Queen of Babble Read Free

he says, “not ever having taken a photo of my bare ass before.”
    “Andrew didn’t take a photo of his own ass,” I say. “His friends took it.”

    “How homoerotic,” Chaz comments. “Why do you call him Andrew when everybody else calls him Andy?”
    “Because Andy is a jock name,” I say, “and Andrew isn’t a jock. He’s getting a master’s in education.
    Someday he’ll be teaching children to read. Could there be a more important job in the whole entire world than that? And he’snot gay. I checked this time.”
    Chaz’s eyebrows go up. “Youchecked ? How? Wait…I don’t want to know.”
    “She just likes pretending he’sPrince Andrew,” Shari says. “Um, so where was I?”
    “Lizzie’s being an ass,” Chaz helpfully supplies. “So wait. How long’s it been since you saw this guy?
    Three months?”
    “About that,” I say.
    “Man,” Chaz says, shaking his head, “there is going to be some major bone-jumping when you step off that plane.”
    “Andrew isn’t like that,” I say warmly. “He’s a romantic. He’ll probably want to let me get acclimated and recover from my jet lag in his king-size bed and thousand-thread-count sheets. He’ll bring me breakfast in bed—a cute English breakfast with…Englishy stuff on it.”
    “Like stewed tomatoes?” Chaz asks with feigned innocence.
    “Nice try,” I say, “but Andrew knows I don’t like tomatoes. He asked in his last e-mail if there are any foods I dislike, and I filled him in on the tomato thing.”
    “You better hope breakfast isn’t all he brings you in bed,” Shari says darkly. “Otherwise what is the point of traveling halfway around the world to see him?”
    That’s the problem with Shari. She’s so unromantic. I’m really surprised she and Chaz have gone out as long as they have. I mean, two years is really a record for her.
    Then again, as she likes to assure me, their attraction is almost purely physical, Chaz having just gotten his master’s in philosophy and thus, in Shari’s opinion, being virtually unemployable.
    “So what would even be the point of hoping for a future with him?” she often asks me. “I mean, eventually he’ll start to feel inadequate—even though he’s got his trust fund, of course—and consequently suffer from performance anxiety in the bedroom. So I’ll just keep him around as a boy toy for now, while he can still get it up.”
    Shari is very practical in this way.
    “I still don’t get why you’re going all the way to England to see him,” Chaz says. “I mean, a guy you haven’t even slept with yet, who obviously doesn’t know you very well if he isn’t aware of your aversion to tomatoes and thinks you’d enjoy seeing a photograph of anyone’s naked ass.”
    “You know perfectly well why,” Shari says. “It’s his accent.”

    “Shari!” I cry.
    “Oh, right,” Shari says, rolling her eyes. “He saved her life.”
    “Who saved whose life?” Angelo, my brother-in-law, moseys over, having discovered the dip.
    “Lizzie’s new boyfriend,” Shari says.
    “Lizzie’s got a new boyfriend?” Angelo, I can tell, is trying to cut back on his carbs. He’s only dipping celery sticks. Maybe he’s on South Beach to control his belly fat, which is not enhanced by the white polyester shirt he is wearing. Why won’t he listen to me and stick to natural fibers? “How did I not hear about this? The LBS must be on the fritz.”
    “LBS?” Chaz echoes, his dark eyebrows raised.
    “Lizzie Broadcasting System,” Shari explains to him. “Where have you been?”
    “Oh, right,” Chaz says, and swigs his beer.
    “I told Rose all about it,” I say, glaring at all three of them. Someday I’m going to get my sister Rose back for that Lizzie Broadcasting System thing. It was funny when we were kids, but I’m twenty-two now! “Didn’t she tell you, Ange?”
    Angelo looks confused. “Tell me what?”
    I sigh. “This freshman on the second floor let her potpourri boil