Jaine Austen 7 - Killing Bridezilla (2 page)

KILLING BRIDEZILLA

7

“Jaine, sweetie!” she beamed. “It’s so good to see you again.”

As she wrapped me in a bony one-armed hug, her dog began licking my face with all the abandon of a coed gone wild.

“Mamie really likes you, Jaine!”

Either that, or she smelled the Quarter Pounder I’d had for lunch.

“It’s time you two were properly introduced.”

She held out the dog, and I now saw that they were wearing matching pink tank tops, embroidered with the logo
I’m Cute. Buy Me Something
.

“Jaine, say hello to Mamie.” She smiled at me expectantly.

Oh, good heavens. She actually wanted me to say hello to her dog.

“Um, hello, Mamie.” I managed a feeble smile.

Mamie, having clearly decided I was her new best friend, squirmed in Patti’s arms, eager to unleash her salivary glands on me.

“I hardly ever let anybody do this,” Patti intoned with all the solemnity of King Arthur bestowing a knighthood, “but you can hold her.”

With that, she thrust the dog in my arms, and within seconds I was covered in an aromatic layer of dog spit.

“Let’s go out to the patio, and I’ll tell you all about your assignment.”

She guided me past a maze of impeccably decorated rooms and then out through French doors to a bit of paradise that would give the Garden of Eden a run for its money.

I gazed in awe at the plushly furnished patio (complete with built-in Viking BBQ), the olympiccaliber lap pool, and the tennis courts in the distance—all of it surrounded by velvety green lawns, 8

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exquisitely tended flower beds, and a small forest of trees.

“Want something to eat?” Patti asked, plopping down onto a chaise longue. “I’m starved.”

“Sure,” I said, hoping for something whose main ingredient was chocolate.

“Hey, Rosa,” she barked into an intercom on an end table. “Bring us some Evian and carrot sticks.”

Oh, foo. Not exactly the snack I’d been hoping for.

“So what happened to your house in Hermosa Beach?” I asked, easing myself into a pillowy armchair, still holding Mamie, who was now busy nibbling on my ears.

“Oh, Mom sold it when she married Connie.”

“Connie?”

I blinked in surprise. I remembered Patti’s mom, a va-va-va voom blonde with a nipped-in waist and man-made bosoms, and somehow I couldn’t picture her hooked up with someone of the female persuasion.

“Short for Conrad. Conrad Devane. My stepfather.”

“Where’s your dad?”

“Oh, Daddy died about ten years ago. Guess he figured it was easier than living with Mom. He wasn’t dead in his grave two weeks before Mom sank her claws into Connie. She knows how to sniff out the rich ones. Not that it mattered to me. Daddy left me a bundle.”

She smiled proudly as if inheriting money was a major life accomplishment.

“Anyhow, we decided to have the wedding here at the house. It’s so much cozier than a hotel, don’t you think?”

KILLING BRIDEZILLA

9

Was she kidding? This place
was
a hotel.

“We’ll have the ceremony out on the lawn. It should be utterly glorious.”

She stretched out on the chaise, then shrieked,

“Hey, Rosa! Where the hell’s our food?—Oh, there you are. It’s about time.”

I looked up to see the harried maid scurrying to our side, with two frosty bottles of Evian and carrot sticks, beautifully arranged in a cut glass bowl.

Patti grabbed an Evian from the tray and pouted.

“Yuck, Rosa. This water’s too cold. How many times do I have to tell you, I want it chilled, not icy?”

“Shall I bring you another, Ms. Patti?” Rosa asked through gritted teeth.

“Oh, forget it,” Patti said, with an irritated wave. “Just go.”

More than happy to escape, Rosa scooted back into the house.

As I watched her retreating figure, it occurred to me that perhaps I’d been a tad optimistic thinking that Patti had miraculously morphed into a sweetheart since high school.

“Like I said on the phone,” she said, reaching for a carrot stick, “I need somebody to help me write my wedding vows. You wouldn’t believe how many writers I’ve been through.”

After the little scene I’d just witnessesed, I had no trouble believing it. None whatsoever.

“I’m counting on you, Jaine, to come through for me.”

The look in her eyes told me it wasn’t so much a wish as a royal edict.

“What sort of vows were you thinking of?”

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“I’ve had the most fabulous idea.” Her eyes lit up. “Instead of a traditional ceremony, I’ve decided to reenact the balcony scene from
Romeo
and Juliet
.”

Huh?

“Only this time, with a happy ending!”

For a minute I wondered if Mamie’s spit in my ear had affected my hearing.

“I’ll be up on that balcony.” She pointed to an elaborate wrought iron balcony on the second story of the house. “My fiancé will stand below and when I ask him to ‘deny thy father and refuse thy name,’ he’s going to say ‘okey doke,’

and then instead of all that gloomy-doomy suicide stuff, I’ll come down and marry him. See?

A happy ending!”

By now, even Mamie’s jaw was hanging open with disbelief.

And for the first time it hit me that Patti Marshall was an idiot. All those years at Hermosa High, we were terrorized by a prized num-num.

“It’s really a very simple assignment, Jaine. All you have to do is—”

“Rewrite William Shakespeare.”

“Yes! Make it hip and modern! Isn’t that the best idea ever?”

Compared to what? The Spanish Inquisition?

“C’mon,” she said, jumping up from the chaise,

“let’s go up to the balcony. Once you see how gorgeous it is, it’ll put you in the mood to write.”

The only thing that would put me in the mood to write this bilge would be a lobotomy.

With Mamie still in my arms, I followed Patti back inside the house and up to her bedroom, a hot pink extravaganza (think Fleer’s Dubble Bubble) that led out onto the balcony.

KILLING BRIDEZILLA

11

“Inspirational, isn’t it?” Patti gushed as we stepped outside.

“Um. Very.”

“How do you like the railing?”

I dutifully oohed and aahed over the elaborate wrought iron scrollwork that bordered the balcony.

“I had it imported all the way from Verona, Italy,” she beamed. “That’s where the real Romeo and Juliet were born.”

I didn’t want to bust her bubble and tell her that Romeo and Juliet were fictional characters, so I just kept oohing and aahing.

“The workmen just finished installing it yesterday. And I’ve ordered statues of Cupid that’ll be scattered around the garden. Won’t that be romantic?”

Somehow I managed to nod yes.

At which point, she draped herself over the railing and, with great gusto, began mangling Shakespeare:

“Romeo, Romeo, wherefort ares’t thou, Romeo?”

At the sound of this exceedingly bad line reading, Mamie let out a plaintive yowl, as did Shakespeare, no doubt, from his grave.

I joined Patti at the railing and gazed down at the rolling green landscape below.

“That’s where Dickie proposed to me,” she said, pointing to a wooden gazebo nestled in a bower of trees. “The Secret Gazebo.”

“The Secret Gazebo?”

“We call it that because you can only see it from up here on the balcony. It’s practically impossible to find down on the ground unless you know where it is.”

“A secret gazebo. How romantic.”

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“I’ll say. I’ve had some pretty kinky sex down there.”

Luckily, she spared me the details.

After assuring Patti that I’d been sufficiently

“inspired,” we trooped back downstairs where she took Mamie from my drool-infested arms.

“So now you know the assignment,” she said with a toss of her ponytail. “Just dash off a scene where Romeo proposes to me, and I say yes.

Only of course, Juliet’s name will be Patti, and Romeo’s name will be Dickie. And get rid of all the stuffy language. I want it to be snappy and sassy. Like
Friends
with swords and long dresses.”

By now I was on Auto Nod, bobbing my head at everything she said, no matter how inane. Five more minutes with her, and I’d need a neck brace.

“C’mon,” she said, “I’ll walk you to your car.”

We headed outside just in time to see a bright yellow VW beetle pull up in the driveway.

“Oh, look, it’s Dickie!”

A tall, sandy-haired guy untangled his long legs from the car.

“Dickie, sweetie!” Patti cried, racing to his side.

She threw her arms around his neck and locked her lips on his. When they finally came up for air, she said, “Honey, say hello to Jaine. I told you I hired her to write our wedding vows, didn’t I?—You remember Dickie, don’t you, Jaine?”

I looked up at her fiancé and took in his shy smile and spiky, slightly tousled hair. There was something about that smile of his that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.

“I’m afraid not.”

“It’s Dickie Potter. He was in our class at Hermosa.”

KILLING BRIDEZILLA

13

“Dickie Potter?” I blinked in surprise. “The same Dickie Potter who played tuba in the marching band?”

He nodded.

When I last saw Dickie Potter, he was a committed nerd, all knees and elbows, his face sprinkled with acne, someone Patti never would have looked at twice. But over the years, he’d blossomed into a major cutie.

“What a change, huh?” Patti winked.

“Patti and I ran into each other at last year’s Hermosa High reunion,” Dickie said, gazing at her with a worshipful smile.

“Yeah, he took one look at me, and the next thing I knew he was divorcing his wife.”

Patti giggled coyly, the happy homewrecker.

“Poor Normalynne,” she said, without a trace of sympathy. “Didn’t know what hit her.”

“Normalynne Butler?” I asked, remembering a tall, gawky girl who played flute in the band. “You were married to Normalynne?”

“Yes.” Dickie nodded ruefully. “I’m really sorry it ended the way it did.”

“Oh, poo. I’m sure she’s over it by now,” Patti said, waving away his doubts. “Well, it’s time for Jaine to get out of here and leave us alone.”

She threw her arms around him once more, clearly ready for some wild times in the gazebo.

“It was nice seeing you,” Dickie said to me, over her shoulder.

“Very nice,” I said, eager to make my escape before the action got X-rated. I gave a feeble wave and was heading for my car, when Patti called out to me.

“You better not screw this up, Jaine, like you used to screw up in P.E.” She shot me the same 14

Laura Levine

demoralizing look she’d used so effectively all those years ago in the Hermosa High gym. “You were such a klutz.”

Then she laughed a tinkly laugh for Dickie’s benefit. She wanted him to think she was kidding.

But she and I both knew better.

“And don’t take too long,” she trilled. “I want the script in my hands the day after tomorrow.”

So much for Patti having changed. Whatever initial burst of goodwill she’d shown me was history.

The bitch was back.

I trudged up the path to my apartment, wondering how I was going to survive working for Patti, when I saw my neighbor Lance stretched out on a deck chair.

Lance and I live in a modest duplex on the fringes of Beverly Hills, far from the megamansions to the north and just a hop, skip, and jump away from the gangs to the south. It’s a neat old 1940s building where the rent is reasonable and the plumbing impossible.

“Hey, Jaine,” Lance said, his blond curls glinting in the sun. “How’s it going?”

“Don’t ask,” I grunted.

“C’mere,” he said, patting his chair. “Tell Uncle Lance all about it.”

Lance works odd hours as a shoe salesman at Neiman Marcus, which is why he can often be found lolling about on deck chairs in the middle of the day.

I plopped down next to him and he put a comforting arm around my shoulder. An arm he promptly jerked away.

KILLING BRIDEZILLA

15

“Yuck. Why are you wet? And you smell funny.”

“It’s dog spit. One of the perks of my new job,” I sighed. “I just got the assignment from hell, writing for a ghastly woman I used to go to high school with. A world-class bitch, the queen of mean.”

“Any chance she’s gained oodles of weight and grown a mustache since high school?”

I shook my head, dispirited. “Patti’s actually thinner than she was back then.”

“That’s because the mean gene burns calories. That’s your problem, Jaine,” he said, glancing at my thighs. “You’re way too nice.”

“She actually wants me to rewrite Shakespeare.

She wants me to make it ‘snappy.’ Like
Friends
with swords and long dresses.”

“Why don’t you just turn down the job?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was hoping to spend the money on a few luxuries like food and rent.”

“Poor baby,” he tsked. “Know what you need?

A nice frosty margarita. C’mon, let’s go to my apartment and I’ll make you one. With a big bowl of chips.”

“Great,” I said, my taste buds springing to life.

“Oh, wait. I just remembered. I’m all out of tequila. And margarita mix. And chips, too, for that matter.”

Five minutes later we were sitting in my living room feasting on lukewarm Snapples and leftover martini olives.

“It’s funny,” I said, sucking on a pimento. “You spend decades trying to forget how miserable you were in high school, and then, after only a few minutes with the Class Dragon Lady, it all comes flooding back.” I took a desultory slurp of Snapple. “I was so awkward in high school. I 16

Laura Levine

swear, I spent four years with the same damn zit on my chin. What about you? Were you a mess?”

“Not really,” Lance said with an apologetic shrug. “I had my own set of problems, trying to explain to my dad why I wasn’t reading
Playboy
and playing football, but I didn’t go through an awkward phase.”

Prozac looked up from where she was nestled on Lance’s lap.