Adventures with Max and Louise Read Free Page B

driveway. To her credit, she’s driven like a snail, sensitive to my pain.
    “On my behalf, Ang. Honestly, whose side on you on, anyway?”
    She turns to me before she gets out of the car. “On yours, of course. I can’t help it if the man’s attractive. And a doctor. Attractive and a doctor. You’ve got to admit that’s a good combo.”
    “Did you miss what happened back there? He gave me someone else’s implants! Doesn’t that make you the least bit concerned about his stability? His frame of mind?”
    This isn’t going anywhere. Once Angeli latches onto an idea, particularly in matters of the heart, she has the tenacity of a pit bull. I give it one last shot. “Besides, you don’t date Indian men, remember? You were never going to sit through another endless cricket game while some guy blathered on about how he wanted a modern woman who cooked like his mother.”
    She pivots in her seat, perfectly made-up eyes narrowed in concentration. Obviously, she’s put a lot of thought into this, probably while I was on the table getting Christine McDaniel’s implants sewn into my chest. “Rules are meant to be broken. Besides, I don’t meet too many good-looking doctors working at the Clinique counter. I am so done with metrosexuals. I have no use for men who’ll fill up my bathroom cabinets with their grooming supplies.”
    “Well, next time hit up your own doctor,” I sniff.
    “That’s a good idea,” she says, grabbing her purse. She steps out of the car and grabs the back of her thighs. “Does he do lipo?”
    Climbing out, I stumble a bit before Angeli rushes around the side of the car. She grabs my arm, firmly squeezing it, while slinging her other arm around my shoulder. For a moment, despite my irritation, I feel a surge of love. Angeli can be awfully self-centered, but when it’s important, she’s never let me down. Slowly, we make our way to the front steps.
    Since mom died, our Dutch Colonial has lost its well-groomed charm. The black shutters need painting. Chipped pots have fallen off the flagstone steps. The lawn has more dandelions than grass. The rosebushes have been gnawed by aphids to sickly little stubs. I rarely enter through the front door, normally walking around the back into the kitchen. It’s strange to be helped into my own house. I hand Angeli the keys, and she opens the door.
    As soon as I’m inside, the reality of my situation hits. I slide down onto the floor, staring down at my buxom chest. “Oh, Angeli,” I gasp. “I have breast implants. Me with D cup implants. What am I going to do?”
    “Well, one thing’s for sure,” Angeli says, pulling me off the floor into the kitchen. “You’re gonna need a bigger bra.”
    Seated at the kitchen table, I rest my head on my folded arms. Angeli puts the kettle on for tea. Since high school, this has been our routine. I man the kitchen for all snacks and meals. Angeli, after years of belabored cooking lessons from her mother, has one area of expertise: tea.
    “I need cake,” I sigh, motioning to the countertop, where my famous old-fashioned sour cream chocolate cake sits, glossy and seductive, under a glass cake saver. I perfected this recipe one rainy day when I came upon, for some reason, three pints of sour cream on the verge of going bad in our fridge. Three days and many ounces of unsweetened chocolate later, a cake was born.
    Angeli nods, pulling two plates out of the cupboard. She slices us two thick slabs of cake, placing one before me on the table. As is our custom, she eats perched on the counter. We wait in silence for the water to boil.
    “You’ve got them for two months, you might as well enjoy them,” Angeli says through a mouthful of cake. “Get some great bras and sexy shirts. I can take you shopping. It can be an experiment: life before and after big boobs.”
    “What am I going to tell my dad?” I groan.
    “How about the truth?”
    “Yeah, sure. Oh, by the way, there was a slight mix-up in surgery.