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floor, past a jade inlaid mirror in the entryway and a barely glimpsedMiro sketch, down a hall of ancestral pictures in striking, contemporary frames. Twenty feet in, I stopped impulsively to admire the view.
    A stunning garden room ran along the entire back side of the house, an atrium of tropical wonders—ferns, banana trees, and hibiscus I’d seen only on the Internet. Thirty or so women crowded around talking and drinking wine, a much more diverse, anorexic, and formal group than I’d expected after encountering Letty. A pale young harpist wrapped in a gauzy dress played Mozart near a banana tree as if she were all alone, or at least wished it. A few of the women paused at our entrance, smiled, then turned back to their conversations.
    “Gimme those squares so I can present them to Caroline.” Letty grabbed the plate and abandoned me, parting the crowd like a whale churning through water.
    I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to face two nearly identical women, with taut, Botoxed faces, breasts like tennis balls, $150 haircuts, spray tans, French manicures, white capris, and tight sleeveless tanks that showed off their Pilates regimen. Women who looked older than they were because they worked way too hard at achieving the opposite.
    “I’m Red Mercedes,” said the one who appeared the tipsiest. “And this is Beach House.”
    “Stop it, that’s not funny if she doesn’t know us. Mary Ann’s had a little bit too much to drink already. It’s an inside joke. I’m Jenny, by the way. We have the same plastic surgeon in Dallas. And he owns a Mercedes convertible and a beach house, which we’re pretty sure we paid for. I can’t believe I’m explaining this. God, you look amazing. Do you even wear foundation? Oh, to have ten years back.”
    “Thank you. It’s very nice to meet you.” I felt like curtsying.
    Huge diamonds in multiple forms and sizes glinted on their fingers as if they bred at night. These were women who likelygraduated out of college sororities straight into marriage, part of the pack of hausfraus I’d dodged this week in the local upscale grocery, Central Market. The women who pretended not to see you as they cut in line at the cheese counter and their Justice- and Abercrombie-clad children demanded Havarti over Gouda.
    “Welcome to our butt-hole of a town,” Jenny told me. “The gossip is that your husband is a modern-day gladiator.”
    “Did Letty mention she was a pageant girl?” Mary Ann tipped the last sip from her wineglass. And, then, under her breath, “She’s such a
bitch
.”
    I felt like I’d fallen into a Texas rabbit hole. Or maybe a tarantula hole. I’d gotten my first scary look at one of those suckers in the front yard yesterday. The six-year-old boy next door had offered to stick his garden hose in it and blast out the owner, an offer I politely declined.
    I was unsure how to respond to this schizophrenic chitchat. Where was my hostess? My eyes flitted around a little desperately.
    Mary Ann was rubbing a finger across a tiny red spot on Jenny’s cheek. “Pimple. Not skin cancer,” she slurred.
    “I bet you’re looking for a drink,” Jenny announced into the space left by my hesitation. In seconds, the two women had tugged me into the yard that spilled out of the atrium. The architect’s optical illusion with glass and nature made it nearly impossible to tell where the inside stopped and the outside began. That is, until I reached the invisible line, where the air-conditioned breeze evaporated and a stifling wall of summer air took my breath away.
    I spied not one, but two outdoor rooms with plush furniture to sink into on either side of a lagoon-like pool. The fire pits glowed, even though it was 95 degrees outside. I smelled an industrial amount of mosquito spray. Chemical misters at work. Not good for Baby.
    “So, what can you drink?” Jenny demanded. We moved toward a mini-bar covered with a fake thatched roof, where a tuxedoed young man with a green