proposed to Greta Gustafson. Isn’t that grand? Wedding bells will be ringing any day now!

That’s all for now, honey. I’ve got to run to the market. For some strange reason, we’re all out of sherry.

Chapter 18

“Susie the Slug is pregnant!”

Kandi called me the next morning with the latest bulletin from the set of Beanie & the Cockroach. When the phone rang, I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, trying not to think about Daddy running naked through the streets of Tampa Vistas, and just about to bite into a plump cheese danish I’d picked up for breakfast. I reluctantly abandoned my danish and raced to the living room to answer the phone.

“Can you believe it?” Kandi wailed. “She went into labor last night and was rushed to the hospital.”

“Really? I thought slugs just laid eggs.”

“Not the character. The actress. Now we have to write her out of the script. Just when we finished writing Ernie the earwig out of last week’s script.”

I offered her my deepest condolences.

“I am so pissed. Steve and I were supposed to meet Armando to choose a wedding cake this afternoon. Now Steve’s going to have to go without me. You know how important this whole cake thing is, don’t you?”

“Ranks right up there with nuclear proliferation.”

“Seriously, Jaine. They did a survey, and it turns out that the thing people remember most about the wedding is the cake.”

“Funny, I always thought it was the full bar.”

“Anyhow, I simply had to talk to you, sweetie, what with you being such an expert on desserts.”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted at that crack.

“So what do you think? German chocolate with white frosting, or yellow cake with raspberry filling?”

“Kandi, when it comes to a choice between chocolate and anything else, the answer is always chocolate.”

“But the raspberry is so pretty,” she said.

Only skinny people choose food because it looks pretty. I don’t know about you, but I’d eat a dump truck if it was made out of chocolate.

Kandi rambled on for a while about the pros and cons of chocolate versus strawberry. All this wedding cake chat was whetting my appetite. I kept picturing that danish, oozing cheese and slathered with icing, waiting for me at the edge of my tub.

Finally, I managed to get off the phone. I was just about to make a mad dash for the bathroom when the phone rang again. Damn. Why does the phone always ring just when you’ve got a danish on the tub?

It was Ashley.

“Oh, Jaine. I’m so embarrassed about the way I behaved yesterday. I can’t believe those terrible things I said about Marybeth. I don’t know what came over me. I may have resented Marybeth a little, but underneath it all, I really did love her.”