Death by Pantyhose Read Online Free Page B

that there was nothing left
to eat except her place mat, Dorcas rolled up
her paper napkin in a ball and tossed it on her
plate. Then she reached into her purse and took
out a beautiful cloisonne lipstick case. When
she opened the case, I was surprised to see a
tube of Chapstick nestled inside.
    "You keep Chapstick in a beautiful case like
that?" I asked.
    "Oh, I never wear lipstick. It's a sexist symbol
of feminine subjugation. A tool of the maledominated media."
    Huh? Was she talking about the same stuff I slapped on my lips to keep me from looking like
a walking zombie?
     
    "I love the case, though," she said, admiring
the beautiful cloisonne design. "I bought it years
ago, back when I was still trying to please men."
    Hmmm. It looked like somebody at the table
was channeling Betty Friedan through Germaine Greer.
    "So," I said, figuring I might as well get it over
with, "tell me about your act."
    "It's a whole new kind of comedy. I tell jokes
from a feminist sociological perspective."
    Uh-oh. Not exactly an area ripe with chuckles.
    Dorcas began an impassioned rant about how
women were oppressed in a male-dominated society, how they were made to loathe their bodies
by the media and forced to sacrifice their integrity and comfort for an unattainable ideal of
beauty.
    Her eyes shone with excitement, her hands
waved wildly. The woman was a bundle of nervous energy. Maybe that's why she was able to
pack away so much food and never gain a
pound.
    "And when I rip up my pantyhose and throw
the pieces to the audience at the end of my act,"
she said, flinging her arms in the air, "it symbolizes my breaking the yoke of centuries of male
oppression! "
    Good heavens. It sounded more like an article in Ms. Magazine than a comedy routine. Not
that I didn't agree with a lot of what she said,
but there wasn't a laugh in sight.
    "It's brilliant, isn't it?"
    I nodded numbly.
     
    "All it needs is a few jokes to spice it up.
Think you can do it?"
    Was she kidding? There was no way on earth I
could make this stuff funny. Chris Rock, Ellen
DeGeneres, and the writing staff of The Simpsons
couldn't make this stuff funny. And I was just
about to tell her so when I remembered a little
thing called a "car" I was going to have to buy.
    "Sure," I said, forcing the words out of my
mouth. "I can do it."
    "Great! "
    We set up a date for me to see her act the
next night at the Laff Palace.
    "I just know that with you by my side," she
said, "I'm going to be utterly hilarious."
    As it turns out, with me by her side, she was
going to be utterly screwed. And I wasn't exactly
in for a day at Disneyland myself. If I'd known
then what was coming down the pike, I
would've taken the pastrami and run.
    I was sprawled on my bed, sipping chardonnay and licking the filling out of Oreos, thinking about how my day had gone from hopeful to
horrible in the blink of an eye. It had started out
so promising, with the sun shining and the birds
tweeting and a high-paying job in the offing. And
then, before I knew what hit me, I was minus a
car and stuck with a minimum-wage job writing
jokes for the unfunniest woman on the planet.
    I gazed down at Prozac, who was snoring on
my chest, blasting me with fish fumes.
    No doubt about it. Life-much like Prozac's
breath-stunk.
    At that moment, just when I was convinced that I was living under my own personal storm
cloud, the phone rang. I let the machine get it.
     
    `Jaine? It's Andrew Ferguson calling."
    And just like that, my world was flooded with
sunshine again.
    You remember Andrew, don't you? You
would if you'd read my last book (The PMS Murder, now available in paperback at all the usual
places).
    Andrew Ferguson was a world-class dollburger, a bank executive I'd met on a job interview. The minute I saw him, with his lanky build
and sandy brown hair that curled sexily at the
nape of his neck, I felt my napping hormones
spring into action.
    At the time, I didn't think I stood