Bulls Island by Dorothea Benton Frank

outfitted like she shopped for a career, which, in fact, she did. I don’t have to tell you she and Joanie had yet to find common ground much less each other’s middle path.
    “You, too,” Joanie said as her eyes traveled the full length of Valerie’s zillion-dollar designer ensemble. As if an effort to be attractive were a mortal sin punishable by an eternity in hell, Joanie shook her head in disgust. “I gotta go.”
    “What was that all about?” Valerie said, after Joanie and her canine entourage disappeared from view.
    “You just saw what transparency looks like,” I said. “That woman is made out of cellophane.”
    “You think so?”
    “Yep. And I’ll bet her house smells like a kennel.”
    All afternoon and into the evening I smiled because of Joanie’s blatant hostility. Every thought she had was out in the open and plainto see. But here’s what was interesting. She clearly did not know Betts was coming back to Charleston. The War of Yankee Aggression was a wienie roast compared to the pyrotechnics that were on the horizon. I just had to figure out how and where to position myself before the opening volleys were fired.

CHAPTER FIVE
Betts and Her Bundle of Joy
    G ood news traveled via jungle drums with respectable speed, but bad news took an SR-71 Blackbird, which, to the best of my knowledge, was still the fastest plane on the planet. It may seem strange that a gal like me was into airplanes, but I’ll admit it. I was really something of a speed junkie. Fast cars? Not so much. I had a seven-year-old Toyota Camry in the garage that for the amount I used it, it would last for forty years. But fast planes that took me from one deal to another? Time was still money in my book. But most importantly, I loved the rocket-ship liftoff feeling you got from small jets.
    ARC owned a G-4, which was a lumbering old hag next to the Citation X I flew when the G-4 was in use. The X could fly to Los Angeles in less than four hours at forty thousand feet and almost seven hundred miles per hour. But the Blackbird? Never been on one, but how’s Mach 3.5 at eighty thousand feet? Imagine having breakfast in New York and arriving for an early lunch in Frankfurt with time to refresh your makeup.
    So when I got a piece of good news, I was like the Blackbird, screaming into the air. Naturally, soon after I went through the mail and found the good news, I called Sela.
    “What are you doing? Busy?”
    “Signing checks for distributors as usual. Please. Interrupt me.”
    I giggled. Who liked to pay bills?
    “Okay. Guess what?”
    “What?”
    “Adrian finally got off the waiting list and into Columbia!”
    “Oh my! Glory hallelujah! Congratulations! How fabulous! Did you tell Aunt Jennie?”
    “Are you kidding? First call went to Adrian—no cell-phone reception, of course. Then I called Aunt Jennie. She’s thrilled! Called you third. She’s coming for dinner tomorrow night.”
    “You’re cooking ?”
    “You have to take a cheap shot at my culinary skills because I called you third?”
    “Sorry.”
    “Honey, don’t you know New York is the world capital of takeout? We’ll be feasting on Adrian’s favorite sushi—fatty tuna and smoked eel—Aunt Jennie’s favorite veal Parmesan, and my favorite ribs from Blue Smoke. Anyway, Adrian is going to be seriously out of his mind with some huge unmitigated glee.”
    “And you are, too…”
    “You know it,” I said. “Doing a happy dance over here! Ivy League is a very big deal.”
    “Absolutely. It absolutely is. Well, give him a big kiss from his auntie Sela.”
    “I’ll do it!”
    “I’m gonna send him something, too. Good grief, Betts, where does the time go? Seems like yesterday that I went up to Nantucket with y’all. Adrian was just a little squirt jumping waves and making sand castles.”
    “Right? Now he’s six feet tall with a man voice, and a dead ringer for he-who-shall-remain-nameless.”
    “Nameless. You know what, girl? There’s something so