she replied and I stared at her mainly because her answer was crazy. Honest, but crazy.

Then I asked, “You crashed a baby shower?”

“No. Got dragged here by Beanpole,” she jerked her head at the tall, svelte, modelesque Tracy. “She didn’t wanna come alone. Gwen and Cam didn’t wanna come at all. I’m seein’

now why. Trace has got a heart of gold but no capacity to get it when people walk all over her, even when they’re doin’ it in high heels. She talked us into it with promises of employee discounts at her store. She works at Neiman’s.”

“Mm hmm,” I mumbled, thinking that would do it. There was a time in my life when I’d go to a really bad baby shower with the promise of an employee discount at Neiman’s. That time was over, though. As I had done frequently through the years, starting at around age six, I’d entered a new phase in my life. This one was one where Christian Louboutin didn’t factor but Harley Davidson did.

As I was thinking this, she suddenly and bizarrely announced, “Done with this shit. Let’s have cocktails.”

Then before I could open my mouth, she shot up to standing, grabbed her enormous purse that clunked and clinked when she did, hefted it up on her shoulder, grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the couch.

Then she declared loudly, “Smoke break!” and everyone’s eyes came to us, some of them shocked seeing as these days you could light up a doobie and no one would blink but if you lit up a smoke, you courted being publicly stoned to death. But most of the eyes were envious and probably not because they smoked, probably because they, like me and obviously Elvira, wanted to escape.

“Smoke break?” Ada asked, her face twisted in revulsion.

“Yeah, back deck okay?” Elvira asked but didn’t wait for an answer. She started tugging me to the sliding glass doors at the back of Ada’s picture perfect suburban home while jerking her chin at her posse.

I had no choice but to go but I did manage to bug my eyes out at Martha as I went; my nonverbal invitation for her to get her ass up and follow. I’d known Martha since we were in fifth grade. I moved out to Denver to be with Martha. Before marrying Damian, I lived with Martha. After leaving Damian I again lived with Martha. Therefore Martha read my nonverbal invitation and got her ass up.

“Ice,” I heard Elvira order, Tracy nodded and peeled off as Elvira tugged me out the door.

Then she let my hand go and sashayed to the picture perfect lawn furniture on the deck, folded then shoved my slice of cake in her mouth all in one go (though, it was so small, this wasn’t hard). Then she dropped the plate to the table, plonked down her massive purse which again clinked and clunked and, as I watched in unconcealed astonishment, she started unearthing the ingredients for cosmopolitans (including stainless steel cocktail shaker) from her purse as Martha, Gwen, Camille and I rounded the table.

“Ohmigod, I’m so gonna kill Tracy for this. I didn’t like Ada even before that bitch hooked up with Vic. But this party is so bad, if ex-prisoners of war attended it, they’d reminisce nostalgically about the days shit was shoved up their fingernails,” Camille muttered.

“Have you seen Vic?” Gwen asked Camille and got a head shake to her question so she continued, “Shadow of his former self. He used to live and breathe Broncos, Nuggets, Rockies and his vintage Chevy Chevelle. Now he’s wearing button-downs instead of Elway jerseys and driving a minivan and Ada hasn’t even popped that kid out yet.”

“Poor Vic,” Martha muttered.

“Poor Vic, my ass,” Elvira stated while pouring vodka in her shaker. “Needs to man up, take charge of his woman.” Her eyes sliced through Camille and Gwen and she proclaimed,

“You bitches know what I’m sayin’.”

Both “bitches” nodded in a way I found interesting since they clearly did know what she was saying and I did not and wanted to know more but before I could ask I heard the sliding glass door open. I twisted to look as it closed and saw the gorgeous, glamorous Tracy carrying two big glasses filled with ice strutting out like she was on a catwalk and not on a picture perfect back deck.

“Okay, just gotta say, I’m glad we’re out here because I wanna know what the frig is up with you.” I heard Martha say and I looked to her to see she was looking at me and therefore talking to me.

This was probably not good.

Martha was Elvira’s height which was to say five foot four. She was also now taller than me for I was wearing a pair of flip-flops with a black base and glittery silver on the straps and she was wearing a pair of platform pumps with a six inch heel and two inch platform. She was rounded just right, had curly dark brown hair that looked fabulous against her pale skin and bright blue eyes. She also knew me better than anyone in this world (or, at least, the parts I let her know). She was always late, she was always in a tizzy, her life was always filled with drama but I loved her and she loved me, always and forever, no matter what. I’d been through the thick and the thin with her, all of it, and there was a lot of it, riding her killer waves, holding her hand the whole time and she was grateful for it and didn’t have a problem with letting that show.

That said, although she could be immensely gentle, insightful and thoughtful, that didn’t mean when she had something to say, even if that something might be uncomfortable, she didn’t say it.

Which I was getting the sense she was gearing up to do now.

So I asked a fake innocent, “What?”

“What?” she asked back, not buying my fake innocent for a second and I knew this when her eyebrows shot up and she kept speaking. “Girl, I walked into your house and you had a face… a face…” She shook her head. “I don’t even know what was up with your face and you still got that face.” Then, as if I didn’t know what a face was, she lifted a finger and jabbed it toward mine going on as she dropped it. “All I know is, three months you’ve been hell on wheels, no one could keep up with you and now you look all foggy like you’re living in a dreamworld.”

Damn.

I really needed to remember that even as Martha lived out her ever-present drama, that didn’t mean she didn’t pay attention.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

“Sure you do,” Elvira stated, dumping ice into her cocktail shaker.

“Uh…” I mumbled to Elvira, a little surprised since I’d met her an hour before and she couldn’t know anything about me especially not about this.