Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [37]
“Zoe, it’s Zoe,” Peggy Jean corrected.
“Well, maybe ‘Zoo’ is more appropriate.”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re right, Trish. I mean, maybe this is just the price we pay for our celebrity.”
“It is, I’m telling you. Of course there is one thing you should be worried about,” Trish said.
“What?” Peggy Jean said with alarm.
“Look over there,” Trish said, pointing across the street at a Krispy Kreme sign being lowered by crane into place on the new store front.
Peggy Jean smiled, relieved. “Actually, that comforts me. It means there will be police officers around.”
“Honestly, Peggy Jean, you have no need for police officers. Now come on, let’s go back inside.”
She had one new E-mail.
To: PG_Smythe@Sellevision.com
Fr: Zoe@ProviderNet.com
Subject: Cut, Cut
You cut me off mid-sentance on live television?
That’s how you treat your FRIENDS???
Oh, nice try with the new frosting job, but sweetheart, let me tell you something: it DOESN’T work. Neither do your hairy knuckles. You are nothing but a RAT.
But I do know what would work for you:
Cut, Cut.
Peggy Jean gasped as she read the last two words: Cut, Cut. Was it a threat? A threat of physical harm? Had this Zoe person finally gone over some edge? “And I don’t have hairy knuckles, you madwoman!” Peggy Jean said through gritted teeth as she tapped the “send” key on her computer. As she did this, she looked down at the knuckles of her right hand, turning them in the light to catch the profiles of hairs.
Yes, hairs.
She took another Valium, washing it down with one of the little bottles of peppermint schnapps from her flight.
A
fter that week’s third Joyce’s Choice program ended and Adele Oswald Crawley’s Indian Pride Fry Bread Extravaganza special came on, Bebe walked back to her office and, upon opening the door, came very close to fainting.
B—
I was trying to remember how many times you blushed over dinner. I lost track after twelve, but figured a “baker’s dozen” might get the idea across. You know, “an eye for an eye.”
Looking forward to seeing you again,
Hoping to see you soon,
Do you believe at love at first sight?
Yours truly,
Unable to stop thinking about you and praying you feel the same,
Eliot
The handwritten card was the most romantic thing Bebe had ever held in her hands. It completely overpowered the thirteen long white boxes, each filled with a dozen red roses, that were stacked on a pile atop her desk. One hundred and fifty-six roses altogether. It was completely overboard. The first thing Bebe did was phone her mother, Rose, in California.
“Mom, I really think I might have met somebody,” she said.
“Oh, dear, that’s wonderful! Did you meet him out shopping?” her mother asked.
Bebe hadn’t thought of exactly what to tell her mother in terms of how they met. She improvised. “We’ve only had one date, but it’s like I made a list of everything I wanted in somebody and he arrived, mail-order.”
“Is he a doctor?” her mother asked. “An executive?”
“He owns a business, a chain of stores.”
Her mother gave a small, delighted gasp. “A chain of stores? Imagine that, a whole chain, how wonderful. Do we have any of his stores down here?”
“It’s a dry-cleaning business, actually. But that’s not the point. The point is that he’s handsome and smart and funny and, I don’t know, I just have a really good feeling about him.”
“Well, everybody needs clean clothes,” her mother said, trying to sound upbeat. “Of course, there’s no reason he couldn’t branch out in the future.”
After Bebe hung up with her mother, she looked over at the mound of boxes, the top box opened. It reminded her of a story her mother told her.
When Bebe was five, she lived with her mother and father in Brooklyn. Her father was a police officer with the NYPD. He worked a lot of nights, and one of those nights was Bebe’s mother’s thirtieth birthday. Because Dad frequently missed holidays, the family often celebrated them