Gone With a Handsomer Man by Michael Lee West Page A

to Pinehurst. He went every summer to play golf. I’d planned to go too, and I’d lined up a dog sitter to feed and walk Sir twice a day. Maybe I could sneak over to Bing’s house and visit my dog. I could also get Templeton Family Receipts.
    I fit the key onto Miss Dora’s chain and dropped the pink tassel into the bowl. Then I pushed the Hefty bags next to the staircase. No need to unpack. I was leaving in the morning, what with Bing’s deadline. I hadn’t found an apartment, so I’d have to stay at a cheap motel until I found a job.
    As I started out of the foyer, my heel snagged on one of the bags, and a black sheath dress spilled out. Bing had bought it specially for our engagement party. It had a high neckline, fit for Sunday school or a funeral.
    “Shouldn’t I wear a peppy color?” I’d asked him.
    “Black is the new white,” he’d said. “And don’t let Dora say otherwise. That woman looks like a Mary Kay cosmetics trophy. The bitch suffers from pinkitis.”
    It was true. Miss Dora’s house was raspberry stucco, but the interior was pink as a cat’s mouth. The night of the party, Bing took me on a tour, pointing out paint colors. “This room is Baboon’s Ass Pink,” he said, waving at the guest room. He guided me down the hall, pointing at other rooms. “Vaginal Blush,” he said. “Nipple Nougat.”
    We made love in the pinkest bedroom. Then we crept down the stairs, into the real world of Charleston and Miss Dora’s friends. Bing introduced me as Christine and said I was a gourmet cook. People were just as sweet as could be, asking about my china and silver patterns, which, thanks to Miss Dora, I’d picked out at Belk.
    I couldn’t have said why, but after the party, everything changed between me and Bing. We were just too different. I was bashful; he was outgoing. I would take food to a funeral and not tape my name to the bottom of the bowl. Bing craved recognition. Every time I drove by a billboard with his picture on it, or saw a Jackson Realty ad on television, I’d have to get a sugar fix.
    A few days after the party, I was watching the local news and one of Bing’s ads came on. I grabbed my purse and headed to the door. “I’m going to Piggly Wiggly to buy me some Easter Peeps,” I told him. “You want anything?”
    “God, what are you, the Swamp Queen?” Bing said. “It’s not ‘ buy me some Easter Peeps .’ Just say, I’m going to ‘buy Easter Peeps.’ You don’t need ‘me.’”
    Now, barely two months later, the engagement was off. I pushed the black dress into the bag and walked to the kitchen. As I crammed chocolate cherries into my mouth, I tried not to think about Bing or his leggy girlfriends, but I couldn’t help it.
    I imagined shooting the women with a paint gun. No, that wasn’t mean enough. I wouldn’t feel satisfied until I’d force-fed them Good Riddance Blueberry Pie. It calls for sugar, Scotch whiskey, and 1½ cups of heavy whipping cream. Add 2½ cups of berries, along with 3 tablespoons of melted blueberry jelly and a dollop of Havoc—a blue, granular rat poison with a rodent-alluring flavor. The berries will mix right in with the fatal aqua-blueness of the pellets. Sprinkle more Havoc into the buttery homemade pie dough, adding a handful of chopped hazelnuts and dried berries. Flatten with a rolling pin, pressing it over the dough this way and that. Make a wish. Pray for an unwrinkled love life. Or maybe that’s the problem, maybe I’d stretched it too thin. But never mind all that. A pie like this calls for two crusts, top and bottom, symbolic of the missionary position—which, like pie, is easy to overindulge in.
    In real life, I would never make this pie. But I imagined how tart and sweet it would taste, and how it would ooze over the bone china plate. Come on, girls , I’d say, one bite won’t kill you . I’d sit back, watch them eat. Each forkful would deliver sweet explosions of flavor, texture, and death. I could see all the way