“I sure will. Now you go back to being on the rag.”

“I know I’m being bitchy. Sorry. I have to go interview someone stupid now.”

“So that’s why you’re in such a nasty mood. Are you going to interview a Housewife who’s Desperate?” Lauren was a television reporter for MoreTV, a twenty-four-hour cable channel devoted to all things celeb. She’d had the dream gig, flying off to glamorous places like the Cannes Film Festival or interviewing James Bond on the set of his latest film. Recently though, MoreTV had shifted its focus from being the “CNN of entertainment news” to chasing celebutards, following around rejects from American Idol, and debating which stars from Desperate Housewives were feuding. This had not pleased Lauren.

“Yes, I am off to see a Housewife—we’re going to the Dog Park up on Laurel Canyon so she can share one of her passions with me,” Lauren replied.

“I bet she’ll tell you her dog is her child. Do you want to bet me?”

“That is a bet I won’t take,” Lauren said. “Call me if you get engaged.”

Lauren hung up and I turned back to the mess of my desk.

“Hey, Dani, your mom’s on the phone,” my assistant Azita called out to me from her desk outside my door. “Do you want her?”

I didn’t need my mom’s toxic juice spraying all over me on a catch-up day like today. Thank God I’d been on the phone with Lauren and not picked up the second line when it was blinking. “Can you tell her I’m in a meeting, an emergency meeting that I’m needed in?” I yelled back.

“Sure, no problem.”

The last time I’d made the mistake of picking up my mom’s call at work, she’d broadsided me with the latest news about my dad. “Well, you’re going to find out sooner or later, so I guess I should let you know that your father is dating a Russian,” she’d told me.

“Really? I’d asked. “Is this someone he met from one of his magazines?”

“No, I think they met online. She’s one of those women they call a ‘Natasha.’”

“Her name is Natasha? Like Boris and Natasha?” I’d asked.

“No, she’s like a hooker, I think, but she needs an American man for her green card.”

“So Dad’s getting married to give this ‘Natasha’ a green card?”

“I don’t know if your father is getting married again, but they are very serious,” she’d added gravely. “I hear she has a daughter who’s around ten or twelve that your father adores.”

“Oh my,” I’d replied.

“You know, that’s around the age you were when we divorced, so I think he has a lot of guilt associated with those feelings of abandoning a girl close to your age.”