“But I was so proud of your joining the chamber. I had no patience for that sort of thing, really.
There were too many people involved.”
“There still are,” I muttered. “I really don’t think the chamber is for me, after all, Mr.
Wainwright. Those women are just—well, they’re just mean! They’ve called every day for the last week to remind me that as the newest member, I am responsible for bringing at least three kinds of mild cheese, wheat crackers, and four bottles of California white. And I’m supposed to submit weekly progress reports on how my quest for freebies is going. When I suggested that this was excessive, I was given five demerits. I don’t even know what that means! There has to be something going on. Demon possession or a man-hating cult or—ooh! Witches! They could be witches.”
“Isn’t that kind of obvious?” he asked.
“Don’t use logic on me.”
“Jane, you’re not a quitter.”
“Well, that’s just not true.”
Nice Courtney was the only chamber member who was happy to see me walking through the door with my basket of yuppie goodies.
“Jane, honey!” she cried, breaking from the pack to greet me at the door of the chamber house and relieve me of my boozy burden. “I’m so glad you’re here. We just got another new member.
You’ve got to come meet her.”
A blonde in a shell-pink twin set turned when Nice Courtney tapped her on the shoulder.
Jenny gasped. “What the—”
“Hell?” I finished for her.
Jenny looked around furtively and dragged me into the foyer. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“I joined last month. What are you doing here?” I shot back.
“I joined tonight.”
“You’re not a business owner.”
“Yes, I am,” she shot back, handing me her business card.
“What, so I started a business, and suddenly you have to start one? How transparent are you?”
Jenny rolled her eyes. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“Well, it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“I’ve wanted to start my own business for years, and now the boys are getting older. There’s a huge market out there for people who would love to create a kind of memory craft but can’t so much as cut a straight line. People like you. I’m just making it a little more upscale. And technically, you didn’t start one, you inherited it, just like you’ve inherited everything else. The house, Missy’s holdings, the shop—is your long-term plan based on making friends with the elderly chamber members so they remember you in their wills?”
“There are no elderly chamber members. The Courtneys sacrificed them to their evil god,” I growled, ignoring the confused look on Jenny’s face as she searched the room for a face over forty. “And I don’t think I’m going to take crap off someone who was trying to smuggle valuables out of my house in her craft bag.”
Jenny protested, “I wasn’t stealing—”
“What do you call taking items that don’t belong to you from someone else’s home without their permission? Aggressive borrowing?”
“I’m not going to have this conversation with you now, Jane. You’re being ridiculous. Look, no one here has to know that we’re related,” Jenny said, glancing around. “We can pretend not to know each other. You can be some person I don’t know that well and don’t want to spend time with.”
“Fine, fine, it’ll be just like school. You stay on your side, and I’ll stay on mine.” I turned on my heel and rifled through my bag. “Where the hell is the wine?”
I stuck my fingernail in the cork and used a tiny bit of vampire strength to pop it out. I did, however, manage to resist the urge to glug straight from the bottle and snagged a wineglass instead. Full glass in hand, I stomped off to find Nice Courtney. She gave me a questioning look as I took her wine glass and drained it. “Do you two know each other?”
“Apparently not,” I muttered.
Head Courtney called the meeting into session. I stewed while Jenny was introduced and officially welcomed into the group. There was clapping and squealing and cooing. It was a noticeably warmer reception than what I received. They even gave her a little pink rose corsage.
Typical.
My sister had decided to take her love of scrapbooking to another level. The scary level. She started a company called Elegant Memories, a personalized and customized scrapbooking service using specialty handmade papers made from the hairs of Turkish virgins or something. Of course, she was accepted into the fold like a Borg returning to the Collective.
The fact that I could correctly make a reference to the Borg was probably part of the reason I was not being accepted into the Collective.
I spent most of the meeting plotting ways of getting Jenny out of the chamber. (Shaving her head came up, or telling Head Courtney that Jenny was a natural brunette. Somehow all of my solutions were hair-related.) And then I switched to trying to find ways of getting me out of the chamber, which was less productive, since I was interrupted by “Jane?” Head Courtney repeated sternly.
“Huh?”
“I asked how the prize collections were going.”
Crap. Head Courtney had sent me a strongly worded e-mail listing the acceptable prize options for the Fall Festival: gift baskets, gift certificates of no less than $100 each, vacation packages.
Very few businesses (that were not chamber members) were willing to give up such treasures for what was essentially a children’s carnival. So far, a doctor’s office had given me oversized promotional pens advertising a drug for erectile dysfunction, and I’d charmed a local beauty shop out of a gift certificate for a free lip waxing.
“Not well, actually. I managed to get a few things, but with the number of participants you’re talking about, it’s just not going to be enough. I was thinking maybe we need to change our focus for the carnival prizes. I was thinking we might aim for smaller items, so we would have plenty of small, inexpensive prizes instead of a few big prizes. Things like stuffed animals and candy, you know, things that kids would like to win.”
Since this was supposedly a kids’ carnival and all.
Head Courtney’s lips pressed together in a tight, pissed-off line. “Jane, I must not have explained your assignment thoroughly enough in the repeated e-mails I sent you.”
“It’s not that. I just think—” Head Courtney snapped, “I didn’t tell you to think, I told you to gather prizes for the Fall Festival.”
I had a brief, colorful fantasy of latching onto her neck and drinking her dry. But I reconsidered instantly. I’d read somewhere that Botox turns the blood bitter and astringent. Instead, I smiled thinly and said, “That’s kind of condescending.”
Head Courtney sniffed. “Maybe you’re not chamber material after all, Jane.”
A way out! A way out!
I started to reach for my purse, “If you really feel that way …”
Toady Courtney stood up and whispered to Head Courtney, something along the lines of, “But none of us wants to do it, either.”
Dang it.