“Yes, well,” I retorted sorely, and as if it mattered or would help my case, “Donald hates to fly, too.”

“That’s right,” Adrienne said, as if remembering some far-off memory. “He did.”

“Does,” I corrected.

Another pause, another awkward silence. I was finding it difficult to breathe.

“Well,” I said with aggressive cheerfulness, motioning to the car with my hand. “Shall we?”

Adrienne and Gayle were all over each other again while I put Adrienne’s (Louis Vuitton) garment bag into the trunk—Gayle touching the coat while Adrienne unbuttoned it to show off the fuschia satin lining inside. And when she unbuttoned it, I watched in horror as that quick simple movement revealed the magnitude of her bust line: the aforementioned push-up bra pushing her breasts up and into the deeply scoop-necked white T-shirt that barely grazed the belt loops of her skin-tight Diesel jeans.

I lost my breath; felt faint: hyperventilation, then flat-lining, seemed imminent. I tried to concentrate on breathing deeply, until I realized Gayle and Adrienne were both waiting to get let into the locked car. I hit the disarm button on my key chain, walked around to the passenger side of the car (Adrienne’s coat was closed again, thank God, so my oxygen intake increased slightly) and opened the front door. But they were already climbing into the back seat together, still talking about that infernal coat, so I slammed the door and walked back to my side.

I got in and slumped behind the wheel. I felt like a limousine driver, staring at them like that in the rearview mirror.

“This is just like Driving Miss Daisy,” I said to no one in particular.

They both giggled.

I wished they were dead.

“Listen!” Gayle said, leaning over the front seat so I could hear her. “I was just telling Adrienne about Fran’s store. And she said she’d love to get in a shop!”

Get in a shop?

“Would she now,” I said, feigning delight.

“Yes, she would!” Adrienne said, then she and Gayle giggled again.

The idea quickly started to grow on me. I realized that I, too, wanted her to get in a shop:

Out of loyalty to me (I had, after all, just dropped five hundred dollars on a sweater I now hated), Fran would eat her for breakfast.

12

First things first, though.

Adrienne was staying overnight, so we dropped her bag off with the concierge of the tony but tainted Jefferson Hotel (Dick Morris, I was happy to recall, had besmirched himself publicly there with a woman of ill repute) and waited while she checked in (duly impressed by her bust line—it seemed her coat had somehow managed to fall open again—the little man at the front desk instantly upgraded her deluxe room to a suite, which Adrienne barely acknowledged. This type of thing must happen to her all the time, I thought with disgust).

Back in the car, we drove up Connecticut Avenue to Politics and Prose bookstore, and sat down in their coffeehouse amongst the throngs of bearded, Birkenstock-footed, NPR T-shirt-wearing, weekend-morning patrons. The three of us stuck out like sore thumbs. After a moment of silent discomfort and acclimation, I pointed toward the espresso bar, where we selected from a vast array of clever drink concoctions noted on the chalkboard (“Just for the Chai of it”; “Changes in Latte-tude”; “La Ca-Puccini”) and commenced to plan the day.