Got Your Number

tomorrow afternoon in the showiest cathedral in Baton Rouge. She could get a hotel room tonight, be in her hometown by noon tomorrow, catch the highlights of the wedding, then swing by to argue with her old man for a while. It might even be fun to see Angora again, and to check out her doctor man. Heck, it would be worth it to drop in without an RSVP just to piss off Aunt Dee.
    And, in truth, it would be nice to take a break from reality, to peek in on her cousin's charmed life until she could clear the cobwebs in her own head.
    Minutely cheered, Roxann slipped out the door and locked it behind her.

Chapter Four

    "ON THREE, LADIES . One...two... three."
    Angora Ryder strained not to blink, but from the photographer's post-click frown, she suspected she had. Her first childhood memory was of being posed and photographed, but today she couldn't stop blinking for some reason. A nervous tic?
    "Let's try it again," he intoned. "On three."
    Her mother stood beside the camera pointing to her own cheeks and mouthing, "Watch the laugh lines."
    Watch the laugh lines. Dee's mantra. After thirty-two years, Angora realized it was the closest thing to motherly advice she was going to get. Well, today was her wedding day, darn it, so she was going to smile. Some. If only she could keep from blinking.
    "Let's try it again," the photographer bellowed, eyeing her.
    October thirteenth, at last. She was minutes away from marrying an intelligent, handsome doctor. Then she would embark on a three-week honeymoon to Hawaii, and upon return, Dr. and Mrs. Trenton Robert Coughlin (she loved the way that sounded) were moving to Chicago. Trenton had landed a spot with a prestigious podiatry practice, and she had snagged a position with the number one art agency in the Windy City. So what if the owner's passion for Notre Dame and its progeny had cinched the offer?—she would prove her worth when she discovered the next Kandinsky. She just needed a chance. And maybe a brilliant secretary.
    Goodbye, cataloging exhibits at the Baton Rouge River Walk Museum. Goodbye, overbearing mother. Goodbye, Angora Michele Ryder. Hello, Life.
    "I think I got it that time," the photographer said. "Okay, ladies, I need for you to turn sideways and move in as close as possible so I can get the fountain behind you."
    Twenty-four bridesmaids in primrose pink. Angora inhaled as the girls on either side squeezed in closer. Not an easy feat to round up twenty-four girls from the club who weren't pregnant or who hadn't already ballooned up because they'd been married too long to care, but she'd done it. True, three of the girls she barely knew, but they came from very good families, and twelve maids on each side of her would look splendid in the photos.
    She'd wanted to ask her cousin Roxann to be a bridesmaid, but her mother had vehemently refused. Dee detested Roxann, which was a shame since she was Dee's only flesh-and-blood niece, but things were what they were.
    "Angora, darling, stop frowning," her mother called.
    She smiled, which triggered the pantomimed reminder about laugh lines, so she tried to fix her face into the nonsmiling, nonfrowning expression her mother had patented.
    If truth be known, Dee hated Roxann because Roxann was smart. Smarter than anyone Angora knew, and certainly smarter than anyone in the family, including Dee with all her conniving talent, so devious at times it bordered on admirable.
    "Your cousin is a beatnik lesbian and I won't have her at the wedding," her mother had declared when Angora proposed the idea.
    She had nearly burst out laughing. Roxann, a lesbian? Her cousin had taught her how to give a blowjob on a tube of toothpaste. Roxann could recite verbatim entire chapters from How to Make Love to a Man, and had been working her way through the positions illustrated in The Joy of Sex. When Angora had been forced to leave the dorm, Roxann and her poet grad-student boyfriend were up to "the Figure Eight." She always wondered how that one had turned out.
    "Mother, what makes you think Roxann is a lesbian?" she'd asked.
    "She's so odd. Besides, she's not married."
    "I'm not married."
    Dee had made an impatient noise. "It's not the same thing. Roxann has always worn her hair short."
    She'd dropped the dead-end conversation with Dee, but she'd asked the calligrapher for one blank invitation and addressed it using the post office box she'd wangled from Uncle Walt last Christmas.
    She'd even started a couple of letters to Roxann several