there was never anything on the tape. Maybe the machine is broken or something.”
To my everlasting relief, Mrs. de Villiers had nodded and said, “Oh, yes, of course, it might be. It’s quite old. I suppose I should stop being such a technophobe and get voice mail, anyway. Well, another thing to put on the shopping list!”
Great. Now Luke’s mom was going to enroll in a voice mail plan, because I’d made her think there was something wrong with her perfectly functional answering machine.
But what was I supposed to have said?Oh yes, Mrs. de Villiers, this man with a sexy foreign accent left multiple messages, but I erased them because I assumed he was your lover and I want you and your husband to stay together?
Yeah. That’d make me more popular than ever with Luke’s parents.
“What do you think of the wine?” Raoul pops his head across the pass-through to ask Tiffany and me. He is darkly handsome—but not objectionably good-looking or what Shari would call a “pretty boy.” He has an easy smile and lots of chest hair peeping from the open collar of his shirt… and he only has just the one button undone.
“It’s great,” I say.
“I love it.” Tiffany leans across the pass-through to kiss him, practically putting her knee in my bowl of cranberry relish. “Just like I love you… ”
The two of them are exchanging baby-talk and I’m doing my best not to vomit when the buzzer rings.
“Ah,” I hear Luke say. “That must be them at last.” He picks up the intercom phone and tells Carlos to send Chaz and Shari up.
Finally. And about time, too. My turkey was in danger of drying out. Just how long can you keep poultry warming, anyway? Especially poultry that’s already been cooked once—or however they make precooked turkeys.
I pull it from the oven, relieved to see that the skin is dark golden in color, and not blackened as I’d started to fear it might have become, and let it rest in its own juices, as the little handbook that came with it—and Mrs. Erickson, who, at seventy, knows from good turkey—advised.
The doorbell rings, and Luke goes to answer it. “Hey!” I hear him say cheerfully. “What took you so—hey, where’s Shari?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Chaz is trying to keep his voice low, but I can still hear him. “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. de Villiers. Long time no see. You guys are lookin’ good.”
Tiffany has popped down from the kitchen counter and is now leaning her sinewy body (I’m positive she isn’t wearing Spanx beneath all that leather) through the doorway to peer at Chaz.
“Hey,” she says, sounding disappointed. “I thought he was bringing your girlfriend. That friend of yours you’re always talking about, Shari. Where is she?”
I pop my head out the kitchen doorway and see Chaz handing over two pie boxes to Luke. The door to the hallway is closed. And Shari is nowhere in sight.
“Hey,” I say, coming out of the kitchen with a smile. “Where’s—”
“Don’t ask,” Luke mouths, coming toward me with the pie boxes. In a louder voice, he says, “Look, Chaz spent all day baking not one but two pies for dessert. Strawberry-rhubarb and your favorite, Lizzie—pumpkin. Shari’s feeling under the weather, so she couldn’t make it. But that just means there’s more for the rest of us, right?”
Has he lost his mind? He tells me my best friend can’t make Thanksgiving dinner because she’s under the weather—and he expects me not to ask?
“What’s wrong with her?” I demand of Chaz, who has headed directly to the bar Monsieur de Villiers has set up on his wife’s antique rolling drink cart, and is helping himself to a whiskey—straight—that he quickly downs before pouring another. “Is it the flu? It’s going around. Is it stomach or head? Does she want me to call her?”
“If you’re gonna call her,” Chaz says, his voice rough from the whiskey—and something else maybe, “you better do it on her cell. Because she’s not home.”
“Not home? When she’s sick? She’s—” I widen my eyes… then lower my voice, so the de Villierses and Tiffany and Raoul can’t hear me. “Oh my God, she didn’t go into the office, did she? She went to the office when she’s not feeling well—and on a public holiday? Chaz, has she completely lost her mind?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Chaz replies. “But she’s not at the office.”
“Where is she, then? I don’t understand… ”
“Neither do I,” Chaz says, going for his third whiskey. “Believe me.”
“Charles!” Monsieur de Villiers has finally caught on that Chaz is helping himself at the bar—and not to the wine Raoul brought, either. “You must try the wine this young man brought with him. It’s the new Beaujolais! I think you will like it better than whiskey, even!”
“I highly doubt that,” Chaz says. But the liquor seems already to have improved his mood. “How you doing there, Guillaume? You’re lookin’ good in that cravat there. Is that what you call it? A cravat? Or is it an ascot?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Monsieur de Villiers confesses. “But it doesn’t matter. You must come and try a glass of this—”
He leads Chaz away before I can ask him any more questions.
“So your friend’s sick, huh?” Tiffany slinks over to thrust her concave stomach at me. “That’s too bad. I was looking forward to meeting her. Hey, so what’s the deal with all these paintings on the walls? Are they real or what?”
“Could you excuse me for a moment please?” I ask Tiffany. “I just have to, um, check the turkey.”
She shrugs. “Whatever. Hey, Raoul. You should tell them about that racehorse you owned that one time —”
I hurry into the kitchen, where Luke is trying to find a place to put down the pies—no easy task, considering all the food the granite counters are practically sagging under.
“So what did he say to you?” I stand on tiptoe to hiss in his ear. “Chaz, I mean. About Shari. When he came in?”
Luke just shakes his head. “Not to ask. I think that means—not to ask.”
“I have to ask,” I sputter. “He can’t just come in here without my best friend and say not to ask where she is. Of course I’m going to ask. I mean, what does he think?”
“Well, you asked,” Luke says. “What did he say?”
“That she was sick. But that she wasn’t at home or at the office. But that doesn’t make any sense. Where else could she be? I’m calling her.”
“Lizzie.” Luke looks helplessly at all the food, some of which is still sizzling on the stove. Then he looks back at me. Something in my expression must have told him not to pursue it, though, since he just says with a shrug, “Go on. I’ll start bringing stuff out to the table.”
I give him a quick kiss, then hurry over to where my cell phone is charging (my Happy Thanksgiving call to my parents had worn out my battery, since they’d forced me to speak to each of my sisters, their various children, and Grandma, too—who hadn’t even wanted to talk to me, as doing so required taking her attention away from the episode of Nip/Tuck —“I just adore that Dr. Troy”—she was watching,Dr. Quinn apparently not being on yet).
“Uh, I’ll be right back,” I say to my guests. “I just have to run to the store to get some more, um, cream.”
Mrs. de Villiers—the only one, besides Luke, who knows how very, very far it is from her apartment to any store that might be open and selling cream on Thanksgiving Day—looks at me in horror. “Can’t we do without?” she wants to know.
“Uh, not if we want whipped cream with our pumpkin pie!” I cry.
And slip out the door. Fortunately, no one even seemed to notice I’m not wearing a coat. Or carrying my purse, for that matter.
As soon as I get to the door to the emergency exit, I start dialing. Inside the stairwell, it’s cold… but private. And for once I get excellent reception. Shari picks up on the second ring.
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she says. She knew it was me from the caller ID. “Just enjoy your meal. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Uh, no, we won’t ,” I say. “We’ll talk about it right now. Where are you?”
