5

AS SAM AND KITTY approached the Palace Hotel’s Silver Ballroom, two footmen in gold knee pants, silver vests, powdered wigs, and golden pumps bowed and threw the doors wide. Before them was a stunning mirrored room, dappled in gold, the ceiling hung with a dozen crystal chandeliers. It was jammed to the gills with swells in full-out formal gear. This was going to be an even longer evening than Sam had thought.

“Good Lord have mercy!” said Kitty.

“Marie Antoinette or stay home,” said Sam in lieu of I told you so.

But Kitty got her drift. “You were right. I was wrong. Jinx is pulling out all the stops. And we’re both underdressed.”

Who knew that a party in Hot Springs, Arkansas, even Jinx’s engagement party, would call for sequins and bugle beads to the floor—the sort of thing any self-respecting beauty contestant kept at the ready in three or four colors?

But all one hundred of the other women guests seemed to be either from Texas—where women were serious about dress-up—or were former Miss Somebodies. Their big hair was done up with sequins and swirls and bows. Some of them had even dyed their tresses to match their gowns.

Sam was in the simple knee-length scarlet silk sheath she’d described to Olive. Kitty wore seafoam chiffon evening pants and jacket, nice with her red-blond hair. Kitty said, “We look like street people.”

“Good. Then everyone else will give us a wide berth, we won’t have to make stupid chitchat about Herself, and we can just eat. Jesus, would you look at those hors d’oeuvres!”

A platoon of white-gloved tuxedoed waiters stood in the center of a great circular table serving up chilled lobster, Beluga caviar, truffled pâté, pressed duck, three-vegetable mousse, soft-shell crabs, smoked catfish, skewers of snails and chicken, shad roe with lump backfin crabmeat, grilled spring onions, rare eye-of-the-round tenderloin, and a pan roast of oysters with wild mushrooms, spinach, leeks, and cream—all of which Sam intended to sample.

There was a 12-piece ensemble playing Viennese waltzes.

Silver cages of turtledoves.

A fountain of Roederer Crystal champagne.

And Sam didn’t recognize a single other soul.

But Kitty did. “Oh, look, there’s Loydell!” She pointed through the crush toward an old lady in the receiving line. Sam had long been curious about Jinx’s mother, who’d now turned out to be her new friend Olive’s best buddy, and there she was.

Loydell Watson was thin where Jinx was curvy and pointy-faced. Her iron gray hair was crimped into a series of stiff waves marching back like soldiers in formation from her forehead. And party or no party, she was wearing her sensible shoes.

Which might not be a bad idea, Sam thought. Her high-heeled pumps were killing her already. So you reached a certain age, like Olive and Loydell, you traded in cute for comfortable, stashed the pumps, the pantyhose, all the other folderol, bought muumuus, pants with elastic waists, let it all hang out.

Maybe that’s what she was going to do now that Harry was out of the picture. She’d shuck the lacy underwire bras, forget exercise class, race-walking. Not exactly let herself go, but get more comfy. Why not? She couldn’t compete with a 22-year-old blonde, no matter what. And those women who worked at it so hard, trying to keep the illusion of youth—well, they were nuts.

Like Jinx, the beauty queen. Kitty had said the last time she’d seen Jinx she hadn’t aged a whit, looked exactly the same as she had when she was first runner-up to Miss Arkansas.

Sam turned to Kitty now. “So where is Herself? You think she’s going to descend in a swing from the ceiling? Lope in on an elephant? Burst out of a giant cocoon and fly across the room?”

Kitty ignored her and peered at someone around a substantial blonde wearing half an acre of silver and jet beads. “Yes,” she said, pointing. “That must be Speed, the fiancé.”

The big blonde moved, and Sam saw a balding man with a curly halo of salt-and-pepper hair. He was waving his short arms like a helicopter, talking 90 miles a minute.

“Tell me it’s for real,” she said.

“Hush,” said Kitty.

“Oh, be still my heart. Jinx marrying a chubby mosquito. Promise me it’s not a joke.”

“Shut up, Sammy, or I’m walking right off and leaving you.”

Though he was kind of cute, if you went in for elves. He had bright blue eyes and a pink cupid’s bow of a mouth. For a little sucker he was built, she would give him that, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested beneath his cream-colored slouch tuxedo right out of the thirties. His tie, tiny black patent pumps, and shirt were black. Sam grinned. “I take back what I said about his being a pool hustler. He couldn’t reach the table.”

“You lied, didn’t you, when you promised to be nice.”

“I’m sorry. I’m tired, Kitty. Morose. Cranky. Just put up with me tonight, and I promise, tomorrow, I’ll kiss Jinx’s feet.” That was easy to say, since she knew they weren’t scheduled to see the happy couple the next day, what with Jinx’s raft of Texans. Kitty had promised the two of them could have a lazy morning, take another bath and massage, pack a lunch, and head for the mountains and a long hike. Nature therapy.

Just then the musicians struck up “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,” and through a side door flounced a covey of them, all dressed in yards of floating white organza. A buzz flew around the room. And then the buzz grew as the guests realized that the eight girls—beginning with the tiny one who was no more than three years old and working up to about 21—were blond, blue-eyed look-alikes who all, in turn, looked like Jinx. It was like watching the Breck girl grow older or the Ivory soap commercial where the baby grows into the woman. It was weird, is what it was. Beyond weird. It was bizarre. Sam tried to sneak a look at Kitty, but she was staring off into space. Trying to stifle a major choking attack, if Sam knew her Kitty.

Then, a long beat passed, and the orchestra struck up “There She Is,” which Jinx had never been. Miss America, that is. But it was her party, by God. And so tacky, it was definitely worth the trip.

A drum rolled, a spotlight hit a darkened area at the end of the room, and there she was indeed, Julia Alice Watson MacMillan Barnard about-to-be McKay, just as luscious as ever with the kind of blond, blue-eyed beauty queen looks that were everywhere you turned in the Atlanta and Dallas-Forth Worth airports. Maybe we were talking a contender for Mrs. America now, but she still had spaces between the curves. The only thing that was noticeably bigger was her platinum hair. Bigger than Texarkana, Sam would say to Kitty later. Jinx floated into the room with a rhinestone tiara atop her blond chignon, wearing a dangerously low-cut strapless gown of cloth of gold that looked like it had been spray-painted on. Jinx waved to the crowd as if they were her subjects as she made her way across the room toward the reception line.

“Too bad there’s no runway,” Sam murmured. “I guess they couldn’t get it built in time.”

Then suddenly, there she was, right in their faces. “Samantha Adams and Katherine Lee, I swear! Come here and let me hug your necks! I’m so proud y’all could come!”

Gag me, thought Sam, with an iced-tea spoon—in the bride-to-be’s silver pattern, of course.