The Favoured, The Fair and Ms. Vérité Claire

11 Christmas Classic

"Lotte! Lotte! Did we get a Christmas card from Minx in the mail?"  Vérité was gorgeously frantic, freshly returned from her salon appointment.

"I go and see," Lotte shrugged.

Julia looked up from a pile of receipts, afraid to ask. And yet she had to. "What happened?"

She watched as Vérité paced, shuffling through a stack of old mail, then as she zig-zagged from wall corner to chair back to table top, and any other surface she could throw herself dramatically against while setting down her shopping bags. She finally settled for a seat on the arm of the sofa where Julia was and from her perch, rolled her head back and whined angrily to heaven, "Why???"

"Oh, dear," Julia said. "How bad is it?"

Vérité shook her head and air-stomped before regaining her composure.

"You know when Carol Albright told me Tantrum Dens were the new Panic Rooms I told her not to believe everything she reads in Hammacher Schlemmer. Now what I wouldn't give for something to smash and a safe place to do it!" She leapt to her feet once again, scanning the room with hands on hips, seeming to briefly consider several items including a candy dish and a set of antique Victorian servants bells atop a mantel shelf. "No, I won't do it," she said exasperated. "We'll have to go to one of those dollar stores for a handful of cheap ceramics and some safety goggles."

"And ruin your beautiful blow out?"

"It did turn out didn't it?" she smiled, forgetting for a split second her vexation. "You have no idea how much hairspray's in here, but OH! DON'T TALK to me about the salon or this stupid afternoon! I am just so...so..."

"I heard Screaming Closets are the new Tantrum Dens," Julia tried.

Vérité scrunched her eyes to olive pits. "Screaming won't cut it."

"Are you going to tell me why?"

"Shove over," she said, squeezing in next to Julia with a respectable plop. Julia moved an afternoon's worth of carefully sorted papers out of Vérité's destructive reach.

"There I was at Circus getting my brush set with Elaine. Amy was giving me my hand massage and Roger had just brought me my cappuccino when I heard a voice say, 'Vérité is that you?'

"I said, 'who is that?' with a ridiculous smile on my face and whom do I turn to see in the chair beside mine but Denise Karmine crinkling her pointy little nose at me like we're bestest friends! Has she no shame? She knows I'm not speaking to her!"

"Does she? Actually?"

"Yes and she knows why! She knows exactly how she betrayed my confidence by spilling the beans to Minx about my memoirs deal so that Boston cream body snatcher could run right out and get a book deal of her own. She is still one of the top five sneakiest people I know and I will never forgive her for it when I remember not to, but there were too many witnesses to take back my hello so I just said, 'Darling! How've you been?'

"So then she says she's fine and tells me I look gorgeous and she pouts with those awful yarny lips of hers and says, 'But I'm afraid someone's been telling tales.'

"'Whatever do you mean?' I say. Roger wasn't going anywhere, and I can't say I blame him. 'Minx said you'd had a tragic hair accident and have to wear a wig.'

"Elaine stops her backcombing and says, 'That bitch!' because she knows nothing of it. Then I say, 'clearly she's hearing voices again,' and we all have a good laugh at Minx's expense until Denise says, 'Didn't you get the Christmas card?'"

"What Christmas card?" Julia asked.

"Maybe this one?" Lotte said, returning with the pile of mail from the foyer.