There's an explosion in the house. Firepit mishap?
___
The Girl comes walking through the respectably large but tastelessly decorated foyer en route to the pool. We've all met in Palm Springs for the weekend, JLW to get away from the humidity of New York, me to get away from the June gloom of Santa Barbara, and The Girl to find a new life away from her ex-husband.
The Girl is a California goddess, skin as tan and teeth as white as can be, hair highlighted just the right shade of blond to make her big blue eyes explode, rocking the same teeny tiny shorts she wore in high school, her tummy improbably firm after incubating two babies. Everywhere we go, men flock to her, though she only acknowledges it when a creep approaches her and directs a cogent, "Nice breasts," her way.
He's not wrong, and she, who breastfed two nibbling boys, who divorced a creep who wanted her to look more like the internet sex worker creation he couldn't stop leering at long enough to save his marriage, is going to take the fucking compliment, but that's still no way to introduce yourself to a lady.