Free One Foot In The Gravy by Delia Rosen Page B

of her sounded that way. This was the first time in our lives we’d ever spoken, though I’d heard about her from Royce and at the deli.
    “I really did just have sex with him,” I assured her. “But if I did love him, why would it matter? You were already on the way to being divorced, weren’t you, when he tried to buy my property.”
    “ Your property!”
    She did it again: “Your” became “Yoh-ah” and “property”—well, each syllable was accented, the middle one pronounced “puh.”
    “You sassy city thing,” she said, no longer an eagle but a hissing snake. “You didn’t earn that place. You inherited it!”
    I don’t think there’s any need for me to continue parsing her enunciation. You get the idea. Anyway, I admitted she was right about that, then added, “Isn’t that how you got your money?”
    “Good God, no! I divorced for it!”
    “But your former husband was old money. So in a sense you inherited too.” I couldn’t believe I was trying to reason with this lunatic. “Anyway, what’s that got to do with the price of potatoes in Idaho?”
    “Oh, listen to you! Listen to you, you witty urban slut.”
    I closed the gap between us by an inch or two. The “urban”’ part of me, the “Asshole, the line is over here !” part of me, was beginning to boil. “Now look. I didn’t pull off the road to be called names by someone like you—”
    “Someone like me ?”
    “A poseur, a society mountebank, a zoyne .”
    She looked at me blankly. She suspected she’d been insulted, but she didn’t know how. I used the break to regroup.
    “Now, was there something else? Because if not, I’ve got a couple of questions for you.”
    She folded her arms daringly. “Do you now?”
    “I do.”
    “Go ahead, Gossip Girl . Shoot to kill!”
    My insults were vocabulary. Hers were the CW. It figured.
    “Actually, it’s funny how this discussion started out, because I wanted to know if you were in love with Hoppy Hopewell.”
    Her eyes became shiny plums. “Love?”
    “Yeah. Rumor has it you two were tight.”
    I swear, it was like I suddenly dropped into Gone With the Wind and Scarlett was about to play one of her parts. Or else it was the Three Faces of Eve and the woman was truly suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder. She half-turned, her cigarette hand dropped, and up came her other hand with a handkerchief ! Either she always carried one up her sleeve for effect, or she had mastered sleight of hand, in which case the movie would be Houdini .
    “Who—who says such things?” she sobbed, touching her eyes in turn.
    “All of Nashville, including the surrounding suburbs. Maybe some folks in Charleston.”
    She appeared not to hear. “It is true. I loved him, even though he was a decade older than I.” Her eyes and manner became imploring. “Who wouldn’t?”
    Me? Thom? I thought. And if you’re thirty-eight, I’m a Vernicious Knid.
    Rhonda suddenly had a rhapsodic air about her. “Hoppy was funny. He was vivacious in a manly sort of way, he was romantic, he was an amusing lover—”
    “Great,” I cut her off. “The question is, were you a jealous lover?”
    The tears stopped. I swear I heard the squeak of a faucet. “What are you implying?”
    “I hear he was also close to Hildy Endicott.”
    A beat, and then she laughed like Blanche DuBois. “Hildy Endicott! That’s almost comical!”
    “They were in business together.”
    “Were they now?” That seemed to throw her a little, but she recovered. “People cannot be in business without being lovers? Weren’t you and my husband lovers and yet not in business together?”
    I wasn’t sure that made sense, but the laws of physics didn’t really apply to this woman. “Let me put it another way,” I said. “Did Hoppy ever lead you to believe you were exclusive?”
    “Ms. Katz, may I ask you another question?”
    “Go ahead.” She would have asked it anyway.
    “What in the name of the father is this any business of