Botox Diaries

Chapter One champagne corks are popping and it's only five a.m. "Darling," Lucy trills as I groggily cradle the phone between my ear and my goose down pillow. "I didn't wake you, did I?" Of course not. Why would I be asleep at this hour when I could be up repotting the azaleas? "Where are you?" I ask, fumbling for the Brite-Lite clock on the night table to confirm that, yes, it's still two hours until my alarm goes off. "Traveling?" "L.A., darling," Lucy says. "Working." I knew that. When she's in New York, Lucy lives around the corner in a big Tudor house, but she regularly packs off to Burbank to produce glamorous TV shows. Being on the opposite coast causes her to sink into saying "darling" too much. "Everything okay?" I ask, awake enough now for my worry genes to have kicked in. "Absolutely, yes," Lucy says as I hear what I swear is another champagne cork popping in the background. She bursts into giggles, covers the phone, and calls out, "Watch it, darling!" "What's going on there?" I ask. "It's not what you think. We're rehearsing for a show and there's a scene with Dom Perignon. We're using real French champagne, even for the sound check." French champagne. I sit up abruptly realizing that when the phone rang, I had been dreaming about Jacques, my very own Frenchman. We were lying naked, with our arms wrapped around each other at the edge of a warm, sunny beach. He was kissing me passionately as the waves lapped over us. Wait a minute. Didn't I see that same scene in some old movie? I put the phone down and notice the TV across the room is still flickering. I must have fallen asleep watching From Here to Eternity. Again. "Yoo-hoo, " Lucy calls impatiently. "Earth to Jess. You still with me?" I clear my throat. "Jacques," I say. "We were making love." "Jacques? Jacques is there?" Lucy screams so loudly across the country that she doesn't even need her brand-new cherry red Nokia 120000RICH cell phone. "No, Jacques isn't here. Of course not. We were on the beach." That's not what I meant to say. "I mean I was dreaming about him on the beach. Nude." I manage to stop myself before I get to the climax. Of the story. Next topic. I realize it's two a.m. on her coast so I say, "But anyway, you're working late." "I know. All night. Everyone thinks my life is all poolside meetings with Ben Affleck, but all I do out here is work, work, work." Lucy sounds awfully cheerful for a poor working girl. But then again, she's downing champagne while I'm cozying up to a blue plastic tumbler of tepid bathroom water. "So what's going on?" I ask, wondering why this call couldn't have waited for daybreakon either coast. "I'm so sorry to bother you, " Lucy says, taking a deep breath, "but it's about the bake sale." Ah, right. The fifth-grade bake sale. Now that's certainly worth a call at five a.m. In fact, I bet she's halted shooting on her million-dollar production in order to get this handled. "I need a favor, darling," Lucy says. "Dan said he'd pick up something for Lily to bring, but that means it will be store-bought. Uck. I'll look like a bad motSchnurnberger, Lynn is the author of 'Botox Diaries', published 2004 under ISBN 9780345468574 and ISBN 0345468570.