“Is the Laura you’re talking about Laura LaPierre?” I asked, leaping into the fray.
Dead silence, followed by an incredulous look from Mindy. “You know Laura?”
“In a roundabout way,” I fibbed. “She’s quite the celebrity. Did any of you read the interview she gave to Fitness Magazine? It was dynamite. She offered tips on how to stay ultra toned and flab-free past sixty-five. And she should know, because she looks like she has about zero percent body fat.” I smiled at Mindy. “She provided statistics on the high correlation between a pissy attitude and the high incidence of halitosis, boils, and rickets.” I smiled at Paula. “And she gave pointers on how to turn ordinary business ventures into cash cows. I guess she’s an entrepreneurial genius with more money than God.” I smiled at Gary. “Have you spoken to her?”
Eyes bulged. Expressions froze. Jaws fell.
“We haven’t run into her yet,” Mindy finally said in a small, tight voice.
“Well, you might not recognize her because she looks like she graduated last year instead of fifty years ago. What a knockout! You must be thrilled that a member of your class has made such a big name for herself. I think Vanity Fair is doing a feature article on her next month, and after that, she’ll be on the cover of Vogue. You should corner her sometime so you can reminisce about old times. I bet she’s dying to thank all of you.”
Ricky looked confused. “What’s she got to thank us for?”
“For treating her the way you did. If you’d been nice to her, she probably would have stayed in Bangor … and ended up like the rest of you.”
The floor tilted as we quartered into a wave. “Oh, jeez,” Ricky squawked, grabbing the table with both hands. We slammed into a trough with a boom strong enough to shake the table and cause the silverware to jump. Dishes rattled. Soup sloshed onto the table-cloth. And Ricky’s head fell forward as if he’d been guillotined.
“Is everyone ready for the next course?” I asked brightly as our waiter strode toward us, seemingly immune to the lurching deck. “Wow. Looks like a week’s worth of food. Hope everyone’s hungry.”
Ricky let out a groan like a wounded animal.
“Would you get him off the table?” Paula exploded. “Unless you expect the waiter to serve the next course around his head.”
“Is he going to be sick?” Sheila asked anxiously.
I stuck my nose in the air and sniffed. “Smells like onions, and hot chile oil, and peppercorns, and—”
“Somebody …” Ricky pleaded in a whisper of breath, “shut her up.”
“Bang Bang Chicken,” our waiter announced as he snapped open his tray jack and set his heavy serving tray atop it. “Very piquant.” He arched his brows at Ricky’s head. “Does der gentleman vish to try der entree?”
“He’s feeling a little out of sorts,” explained Mindy, “but he wouldn’t want his meal to go to waste, seein’s as how it’s already paid for, so you can give it to me, and I’ll just pick on it after I finish mine.”
“Give her mine, too,” Sheila instructed. “There’s no way I can enjoy my meal with Jumbo’s head in my lap.”
“His head is nowhere near your lap,” argued Mindy.
“How would you know what a lap looks like?” railed Sheila. “When’s the last time you saw yours?”
Paula laughed. “I doubt she can remember that far back.”
“I’ll tell you what I do remember,” Mindy shot back. “I remember who Bobby Guerrette refused to go to Senior Prom with. The girls were supposed to ask the boys. Remember him turning your invitation down flat? He decided to stay home rather than go with you. How’d that make you feel, Paula? Or did it happen too long ago for you to recall?”
“Witch,” hissed Paula.
“Bitch,” spat Mindy, proving that her rhyming skills had improved appreciably since high school.
“Duck!” cried Sheila, which seemed a lame entry in a name-calling contest, until I realized it wasn’t a name.
It was a warning.
“He’s ready to blow!”
Which he did, with animation, sound effects, and impressive range.
“Jeesuz, Hennessy!”
“OH MY GOD!!!”
I launched myself out of the booth, escaping across the aisle before my cashmere twinset fell victim to Ricky’s malaise. Unfortunately, my dinner companions were less mobile, so they bore the full impact of the assault, their screams and cries attracting the attention of the entire boat.
I regarded them in disbelief. Ugh. They could kiss those clothes good-bye. I couldn’t even read their nametags anymore. Euuuw.
As the scene escalated into a full-blown shouting match, I realized that even though I’d failed to trick them into coughing up any new details about Charlotte’s death, I’d learned two intriguing facts: first, that Pete Finnegan had benefited hugely from the death of a fellow student fifty years ago, and second, if Ricky Hennessy had been able to throw a football half as far as he could hurl, he could have gone pro.
Six
“Our waiter told us the Bang Bang Chicken was real ‘pee-kant’,” Nana confided when we returned to the hotel, “but he didn’t say nuthin’ about it bein’ so dang spicy. Two bites done me in. Feels like I don’t got no skin left on my tongue.” Peering down the length of her nose, she stuck her tongue out and studied it cross-eyed. “Whath it look like?”
We were loitering in the lobby along with other guests who were reading the schedule on the whiteboard, bugging the front desk clerk for brochures, and queuing up at the elevator. “Skin’s still there,” I said, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and giving her an affectionate hug. “But I think ‘piquant’ is restaurant code for hot. Like, ‘Yeow, my mouth is on fire’ hot.”
“No kiddin’?”
“I’m surprised Tilly didn’t interpret for you.”
“We got split up, so she ate with George and I ate with a fella named Peewee. Awful nice young man. He’s one of them reunion folks. He don’t live in Maine no more though. He lives in Arizona in one a them retirement communities.” She scanned the lobby. “That’s him over there by the front desk, gettin’ hit on by Bernice.”
I found Bernice locked in conversation with a guy who probably had to duck his head when he passed through most doorways—a big bear of a man with shaggy white hair and a jacket that wouldn’t zip over his stomach. I laughed aloud. “I see him, but I can’t believe his name is Peewee.”
“He grew.”
“Why is Bernice hitting on him? Is she on the prowl for husband number two?”
“Psssh. You see the way she’s wavin’ her phone around? I bet she’s askin’ him to be her friend on Facebook. But it won’t do her no good because I already asked him, and he said he don’t do social networkin’.”
A lightbulb slowly brightened over my head. “My dinner companions mentioned that all you guys had been pestering them about Facebook. ‘Accosted’ was the word one of them used. So why the frantic push to collect more online friends?”
“You can’t never have enough, dear.” She whipped out her phone and fingered the touchscreen. “What’s their names? Maybe I don’t got ’em yet.”
“You don’t. They’re not interested in sharing their personal information with strangers from Iowa.”
“But I wouldn’t be no stranger if we was friends.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Okay, what’s this really about?”
She peeked at me over the tops of her wire-rims, her eyes sheepish, her voice resigned. “It’s on account’ve Bernice. She’s been so obnoxious braggin’ about how many Facebook friends she’s got that the rest of us decided to one-up her. So it’s kinda turned into a competition.”