Snapped by Pamela Klaffke Page B

your card and your cellular telephone number in Lila’s pocketbook and I know she had meant to give you a ring. She was looking forward to having you by for tea.”
    “I’d love to come by for tea!”
    “Your enthusiasm is simply delightful, Sara, and I’d love to host you for tea if you’d still like to come. In fact, you could be a great help to me in regards to Lila’s things.”
    “Lila’s things?”
    “Oh, dear. I’m not explaining this well, am I? Sara, I’m afraid Lila passed away three days ago.”
    There is nothing better than death to excuse yourself immediately from a party you don’t want to be at.

Overshare
    “But you hate old people,” says Jack.
    “I do not hate old people,” I say. I hate that he knows this about me.
    “You do so. They freak you out,” he says.
    “This is different,” I say. Esther has invited me to Lila’s funeral on Tuesday.
    “You don’t have to go.”
    “I think I do.”
    “Why? To get first dibs on those magazines?”
    “No.”
    Jack laughs into the phone. “You’re such a bitch, Sara. I love it.”
    “I am—” I start to protest but Jack cuts me off.
    “Shit, baby. I gotta run—they need me on set. Can’t wait to see you. Ciao.”
    I am not such a bitch. Planning to attend the funeral of an old lady I only met once, who happened to have had a mythical collection of vintage fashion magazines is not a bitchy thing to do. I am not a bitch. I know Jack likes me tobe a bitch and that people say I’m a bitch, but I’m not—not really. It’s Ted who’s a bitch, for turning all parenting pundit and telling Eva about Gen’s tacky reality show before telling me. Gen could have, should have, told me, I know, so she’s a bitch, too, though not as much as her sherbet-T-shirted Wonderful Friends with their fake tits and the dewy glowing skin. And now Ted can’t come in Monday because of some meeting with lawyers for Gen’s show. There’s paperwork, he said when he called. It’s pressing . I’ll have to oversee production of this week’s issue alone tomorrow. Then Tuesday is Lila’s funeral and Wednesday I’m off to see Jack in Toronto for two weeks. I feel slightly better thinking about this. I’m busy and important. I’m the girl in the movies who smokes and gets impatient with taxi drivers. I dash off to see my younger, ridiculously attractive boyfriend. I drink too much coffee and tell people what to do. I have a personal assistant whom I could yell and throw things at, but it’s Eva and I’m grateful she’ll put up with me. She’s staying at my place while I’m gone. I’m sure she’d water plants and feed my cats if I had any. I’m a bitch with a soft head, a whore with a heart of gold.
    I feel like a whore when I upload the weekend photos and see Rockabilly Ben’s face in frame after frame. The shots I took rolling around on the floor are useless. This is not a surprise. But the others, the ones I shot earlier of Ben, of Eva and her friends, impress me. The kids look great. If they’d been roaming the streets of downtown I’d have certainly stopped them and asked them to pose. There’s no doubt they’re DOs.
    I resist the instinct to delete the pictures of Gen and Ted’s Wonderful Friends taken at the baby party. I crop and cut them on my computer and make a collage that has melaughing out loud. Identical bright white smiles, a row of headless fake tits, men’s bald spots and khakis, big diamond rings and a close-up of a pedicured foot with blotches of sloppily applied self-tanner. The feet and the hands, I have read in women’s magazines, are the hardest to get smooth and even with color.
    My neck is stiff. I’ve been sitting for hours perfecting my scary suburban collage. Since Gen nixed our usual Sunday brunch via early-morning voice mail—too tired from Olivier’s party, too many imaginary inches to whittle off her stomach—I haven’t bothered to get dressed or shower. I groan and stretch and try to talk myself into