McNally's Chance Read Free Page A

well-to-do, and became au fait with the ways of the world, which is to say the ways of the rich, the super rich, and the mega rich. Darling Desire was the child of my wanderlust. The rest, Mr. McNally, is history.”
    I tossed her a curve with, “And what of the child of your womb, Ms Wright?”
    “Gillian?” Sabrina said as if amazed that I would ask. “Gillian had the best of everything. I enrolled her in a fancy Swiss school from day one.”
    “You sent your daughter to the first grade in Switzerland?” I exclaimed.
    “What’s wrong with that? Little Swiss children go to the first grade in Switzerland.”
    “They live there, Ms Wright.”
    “My daughter lived there, Mr. McNally. You don’t think she got on a little yellow jet every morning toting a lunch pail.”
    The woman was insufferable, but I have to add, infectious. Sabrina Wright was a package. By that I mean there were no loose ends no ifs, buts, or maybes. Like Faust, she would sell her soul to the devil in return for a bestseller and then buy it back with ten percent of the gross. “How often did you see your daughter?” I asked.
    Puffing on her onyx holder, she said, “We met frequently at airports when our connecting flights crisscrossed. We dined in the V.I.P
    lounge. I always paid.” She gave it a beat and then burst into a raspy guffaw. Chauncey, giving the impression that he was in on the joke, joined in. Moments later everyone in the bar was sporting a grin. Yes, Sabrina Wright was infectious.
    “Why did you suddenly decide to tell her the truth?”
    “It wasn’t sudden. I had been thinking about it. And then one night oh, you know a couple of white chicks sitting around talking. I was trying to talk her into giving up Zachary Ward. He writes under the name Zack Ward.”
    “Writes?”
    “In a manner of speaking. He’s a reporter for a dreadful tabloid of the “I Was Impregnated by a Martian at the Church Rummage Sale’
    variety. They met at a writers’ workshop where he was the guest lecturer, which gives you some idea of the workshop’s caliber.”
    I wanted to remind her of the precarious position of those who reside in glass houses but refrained. I know it’s popular, especially in bombastic Palm Beach, to put down anything popular with the common folks, be it literature, music, or a hit film, and label it bourgeois.
    I refuse to go along with this line, not only because I am a member in good standing of the bourgeoisie, but because all art is valid and appealing to the masses doesn’t make it less so.
    If Gillian was enrolled in a writers’ workshop, that meant she aspired to emulate her famous mother. Was Sabrina unhappy over her daughter’s career choice? Testing the waters, I said, “I assume Gillian aspires to be an author. As is the mother, so is her daughter, the Old Testament tells us.”
    Quick as a cobra on the offensive, she snapped, “In this case, Mr.
    McNally, it would be more a case of a bastard emulating a bitch.”
    The lady had wit, however acerbic, and I was beginning to enjoy her company, but then I have always been an easy mark for well-turned ankles and calves. With anyone else, the black-tipped cigarette might have been construed as overplaying her hand, but Sabrina Wright overplayed every move, making the Mata Hari weed almost unnecessary.
    Reluctantly I extinguished my English Oval in an ashtray and encouraged Sabrina to go on with her story. “You told Gillian you were her natural mother and she fled. Is that more or less what happened?”
    It was Sabrina’s turn to douse her smoke and she did so by first removing it from the holder before tamping it in the ashtray. Chauncey, ever helpful, removed it and provided us with a clean one. Would he save Sabrina’s black-tipped butt and press it into his memory book?
    Sabrina told Gillian the truth because she thought her case against Zack Ward would be more compelling coming from a flesh-and-blood mother than from a surrogate parent. “I wanted her