Chapter 3: Zip It

Now I rather resent the absurd notion that I was to the manner born. And I do go out of my way to avoid any hint of favoritism at work. Some chaps, having access to a key executive — to wit, i. e., for e. g., one’s mother — might take advantage of that insider connection. Birdie Brewster, for the record, took no such shortcuts. I waited until dinner, “Mamacita, you know how old school Louise Lane is...”

She held up her hand, much like a school crossing guard, “Birdie, BB needs you to take on an additional responsibility.”

When duty calls, yrs. truly clicks heels and snaps to. “Of course.”

“Pru and I have hired a summer intern from back East. College student named Elizabeth Sloane. We’d like you to take her under your wing, introduce her around.”

“Just my cuppa. She’ll be working in Client relations?”

“For starters. We want her to spend time in creative, accounting, media, production — soup to nuts.”

Pru said, “She’s quite the looker, Birdie, keep it zipped up.” The mater and Wandy nodded.

To my credit, even though I am against unfair aspersions, world hunger, and whatnot, I held a heated rejoinder in status quo.

Because there are aunts and there are aunts. Pretty common around the world from what I gather. But Auntie Pru is in another league. Now, granted, she is nice looking, easy on the eyes, just like her Sister. And it’s not just Froggy who said, “Those two MILF’s got the best legs in town.”

But do not truffle with either Sister. They are, individually and in tandem, formidable. So when Auntie Pru issued her ultimatum, I unconsciously reached below my belt. Yep, zipped up.

It is well known, common intel, among high school students, especially seniors, that guidance counselors are, for the most part, clueless. Naturally I ignored their alarums and applied to the three colleges that I knew well of — Harvard, Yale, Princeton.

Deep down, I realized even back then that college would be a waste of my intellectual and creative talents. The three schools foresaw the misfit and, to their credit, postponed my acceptance.

I mention this backstoryial tidbit only to put into perspective the new intern — Elizabeth, “Please call me Ms. Sloane,” Sloane.

Now being a stunning redhead does buy one some ... something. And she was that — stunning and, I assumed, a natural redhead. I was able to overlook certain other ... shortcomings.

While I had attended a school that tout le mondo cané knows — The University of Missouri, Kansas City — Ms. Sloane went to a college that no one ever heard of, Wharton. Sounds like a book Wandy used to read to me, Wharton Hears a Who.

(As an aside, and I am hardly one to tootle my own bugle, intellect-wise, but I did win the Top Speller Prize in fourth grade. A rigorous exam too — spell the names of all fifty states. Tim Brown, the school Brain, spelled Arkansas this way: Arkansaw. Otherwise it would have been a tie and not nearly so prestigious an honor.)

Being a magnanimous chap, I also forgave Ms. Sloane for not noticing the mustache I currently had under contract. She said, “Oh,” and leaned in. “I thought it was schmutz.”

As I later told Froggy, “She’s from New York, got a lot to learn about life.”

“Good gams?”

Now mama-san and Auntie Pru don’t talk about their ages; should you ever meet them, and should the subject inexplainably arise, and should you be asked for an estimate, guess ‘early 30s’. You’d be a decade off, but safer for the miscue.

Speaking of miscues, should you ever find yourself in Kansas City, Missouri, in the River Market neighborhood, as a guest at the Unicorn Club, do not play pool with a woman named Winter. She has the luck of the Princess of Darkness.

While Peggy and Pru work long hours, they also have an active social life. I don’t dwell on the subject of men and the mater. I do, on occasion, consider what Auntie Pru and this guy or that one may be getting up to. Especially after my formidable aunt had a refrigerator delivered to my basement Lair, “No need to come upstairs to raid the kitchen.”