Golden Orange Read Free Page B

middleaged female flesh on the tiny beach.
    Some of the women chose to wear the dated string-bikinis instead of the newer French-cut. This by way of proclaiming that there were no irreparable stretch marks. No hip scars from liposuction, at least none you could notice. Most of the hot mommas were no younger than Cher and no older than Jane Fonda. Many could rival either when it came to body sculpting. It was astonishing what the Nautilus, the knife, and single-minded dedication had accomplished in The Golden Orange.
    Tess Binder arrived on the beach that afternoon wearing tinted prescription glasses with white plastic frames. She nodded to the other hot mommas, acknowledged a few panther smiles and found a suitable place on the sand away from the others but close enough not to seem aloof. She sensed whispering, actually heard a few giggles, and imagined she heard a few clucks of sympathy. Which were about as genuine as those heard when Vilma Draper, former queen of the hot mommas, had experienced silicone-curdle and sued Dr. Max Jenner (Max the Knife), a swashbuckling surgeon whose work was on carnal display in the club lounge one afternoon a week, when the price of booze was reduced and free food was offered.
    As she was applying the lotion to her arms Tess got more depressed. There was no doubt about it, her triceps were sagging! Tomorrow she’d do at least three hundred tricep extensions.
    Corky Peebles was smiling at Tess as though she was about to join her. Corky was at least forty-two years old, though she swore she was thirty-eight—one year younger than Tess claimed she was. Corky’s triceps were firm and smooth, and there wasn’t a dimple on her thighs, not one. She must have had a tummy tuck, but Tess couldn’t see the goddamn scar. The fact is, her skin and muscle were twenty-five years old, the bone and viscera, forty-two.
    The summerlike weather had brought hordes of outsiders to the club that weekend, including the Reverend Wilbur Matlock, a television celebrity who’d spent the last ten years pursuing evangelical work for the Cathedral of Heavenly Bliss. Tess watched as Reverend Matlock and two acolytes in blue satin cassocks stood solemnly on the yacht-lined dock just below the ramp leading down from the cocktail lounge. Reverend Matlock faced a resplendent yacht and raised his arms to the heavens, and prayed.
    He said, “May He who guides us on our voyage to eternity, keep this ship and this glorious crew safe from all harm!”
    A few people sitting on the patio mumbled “Amen” into their mai tais and piña coladas, and two of them started applauding but got shushed by the sober ones.
    The “ship” was the seventy-foot custom yacht Ecstasy. And “this glorious crew” were Beverly Hills caterers hired for the day. It would perhaps voyage to Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island once or twice a year, less than thirty miles from its slip at the club. The boat’s owner, Jeb Driscoll, was busy with three commercial real estate developments in San Diego and L.A., and rarely saw his boat. Like the other seven-figure yachts docked at the club it was a condo-on-the-water, a pied-à-mer , so to speak.
    Driscoll was single once again and had been definitely targeted by the hot mommas. But Tess Binder felt that she had no chance whatsoever with Jeb Driscoll, having blown her opportunity by foolishly accepting a marriage proposal from Ralph Cunningham, one of the biggest developers in Orange County, and the 303rd wealthiest man in America, according to Forbes magazine. Ralph had never become quite as popular as she’d hoped, in that he’d declined to join “Team 100,” along with the dozen or so Golden Orange donors who each gave $100,000 to the presidential campaign of George Bush. After multiple solicitations he did manage to step up with a $50,000 check, but it was too late, coming as it did after Bush was well into his insurmountable