FlyGirl - The First Edition

Chapter 9: If you can make it there, go somewhere else

She also killed her husband. Yep, that's right. She poisoned him. About ten or twelve years ago, she met Cesare whilst summering in the Hamptons, and they had this awesome hot affair that culminated in her killing her husband. She even went to prison for it, but that's because she refused to hire my family as counsel. She end up serving eight years of a twelve year sentence; once she got out, she immediately married Cesare, and they've been together since. Psycho love, man. It's a beautiful thing.

I'll tell you, It's disconcerting spending time with a woman you knew for a fact poisoned her first husband. It makes lunch time that much more exciting.

Despite her Orange is the New Black adventure, she's still a regular on the society page. It goes to show that when you're beautiful and you can trace your line of descent and cash flow back three hundred years, you can kill your husband and it's all good.

Now, I'm no fool; it was fairly obvious that they were only hanging with me because Alex asked them to. If I had any misconception about this, Amelia cleared it up ASAP. She would say things like, "How old are you again, Siobhan? You're only 19? Of course you are." She always made sure to vary her insults to include my Midwestern heritage, to my educational status, to whatever other kind of weird ass insult she could pull out of her WASPy, inbred mind.

It's not like I took her insults lying down. With every insult Amelia would serve at me, I'd return it by replying, "Tell me, Amelia, how did you handle all the lesbianism in prison? I mean, my generation isn't hung up on labels like gay or straight, but it must have been difficult for you. Were you someone's bitch? Did you ever have to make a shiv?" Then I would segue to why she had to plead out by questioning the competency of her counsel. I mean, my uncle shot my father in the face and he was never even charged.

Eventually it all came to a head when we were out having lunch at this trendy boho place in Tribeca. Amelia started in on me with the whole age and lack of pedigree thing. "So now, Siobhan, when did your family come here?" she asked, expressionless, as she stroked the stem of her white wine glass. "You know, we used to have family retainers that were called McIver. Wouldn't that be funny if your family worked for mine?"

I'm ashamed to say that I snapped. I picked up my salad fork, stabbed the table in front of her. "Shut the hell up, convict."

Molly let loose a groan. "Siobhan. Omigod."

Since she was pregnant, I turned away from Amelia and addressed Molly. "You're not giving birth are you?"

"They're going to kick us out," she muttered, her normally pale cheeks a brilliant shade of red. "It'll be all over the blogs. My mommy and me group won't let me live it down." She gave me a panicked look. "What if this means they take my baby off the Wednesday play date waiting list?"

The Wednesday play date waiting list was a waiting list that upper class New Yorkers put their toddlers on so that they could play with five other children one Wednesday a month. Molly told me it was a two year wait. You had to put your child on the list while your child was still in utero.

Useless. These people are useless. I rolled my eyes and turned back to Amelia. "Where were we, convict?"

I'll say this for her. She didn't really react. She stared at me with her unblinking blue eyes for a few seconds, then said, "Now I see why he's so taken with you. You are something more than tits and ass, aren't you, little girl?"

I reached for Molly's salad fork, but got swatted away. "No, no, no," swatted Molly. "No more stabbing, Siobhan."

"Molly, c'mon. I just want to stab her a little. She'll heal. Eventually."

Amelia smiled - I mean her lips turned up at the edges because smiling is what poor people do - and reached around the fork planted in the table for her wine glass. "I've decided that I'm going to like you," she told me, then took a delicate sip of her beverage.