My friends' closets.
Although my cryptic subject line would, if written by a different writer from a different writer, imply that I've recently come to accept a friend's homosexuality, I should, to coin a phrase, be so lucky. No -- I have, through strange circumstances, become more closely acquainted with a certain friend's physical (that is to say, non-metaphorical) closet than perhaps she would have preferred. You will, Gentle Reader (should that be capitalized? ask copyeditor Stine), permit me the indulgence of a new paragraph.
Social invitations have been thin on the ground lately for the literary set in my city (such as it is -- the set, not the city), and so when C. O. Stine invited me to tag along to a cocktail party thrown at the house of an acquaintance who, for decency's sake, and because I am now intimately familiar with the sizes and brand names of her clothes, shall remain anonymous, I went for it. Little did I know that my own editor, tangentially associated with the publishers for whom Stine is working, was there with her editorial assistants (read: flying monkey henchmen) in force. Happily, the party was well-enough attended that I was able to avoid my editor for much of the evening: presumably the guest list was padded with local dipsomaniacs who could be deemed interchangeable with the actual writers in attendance. Unfortunately, I made a miscalculation in the very last moments of the rather dreary fête, and found myself searching for my coat on the pile on my hostess’s bed while the unmistakable voice of my editor was heard approaching down the hallway. Thinking quickly, but not quickly enough, I dodged the imminent editorial conference by ducking into a nearby doorway. The door, I assumed, led to the master bathroom suite, which would, another assumption, lead via a horror-movie-style half-window, to the street. No such luck.
My editor managed to stay in the hostess’s bedroom for an inordinately long time. I can only guess that she was rifling through the gracious hostess’s drawers, perhaps looking for valuables, or a tell-all manuscript of some sort.
What size jeans does the same gracious hostess wear, you ask? 32. The vertical stripes are, presumably, slimming.
Social invitations have been thin on the ground lately for the literary set in my city (such as it is -- the set, not the city), and so when C. O. Stine invited me to tag along to a cocktail party thrown at the house of an acquaintance who, for decency's sake, and because I am now intimately familiar with the sizes and brand names of her clothes, shall remain anonymous, I went for it. Little did I know that my own editor, tangentially associated with the publishers for whom Stine is working, was there with her editorial assistants (read: flying monkey henchmen) in force. Happily, the party was well-enough attended that I was able to avoid my editor for much of the evening: presumably the guest list was padded with local dipsomaniacs who could be deemed interchangeable with the actual writers in attendance. Unfortunately, I made a miscalculation in the very last moments of the rather dreary fête, and found myself searching for my coat on the pile on my hostess’s bed while the unmistakable voice of my editor was heard approaching down the hallway. Thinking quickly, but not quickly enough, I dodged the imminent editorial conference by ducking into a nearby doorway. The door, I assumed, led to the master bathroom suite, which would, another assumption, lead via a horror-movie-style half-window, to the street. No such luck.
My editor managed to stay in the hostess’s bedroom for an inordinately long time. I can only guess that she was rifling through the gracious hostess’s drawers, perhaps looking for valuables, or a tell-all manuscript of some sort.
What size jeans does the same gracious hostess wear, you ask? 32. The vertical stripes are, presumably, slimming.