Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen Read Free Book Online Page B

the twit’s gone and broken another Toby mug.”
    “She’s writing a book about us,” the voice on the other end intoned as though emanating from a catacomb.
    “About us?”
    “About her experiences being our Park Avenue nanny for the past year.”
    “How do you know?” I rasped, suddenly crippled by remorse that I had pooh-poohed legal counsel advising a confidentiality agreement.
    “I went to her room while she was out to return two Tic Tacs I had borrowed before the holidays, when I inadvertently came across a manuscript. Naturally I couldn’t resist a peek. Darling, it’s vicious and embarrassing beyond anything you can imagine. Especially the parts about you.”
    A twitching in my cheek began its arrhythmic calisthenics, and drops of perspiration began emerging on my brow with audible snaps.
    “As soon as she gets home I’m going to fire her,” the Immortal Beloved said. “The snake refers to me as porcine.”
    “No! Don’t fire her. That won’t stop the book and will only cause her to dip her quill in more astringent vitriol.”
    “What then, lover boy? You know how these revelations will play amongst our tony chums? We won’t be able to set foot at any of the posh watering holes we habituate without we’re snickered at and lampooned by wit’s cruel rapier. Velveeta refers to you as ‘that gnarled little pipsqueak who buys his hapless offspring into top preschools while failing to do yeoman service in the boudoir.’”
    “Don’t do anything till I get home,” I pleaded. “This requires a little skull session.”
    “You better ratiocinate on the double, sugar. She’s up to page three hundred.” With that, the light of my life smashed the phone down into its cradle with photon velocity, causing my ears to ring with the ominous tolling of that damn bell in Donne’s poem. Feigning Whipple’s disease, I bailed out of my work early, pausing at the corner hops emporium to placate my jangled ganglia and review the crisis.
    Our history with nannies had been a roller-coaster ride at best. The first one was a Swedish woman who resembled Stanley Ketchel. Her demeanor was succinct, and she achieved discipline amongst the brood, who began showing up for meals well mannered but with inexplicable contusions. When our hidden TV camera caught her in the act of bouncing my son horizontally across her shoulders in what wrestlers call the Argentine backbreaker, I queried the woman on her methods.
    Obviously unused to interference, she lifted me out of my loafers and pinioned me to the wallpaper a good three feet off the floor. “Keep your schnozz out of my rice bowl,” she advised, “unless you’re happy to wind up in a reef knot.”
    Outraged, I sent her packing that night, requiring the assistance of only a single SWAT team.
    Her successor, a nineteen-year-old French au pair named Veronique, who was all wiggles and cooing, with blond hair, the pout of a porn star, long tapered legs, and a rack that almost required scaffolding, was a far less truculent type.
    Her commitment to our issue, unfortunately, lacked a certain depth, preferring as she did to loll about on the chaise in a slip and vaporize chocolate truffles while thumbing the pages of
W
. I adjusted to the creature’s personal style more flexibly than my wife did and even attempted to help her relax with an occasional back rub, but when the ball and chain noticed I had taken to wearing Max Factor and bringing the little frog breakfast in bed she tucked a pink slip into the folds of Veronique’s
poitrine
and deposited her Louis Vuitton on the curb.
    And then came Velveeta, a pleasant drone pushing thirty who ministered to the children and knew her place at table. Moved by her strabismus, I had treated Velveeta more like a family member than a servant, yet all the while as she accepted second helpings of trifle and access on her off-hours to the comfy chair, she was secretly amassing an unflattering portrait of her benefactors.
    Upon arriving