, candied pecans, cheese straws, chocolate dipped strawberries, and four more sets of those adorable little tongs.
I look at Gloria Peacock and smile.
I am starting to see the magic.
And I want a pair of those little tongs.
“Help yourself,” she says, smiling that big smile of hers and I realize that I don’t give a rat’s ass if she’s smiling at me with real teeth or elephant tusk dentures, I load my plate up like the black sheep cousin at a white trash family reunion. Lilly, however, gracefully places just enough food on her plate to feed a small bird. A very small bird.
When we finish the sweet tea, snacks, and polite chit chat, Gloria Peacock stands up and says, “Okay, girls, it’s time to get down to business. Follow me, please.”
We follow her around the pool and through a set of French doors flanked on both sides by about fifty more French doors. Or windows. I can’t tell. We step into a sun room that looks like a Pottery Barn ad and from there into a marble floored hallway topped with domed ceilings painted up like a cathedral. We follow her around a table topped with a flower arrangement the size of Rhode Island, down another glitzy hallway, and into a room that looks like a scene from Mission Impossible.
28
“Welcome to my media room,” Gloria Peacock says proudly, “make yourself comfortable.” She motions toward a gigantic sectional facing an electronic arrangement as impressive as it is intimidating. The brown leather sofa is soft and smooth and I feel like I’m floating on a cowhide cloud. Lilly perches on the edge of a cushion and has this look on her face like she’s not sure where she is or how she got here.
Meanwhile, Gloria Peacock is standing in the center of the room facing her electronic empire and appears to be conducting an invisible orchestra. She’s waving and pointing and I’m starting to wonder is she might be a little off her rockers when all of a sudden the wall comes to life and I’m looking at a picture of me and Lilly talking to Deputy Dax Dorsett outside the gym the night we broke into Catherine Hilliard’s office.
“Where did that come from?” I ask, stunned and secretly embarrassed for thinking she might be senile. Lilly’s mouth is hanging open again and I’m not sure if she’s shocked to see our sweaty faces splayed across Gloria Peacock’s larger-than-life magic computer monitor or if she’s lusting after Deputy Dax, whose biceps look damn sexy up on that big screen.
“Omega Security Systems,” Gloria Peacock says, “my first husband’s brain child and my oldest son’s life work.”
She smiles and Lilly and I stare at the screen like a pair of teenage boys seeing boobs for the first time.
“My Will, General William Peacock, spent 22 years in the Army before he retired and went to work for the F.B.I.” She pauses and seems to be lost in thought, but only for second. “Surveillance was his specialty and this,” she waves a hand around the room, “is today’s version of the work he began back in the 50’s.”
“They had video surveillance in the 50’s?” I
ask, trying to shake off the stupor and, at the very least, appear to have a grain of sense.
“Indeed they did and my William designed the specs that became the foundation of COINTELPRO,” she looks at me and my expression must convey my ignorance because she continues, “COINTELPRO is a surveillance system that the government put into action in 1956, but had to quit using in ‘71 because a bunch of idiots broke into a field office in Pennsylvania and,” she shakes her head and sighs, “what followed was nothing short of mayhem. Blown completely out of proportion.”
“Coin…tell…pro?” I ask and now I’m wondering if Gloria Peacock might be a Russian spy or something. “What is that?”
“COINTELPRO is an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program.” She points at the screen and another image pops up and I’m looking at myself standing outside the emergency entrance to the hospital wearing only one flip flop. Sheriff Jackson has his back to the camera and is looking at the concrete, as are Lilly and Ethan, and Deputy Dorsett is in the process of getting out of his patrol car.
“Oh my God,” Lilly whispers. “What was that movie? With Will Smith and Gene Hackman-”
“So how do you-” I trail off as she brings up a shot of me and Logan Hatter in the parking lot of Ethan Allen’s and my mouth is wide open and Logan has his arm around me and his eyes are closed. “That is amazing detail!” I exclaim. “This is unbelievable,” I pause, shaking my head, “but how?”
“Enemy of the State,” Lilly whispers and I look at her and she has this weird look on her face and I start thinking that maybe she and Deputy Dax have been getting freak nasty on top of his patrol car and that’ll be the next picture we see up on the big screen.
“Mrs. Peacock,” I muster up all my courage, “is this legal?”
“Perhaps not,” she says like it’s no big deal. “My son had the cameras installed at various locations around town as a gift to the city to help cut down on crime. He’s given that gift to several little towns in the tri-state area, but ours is the only one to which I pay attention.”
Diary of a Mad Fat Girl Page 9
