“Hush up. You just want to marry someone important, and Melanie snorts everything she earns up her nose.” As her voice rose, the genteel Southern accent turned twangy and raucous. She turned on Elaine. “They only keep you around because you grew up on the Upper East Side and you have connections. Don’t ever mistake that for liking you. They’re using you every bit as much as they’re using me.”

“Don’t listen to her, Elaine,” Melanie said. “She’s obviously a nutcake.”

“No, maybe I’ve finally had enough,” Bobbi snapped. “You think this has been a picnic for me?”

“Actually, yes,” said Elaine, thinking of yesterday’s shopping excursion to BCBG.

“You would,” Bobbi said, dramatically tossing her pashmina over her head and around her shoulders, Mary-in-the-manger style. “I wish I were dead.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” said Jenny, but Bobbi was already walking away, leaving a wreckage of hurt and confusion in her wake.

“She’s toast,” Melanie sputtered. “She’ll never work in this business again.”

“She’ll never get so much as a dinner reservation again,” Jenny swore. “She’d better go back to Bubba Mills, Carolina, or wherever she came from.”

“I have no idea what came over her,” Elaine said. “I told her I’d give her an advance tomorrow.” But she wanted to fly home tonight, she reminded herself.

Tony still stood there, watching impassively. As a cop, he probably witnessed meltdowns and exploding relationships all the time.

“Forget her. Forget what she said.” Melanie handed over the purloined wallet. “She has no class.”

Elaine forced herself to seem calm as she extracted a bill from her wallet and pushed it across the table toward Tony. “For your cause. And thanks for...getting my wallet back.”

He recorded the donations on the clipboard while the Marley tune wailed from the speakers.

Elaine withered inside. How had her life turned out this way? How had she wound up getting dropped by her so-called boyfriend on Christmas Eve, and getting stolen from by her best friend? Not to mention the Christmas Eve Tony had stood her up. Truly, this night was her own personal Bermuda triangle.

Could this sort of lousy luck somehow be her fault? Elaine forced herself to consider it. Bobbi was trash. She was disloyal, and yet Bobbi’s tirade lingered in Elaine’s mind like a morning-after hangover. To Elaine’s horror, her ex-friend’s words held an eerie ring of truth. Were Jenny and Melanie her friends, or did they just act that way because they needed Elaine for them to get ahead in business?

Her hand shook a little as she tucked the wallet away.