Even a giddy viewer is better than Max. “I’m happy you called. What do you think of the spessartite?”
“Oh, dearie, it’s just precious! I saw it, and just had to elbow Charlie. I told him I had to have it. So he bought it for me. Told him it’d keep me thinking of him while he’s on the road all those days at a time.”
“Are you a collector, Sissy?”
“Oh, dearie, I collect
Well, aside from Fritzi and Mitzi, my Pomeranians. And then there’s the plates and the quilts and . . .”
Her list boggles this mind. “So tell me, will you be setting the stone? Do you need a diamond semi-mount? Because if you do”—I lower my voice to girls-sharing-secrets level—“I have a faboo tray of them to show you. Six, six beautiful diamond semi-mounts.”
“And we’re off to the races! Giddyap!” Max says. “What’s a semi-mount?”
I spin my chair and face him, distracting or not. “You don’t know a spessartite from spit, and now you ask me what a semi-mount is? You don’t know a thing about the gem trade, do you?”
Tweezers in hand, he shrugs. “Never said I did.”
“But—how . . . you’re supposed to be a gem expert!”
“Why?”
“Because we’re selling gems.”
“No.
“Fine. But then what good are you?”
Just beyond the camera, Miss Mona is making like a football ref calling for a time-out. Everything about her blares STOP. Okay. I’ll stop. For now. But just wait until this fiasco is over . . .
“We have three more stones available. Who’s going to pick them up? Who’s going to own a stone that’s close to extinction from the earth’s crust? Who wants—”
“Ooops!”
Max’s tweezers clatter onto the desk. Something sparkly skitters across the surface, falls off the edge, and I see it bounce toward the camera tripod. My jaw drops.
Did he really just do that? And Miss Mona thought he was a good idea because . . . ?
When I collect myself, I point at Max. “You! How could you? What kind of idiot drops a princess-cut diamond? What were you thinking?”
“Before you get a chance,” he says in that ridiculously wonderful voice, “I’ll say my kind of idiot. What’s the big deal? I dropped it. It’s not as if I tossed it through the goalpost uprights, then did a victory dance on top of it. I’ll just go pick it up.”
“NO!” I leap out of my chair. “Don’t you even think about it. Don’t move.”
As I kneel to pick up the gem, the channel’s theme song starts up again. Relief turns my knees to overcooked linguine, and I plop down onto my butt.
You know it.
600
Decision made, I scramble up, shaking. I’m so mad. Diamond in hand, I stalk off the set and, like a bride on Filene’s Basement gown sale day, make for Miss Mona. “I quit! There is no way I’m working with that joker ever again. He knows nothing,
“Oh, Andie!” She chortles. “You have no idea. This is
“Huh?” I stick a finger in my right ear and jiggle. “What’d you say?”
“The phones haven’t stopped ringing since the two of you went on. We sold out of the spessartites, all the semi-mounts went too—sight unseen—and the viewers want to know when you and Max are on next. They don’t want to miss it!”
Now I’m really living in a nightmare. “But he doesn’t know a thing! He said some really dumb stuff on the air. And he dropped a diamond. A diamond, Miss Mona. The one we were supposed to feature next—but couldn’t. He messed up the show from the start.”
Aunt Weeby clumps up, a radiant grin on her face. “Sugarplum! You and Max are a hit! I was in the call room with the customer service girls, and I heard all them phone calls. You’re a hit! The viewers love you and Max. They think you’re a perfect couple—you know: Hepburn and Tracy,
“It’s everything I wanted and more,” Miss Mona adds. “Sparks! Fireworks! Chemistry! I knew it would work.”
