The waiter was at our table, with a pitcher of margaritas. He poured us each a frosty glass.

“Here’s to your new job,” Kandi said, “and my new relationship.”

As fate would have it, neither lasted two weeks.

“Mommy’s home!” I called out as I let myself into my apartment, which—for all you architecture fans out there—is a 1940s duplex in the low-rent area of Beverly Hills. Not that the rent is actually low, but it seems that way, compared to the Casa Kingsleys of the world.

Prozac raised her head from where she was napping on my best cashmere sweater and looked at me through slitted eyes.

When will you get over the ridiculous notion that you’re my mother? she seemed to be saying. In case you’ve forgotten, one of us is a cat, and the other a mere mortal.

I know she doesn’t like it when I call myself Mommy, but I’m the one footing the cat food bills, so Mommy it is.

“Mommy’s got a new job,” I said, scratching her belly. “And guess how much I’m getting paid, snookums? Three thousand lovely dollars a week! That’s enough to keep you in albacore tuna morning, noon, and night.”

Her eyes shot open wide. Just the mention of food can do that to her. We’re a lot alike, my Prozac and I.

The phone rang, and I got it.

“Three thousand dollars a week? Congratulations!”

It was Lance Venable, my next door neighbor.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” he said.

And it’s true. The man has x-ray hearing. Really. Lance hears toilets flushing in West Covina. Which was pretty disconcerting when I first moved in to my apartment, but I’ve gotten used to it now.

“So tell me all about your new job.”

And I did.

“Wow,” he said when I was through. “SueEllen Kingsley. I see her picture in the society pages all the time. What amazing tits. You really saw them naked?”

“Yep. They float.”

“How come nothing fun like that ever happens at my job?” he pouted. “All I get to see are bunions.”

Lance is a shoe salesman at Neiman Marcus. Tall and thin with a headful of silky blond curls, Lance has been working at Neiman’s ever since I’ve known him.

Unlike the other shoe salesmen at Neiman’s, Lance is not an aspiring actor/director. He knows he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life selling shoes, but so far, he hasn’t figured out what he does want to do. So he spends his days fondling in-steps, and is kind enough to let me use his employee discount. Which means that instead of paying $500 for a pair of outrageously overpriced shoes, all I have to pay is $400. Not that I’d ever dream of paying $400 for a pair of shoes. But I could if I wanted to, thanks to Lance. And who knows? Now that I was making three thousand smackers a week, I just might.

We gabbed some more, mainly about Lance’s new boyfriend, a Brentwood real estate broker.