ladies what lunch

It’s lunch with the ladies again. Clare’s going on about the man she’s getting ready to dump and the one she’s trading him in for. “He doesn’t have Roger’s money, but with a body like that, who needs money?”

Gill does. “Puhlease. A nice body never got a girl anything but a house full of brats. Money, on the other hand,” she pauses. Sips her wine. Flashes her ring. “Gets you a whole lot more.” She’ll take money over muscle any day. She has a Porsche and a fat fiancee to prove it.

I want to talk about skin cream and facials and this vein below my 29 year old eye, but Chaz is discussing her arranged marriage.

“I’ll marry him. I’m not bothered.” She really isn’t. “I don’t have time to find my own husband, and the whole scene bores me.” Chaz is Bollywood gorgeous. With perfect skin and perfect hair and a Balenciaga stash I borrow from at least once a week. “But I’m not going to Pakistan, and I’m going to work, and I’m not changing my hair or my clothes.” She means it too.

Luisa says she wishes someone would arrange a marriage for her and then asks how I managed the whole trans-Atlantic-continental thing for so long.

I say “I’ll tell you, but I’ll have to kill you,” and am only half joking. “The world really doesn’t need to know about the devilish persistence that can be me.” I also remind her it’s been a few years since we had to tackle border patrols to be together.

“Are you moving back to Italy with him?” Clare is talking to me, but she’s looking at Gill.

“No. I think it’s France or Amsterdam. Something like that.” Is Gill’s reply.

“He’s Italian,” says Chaz who tries rattling off the name Palenzona and looks at me for affirmation.

“He’s English,” I say. “He’s always been English.” The elusive Mr T. “And he’s not going anywhere at the moment.”

Chaz is hungry and bored. “Oh anyway, what are we having?”

I order a starter only, fork it around the plate, and try not to frown. The weekend woes are too fresh.

I’m still on Ryvita.