The Wing Girl: A laugh out loud romantic comedy

My jaw dropped while my eyes caught fire. I stopped in my tracks and spun around to face him. “What did you say?”

“You know, Belinda, next time your friends take you shopping, you might stop at a store that sells manners.”

He sped away so fast I couldn’t even get my middle finger up.

***

Several women stopped dead in their tracks and parted like the Red Sea as he walked to the corner table in our usual watering hole, which was crowded and noisier than usual. His eyes locked on mine like a heat-seeking missile. He slid his hand along the brass rail of the bar until he reached the empty chair next to me. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, as he arrived. The man was perhaps forty, dark-haired, about six-two, very attractive. Okay, he’s beyond attractive. Looked like a marine recruiting poster in a thousand-dollar suit.

Didn’t matter. I held up my wine glass, which was full. “Isn’t it obvious I already have one?” Sheesh. Some guys are so dumb.

The guy’s smile disappeared instantly. He shook his head and walked away. I caught the word “bitch” under his breath.

“Excuse me?” I yelled.

He put up his hand and kept walking.

“Real nice,” said Roxanne. “I can see we’re makin’ progress on playing well with others.”

“I’ve already got a glass of wine.”

Ariel rolled her eyes. “Good God, were you raised by wolves? He was just interested in you and being polite.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But after a week of men hitting on me constantly … none of them even recognize me from TV any more. They just want to sleep with me.”

“Your point being?” asked Serena.

I took a sip of my wine. “Look, before all … this … ” I waved my hands down my body, channeling Harry. “Before all the hair and the makeup and the heels and the short skirts and the jeans that make my spunky ass pop, men used to come up to me because I was the credible girl from television news who they knew was intelligent. Now nobody even mentions it. Now I only attract men because of how I look.”

“Again … wolves?” asked Ariel.

“So,” said Roxanne, “you’re in this pissy mood because you’re suddenly hot and hordes of men are asking you out?”

“No, that’s not it. Not totally. It’s because I ran into your cousin an hour ago. The cab driver?”

“Bus-ted,” said Serena.

“Fine,” said Roxanne, putting up her hands in surrender. “So I told Vincent to embellish the truth a bit. Where’d you run into him?”

“I got into his taxi. You know, he’s related to you so you should say something to him about the way he talks to people.”

Roxanne looked puzzled as her face tightened. “Why, what’d he say?”

“He said I look spectacular and I’m a serious babe. And then we got into an argument and he said I obviously hadn’t been to charm school.”

“Let me get this straight … first he said you looked spectacular and were a serious babe,” said Ariel.

“The nerve,” said Roxanne. “I can certainly see why you were so offended.”

“Let’s back up a bit,” said Serena, ever the lawyer, “and ask the court reporter to review the transcript. You said you got into an argument after he gave you two very nice compliments, referring to you as both spectacular and a serious babe. Were said compliments the cause of the verbal altercation that followed?”

I put up one hand as a stop sign. “You had to be there. And stop badgering the witness.”

A waiter dropped by and slid an order of mozzarella sticks into the middle of the table. “Sorry for the delay on your dinner reservations. We should have a table for you in ten minutes. I brought you an appetizer on the house.”

“Great,” I said, not even looking at the guy. I reached across the table, grabbed a piece of fried cheese and shoved most of it in my mouth.

“I never noticed that before,” said Serena, as she watched me eat. She then turned to Ariel. “You?”

“No. It kind of went with the total package and I guess it all blended together. I can’t believe I missed it, considering my mother and all.”

“Noticed what?” I asked, my words garbled a bit as I talked through the cheese. I swallowed, licked my fingers and wiped them on the tablecloth.

“Your table manners,” said Serena.

I had a piece of cheese stuck in my teeth and tried to fish it out with one finger. “What about ‘em?”

“The waiter didn’t leave four forks as a garnish,” said Roxanne. She turned to Ariel. “You know what you gotta do.”

Ariel sighed and pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll call my mother immediately.”

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u0f047d89-72cd-5982-915a-978341715d31)

Ariel’s mother, Cassandra Baymont, is a best-selling author and magazine contributor. Not because she can weave words into a clever plot. Nope, her forte is non-fiction. Specifically, she’s America’s foremost expert on etiquette. You see where this is going?

We took a Saturday morning limo ride to the shores of Eastern Connecticut (I wanted to take the train but Mrs. Baymont would not hear of it. Besides, she’s loaded.) Ariel, her mother and I were seated at a posh restaurant she owns called the Hampton View. You can see the Hamptons with a pair of binoculars from the tables next to a window, hence the name. The place is only open for dinner, but because Mrs. Baymont deemed this the etiquette equivalent of DEFCON ONE she brought in a few staffers to serve us a private lunch.

And, you guessed it, to teach me how to eat.

I should mention the source of my current culinary habits. My mom died when I was two, so I was raised by a single father and four older brothers. So seeing things like people vacuuming potato-chip crumbs from their sweatshirts after a long day of watching football and shooting aerosol cheese into their mouths directly from the can doesn’t seem strange to me. Couple that with a career that often forces me to eat in the news car and wolf down whatever I can grab in ten minutes. The result is that Ariel said I resembled a starving man who escaped from a prison camp when I eat. She added that I had apparently never heard of the invention of the napkin, which no doubt accounted for my love of long sleeves.

So we were seated at the best table in the restaurant, next to the window overlooking the shore. Seagulls laughed and occasionally dove for minnows as the waves gently lapped the beach. Our round table was covered with a starched eggshell linen tablecloth. The cutlery was heavy Sterling silver. The place seated only about fifty people, but it felt like a museum, filled with beautiful antiques and framed prints of lighthouses. The walls were a deep red, while the twelve-foot ceiling was painted beige. The whole effect was soothing, rich and classy.

Mrs. Baymont was seated to my left. She’s in her early fifties and well-preserved, an older carbon copy of Ariel. Always impeccably coiffed and dressed, I can’t even imagine the woman in a tee shirt. Even though no one else was there but a waiter and a chef, she was in a lacy white blouse with her ever-present triple strand of pearls. She talked with that affected snobby lilt common to many parts of Connecticut’s most wealthy towns and old money. But she’s a sweet woman who would do anything for her daughter, and has always been very fond of me. Her manners are such that she’s never commented on my appearance, which I realized must have made her do a slow burn every time she saw me.

“Now, dearie,” she said. (She calls everyone dearie.) “Let’s go over the place setting and the various utensils.” A tall, slender middle-aged waiter in a white tux removed the large pewter plates and replaced them with bone china through which you could read a newspaper.

I raised one finger. “I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“Why does the waiter always remove the plates that are on the table when you arrive?”

“Those are called charger plates, dearie.”

“Because they’re from San Diego?”

Mrs. Baymont frowned.