More Muffia (The Muffia Book 2)
Table of Contents
Title page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
EPILOGUE
Praise for The Muffia Series
About the Author
More Muffia By Ann Royal Nicholas
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination; historical names and information, should either appear, are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locations or events is strictly coincidental.
Copyright 2015 by Ann Royal Nicholas
Published by Bournos 2015
Los Angeles, CA
Printed in the United States of America
Cover Design by Fred Baxter
Interior format by coversbykaren.com
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without this condition being imposed on any subsequent purchaser.
ISBN No. 978-0-9907080-3-2
www.Bournos.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If you’re new to The Muffia series, then you might not know there’s a real group of book-loving, Los Angeles women who call themselves The Muffia, which I’ve been lucky enough to be a member of for thirteen years. These women, whose names have been changed for their own protection, generously share endless amounts of wit, insight, kindness, laughs and food. Most of them can mix a damned fine cocktail, too.
If it were not for the Muffs who are, each of them, overflowing vessels of inspiration to me, this series could not have been written. Many of the incidents in the Muffia books have actually occurred; or they could have happened had events gone slightly differently.
Thanks must, therefore, go first to the ladies of the real-life Muffia: Michelle Joyner, Lisa Mohan, Carolyn Calvert, Sonya Walger, Lysa Hayland Heslov, Denise Gruska, Susan Hoffman Hyman, Betsy Salkind, Clare Foster, Janine Eser and Jann Turner. Without these women, my life would be so much less than it is.
So many others contributed to the book you hold in your hand—either through their inspiration and encouragement, or by virtue of their superior beta reading skills. I’m grateful to Agatha Dominik, Fred Baxter, Arbel Ben Peretz, Cedering Fox, Claire Carmichael, Hannah Dennison and Joyce Mochrie.
Thank you, Liz Trupin-Pulli, agent extraordinaire, for continuing to believe in me and the Muffs. Thanks also to Alex Hyde White, all the people at Punch Audio, and Marc Solomon for their skill and expertise in the recording of The Muffia audio book.
Lastly, thank you. Your purchase of this book makes a contribution from the real Muffia possible. Ten percent of profits from the sale of this and all Muffia books will be donated to charitable organizations benefiting girls and women in the United States. The Muffs will decide, on an annual basis, which organizations will be the recipients of Muffia funds. We are particularly interested in organizations that provide women of all ages with access to education and the means to start their own businesses. Should you have ideas of where we might send our donations, please contact us.
Make suggestions and keep track at www.themuffia.us.
Happy reading,
Ann Royal
More Muffia is dedicated to my son who’s been very patient.
CHAPTER 1
If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that if my dear friend and fellow longstanding member of the Muffia Book Club had called me from halfway around the world to tell me that my stupendous Israeli ex-lover—who, by the way, died while we were having unbelievable sex—was walking around Narita Airport very much alive, I would have jumped on the next plane to Tokyo.
If it had been me who’d been awakened with this news in the middle of the night, I would have been apoplectic and immediately gone online and booked a ticket. How dare Maddie react with her typically unique combination of disbelief and ennui? She should reserve all that composure for her freakin’ mediations. What’s wrong with people? And on top of that, now I was going to miss my plane! No good deed goes unpunished, right?
“Excuse me, sumimasen, pardonez moi…MOVE,” I assert with as much conviction as I can muster—though probably coherent only to myself—as I race toward the gate and my plane back to Los Angeles where I live and work and sometimes love. At that moment, though, I don’t think it really matters what I say. I just have to say it with enough volume and with the obvious authority I’ve developed over my career as a talent agent (read: glorified babysitter to celebrities—not what I signed up for), so that I can get all these people out of my way.
But they aren’t moving. Aggghhhh!
There’s a cluster of schoolgirls in front of me—possibly a Hello Kitty convention—wearing impossibly hot pink and taking up the entire corridor. I see an opening and lurch toward it, but as I do, “Oh—uh—oh no—!” And down I go: shoes, bag, phone, and the rest of my carry-on belongings scattering hither and yon.
“Shit,” I utter with more volume than I intend. That, after all, is a word people in every culture understand. I groan in pain, happy I’d given up short skirts, and attempt to pull myself upright, while the Hello Kitty contingent stares at my entire koplotznick like I’m Lindsay Lohan trying to walk a straight line after failing a Breathalyzer test.
Come to think of it, quite a lot of people, guys anyway—actually it’s only been a couple of guys who’ve hit on me, something that occurs less and less these days—tell me I sort of look like Lindsay Lohan. Only older, taller, heavier, and my hair is auburn and naturally curly, whereas Lindsay’s is blonde and straight, last I checked. But yeah, other than all that, I look exactly like Lindsay Lohan.
“Here, let me help you,” says a bespectacled man with a smattering of freckles spread out over his nose. He has an accent—Australian or possibly South African—I can’t tell the difference, and a sorry shortage of hair. He looks familiar in the way guys like Freckles always look familiar. He takes hold of my arm with one hand and helps me to stand and steady myself. In the opposite hand, he’s holding one of my shoes, which had flown off when I tripped. He’s examining it curiously.
This particular pair of Natacha Marros are not what one would call “traditional” in appearance: Lucite platforms and red metallic detailing over a slipper of gold. People who bother to look down and examine strangers’ footwear see them and are instantly put on notice that the wearer is no traditionalist, either. But now, as I follow his gaze, I see the heel of this shoe has completely busted off—something that is not supposed to happen with Marros. Goddammit! No wonder I’d fallen like a three-legged cow.
Well, one thing’s for sure: Yours truly would be making a return trip to the Barney’s shoe department in the near future. I had spent far too much of my hard-earned
paycheck on these puppies not to make a stink if they refuse to give me a new pair. It hardly seems relevant that I’d been traveling at a speed exceeding the limit recommended for such shoes—some twenty miles per hour, across heavy-duty, multi-colored acrylic carpeting, when I fell. For the price one pays, shoes should withstand a modicum of exertion on the part of the wearer beyond a little pole dancing, the purpose for which they were intended.
I was also going to have a talking-to with that pole-dancing teacher of mine. Great teacher, though she is, it was K-Love who’d convinced me to buy the damned shoes in the first place, saying men preferred Marros above all other brands on the feet of girls twirling on poles. Not that I’d had the opportunity or desire yet to dance for a man, though I was optimistic about one day being ready and able to, once I found the man I wanted to dance for. Success equals opportunity meets preparedness, and I was destined for great things. I just had to keep on believing.
Clearly, K-Love’s shoe recommendations were a tad suspect. So, come to think of it, were her promises of increased flexibility and agility—neither of which had been on display in the immediately preceding five minutes. I had fallen on my ass like an uncoordinated giraffe stepping onto dry land after two months at sea. But I was willing to concede that I didn’t go to class enough to see any real benefit.
“Thank you,” I say to Freckles at last, relieving him of the broken shoe.
“Alright now?”
I nod. He sounds like he’s from New Zealand, not that I could tell the difference if he were from Australia.
“Just a minute,” he says, whereupon he darts toward a collection of pink Hello Kitty lunch boxes, emerging with my errant heel, smiling and shaking his head as he hands it to me. “It’s a wonder you can stand in these things. They certainly can’t be very good for your feet.”
What—he’s a podiatrist now? So I twist my ankle in my too-chic-for-shit platforms; that gives him the right to criticize? Granted, maybe I shouldn’t have been wearing them for commercial jet travel. But I didn’t expect to be running for my plane, which was not going to wait just because I went out of my way to call one of my closest friends to tell her some amazing news, which she, incredibly, barely reacted to. It’s not like I had a choice. And now Freckles is giving me a reprimand? Where does he get off? Literally, where? Come to think of it, I bet I can guess where. He looks like the type of guy who regularly enjoys sexing it up in Bangkok.
I smile at him innocently. “It’s not the shoes’ fault. They’re designed for slightly less rigorous activities—like sex with a pole.”
His freckles seem to grow into each other, resulting in his face going entirely red. Must have struck a nerve there. And as I watch him slink away, I’m thinking to myself, Quinn, you can be such a bitch. I know I’m supposed to be practicing gratitude.
“Just kidding!” I call after his disappearing form, gesticulating with my broken shoe for effect.
Why do I sabotage the guys who might actually be good for me? This is really the big question I face as I return to L.A. and the prospect, after the Muffs prodding me into it, of signing up on Match.com or E-Harmony, or any one of an endless number of dating websites in hopes of finding an available—meaning unmarried—man, instead of the married one I’ve been trying to cure myself of. Freckles might even have been a contender in that boy-next-door kind of way, but if I can’t be patient with a nice guy like him, what hope is there?
I snarl at a few members of the Hello Kitty contingent who stare at me open-mouthed and back away. My right ankle begins to throb, and I’m just hoping that the fall has only caused a minor tweak because I desperately need some exercise to unwind when I get home—a fierce workout on a treadmill or, better yet, a dance class—in different shoes, obviously.
Slinging my over-the-shoulder bag, which had fallen in front of my shoulders, back where it belongs, I grab hold of the handle on my ballistic roll-aboard Tumi case and—ouch—start limping, barefoot, in the direction of the gate.
Hobbling as fast as I can, I become aware of a generalized overall body clamminess and that my hair is clinging to my neck under the collar of my white Pink’s shirt—so much for that promised crispness. I also realize that I am unable to correct these fashion faux pas without stopping. Not that stopping would really help when a girl is peri-menopausal and under stress—conditions which will likely soon manifest in another vile symptom like hives or swollen ankles. But there’s no time to stop. So I forge ahead, my shirt collar pressing against my neck from the shoulder bag as I attempt to move at a limping lope, rolling the case in a reasonably straight line behind me.
It could be that part of my current stress is due to overreacting to Madelyn’s nonplus response to my seeing Udi. But how could she be so blasé, particularly since she claimed that before Udi came along, she hadn’t felt a flicker for anyone else in years? How could she let that go so easily? Me—I’d kill to find a guy who sparked my plug the way he had hers.
At my age, fast approaching forty-two years on the planet, I realize how rare those feelings are—more accurately, how rare both those feelings and suitable single guys are. So much so that if I found one who did it for me, I wouldn’t be so quick to let him go. Hah! If that wasn’t just like a woman carrying on with a married man. Well, at least I can admit the unsustainable nature of my situation enough to say that the whole meshuggener mess had led to the decision to attempt online dating as soon as I returned home.
Then again, maybe my romantic notions were getting the better of me, and it was not Udi I saw— only the wishful thinking of the incurable romantic. After all, he was naked the last time I saw him, naked and dead on the day bed in Maddie’s house in Agoura Hills. It was more than likely that I hadn’t been focusing enough on his face; I do get carried away by their bodies...
“Koon wa ba, Losa Angelisan oni ake tashta. Arigato,” a voice was blaring over the loudspeaker.
It sounded like my flight was boarding; I distinctly heard the words Los and Angeles mixed in with the Japanese. Oh no. I can’t miss this plane. It’s vital that I pick up the pace and I do—but eeow, that ankle hurts—as the voice continues in slaughtered English. “AH-den-shun pweese lady an’ gentoomen. Fligh numbah fi-oh-seex to Los Angeles is finohw boading a’gate foteen. Fligh numbah fi-oh-seex… ”
Final boarding? What happened to pre-boarding and boarding of people with infants and then all those zones? At this point, the urgency of my situation necessitated actually lifting the rolling bag into my arms—double eeow—and turning myself into the biggest, barreling, red-headed broad I could, limping even faster through the terminal and trying to give the impression I had no ability to stop which, in fact, was the truth. People veritably leapt out of the way as I sprinted the final twenty-five yards to the gate.
An efficient Japanese woman of indeterminate age stood in front of the ticket scanner. She had a tidy bun on top of her head, and her hand was outstretched for my boarding pass, a prim look of reprimand on her face. I handed her the boarding pass, heart pounding, ankle throbbing, and bowed my head slightly in the traditional expression of Asian submission. Hah! If she only knew.
She says something. It might have been “Welcome to Japan Airlines,” or “You look like Amanda Bynes.” I don’t know which, but I decide it’s the former, not only because it makes more sense but because if it were the latter, I’d have to sock her one.
Actually, I’m impressed when people speak more than one language, even if they’re usually unintelligible to anyone other than their own culture. It certainly doesn’t do much for America’s stature in the world when the average American travelling abroad goes around a foreign country uttering the smug, “Why should I speak—fill in the blank: French, Russian, Mandarin, whatever—when they—and here they point to the offending native speaker in their native land—speak English?”
Though I can’t say I’m fluent in anything other than my native tongue, thanks, in part, to my conservative Fresno upbringing, I’m very proud that I can sa
y, “Hello/please/ thank you/where is the bathroom/ and how much is the wine?” in ten—count ‘em, ten!—different languages. I don’t know if this is what my parents envisioned for me when, at fourteen, I displayed the educational level of a freshman in college, but like I said, I’m destined for great things.
Now, as I gingerly make my way down the ramp to the waiting plane, I felt like I always do when boarding a jumbo jet, as if I were in a fun house without the fun—no mirrors, no spinning disks or revolving cylinders that give the impression of moving while standing still. No—just a boxy wind tunnel wherein I have to squint and close my mouth lest some FOD fly in, while, dripping with perspiration, I follow the path, like a cow to slaughter, toward the cabin door.
Just before I step onboard, I try to fix my hair before making my grand(ish) entrance. If the seated passengers, including my client, Viggo Mortensen, are going to glare at me for delaying their take off, I might as well look like I’m worth waiting for and prompt them to wonder who the chic woman is who’s caused the delay.
Most of the time, I put “the-disaster-known-as” my hair up to keep it from turning into the kind of frizzy, gnarly mess it had now become. But today, I’d been going for sexy—at least that’s how I hoped it looked when I’d left the hotel, prior to my physical exertions—because I’d been hoping to get upgraded to business class so I could sit next to Viggo. In that scenario, acted out in front of the hotel’s bathroom mirror, I was flinging my must-have locks around and flirting with the charming actor about art and music and living a purposeful life as we winged our way back to la-la land after his stellar performance in a series of Kubota Tractor commercials. Not that flirting on the airplane was going to get me any further than flirting during the shoot had—which was nowhere. But I’d still be angry with myself for not trying, and at last check, he was single; so for me, this would be something new.