Shop Talk by Carolyn Haines Read Free Book Online

bouncing through the crowd. Andromeda was short, but her mass of hair, wired with an electric energy, gave her an extra four inches, just enough to be visible bobbing behind the waiter as he led her toward the secluded table in the back of
The Pasta Palace.
It was WOMB’s favorite meeting place. In fact, the only place they could meet. Every other restaurant along the coast had evicted them.
    Andromeda took her seat and dropped an armload of papers on the table and her helmet under her chair. “Margarita, frozen, no salt.” She spoke in a monotone and didn’t bother looking at the waiter. Her sharp eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, which she never removed, and bangs that exactly touched the rim of her somewhat masculine looking glasses. But her gaze lingered on Mona’s attire. It was at least eighty degrees outside and Mona was wearing another turtleneck, the same type of apparel she’d worn for the past three months. It was a tiny detail that intrigued Andromeda, and one that she could not question. The by-laws of WOMB forbade personal probing.
    Mona sipped her burgundy. “Dallas and Coco are running a little late. You know Dallas, she had to catch a sale.” Mona sipped her wine and gave the waiter a withering look as he hovered over her. “We’ll be ready to order when our friends arrive.”
    The waiter cleared his throat. “I, uh, the manager asked me to tell you that there is a time limit on the tables.” His face reddened. “I mean, there are other people waiting to be seated.” He clasped his hands together, then dropped them helplessly to his side. “It isn’t me. I enjoy waiting on you ladies, but there’s been complaints. You’re not to come back here.”
    Mona rolled her eyes. She’d been expecting this for months. Their weekly meetings often ran three or four hours, and few restaurants were willing to put up with five women who ate very little except free breadsticks and monopolized a table for that amount of time.
    “Well, I was tired of margaritas and bread sticks anyway,” Andromeda said to hide her disappointment.
    “Here’s Jazz.” Mona lifted a graceful arm and motioned. “Looking like a television executive from the sixties, as always.”
    Jazz Dixon made her way across the restaurant and dropped a big load of papers on the table. With red-tipped fingers, she brushed a wave of stiff blond hair out of her right eye. It flapped and then settled back into place. “That was a terrific scene, Andromeda, where the ground begins to quiver and then the plants pull up their roots and start to walk away. George Lucas should read that script. The special effects could be stupendous.”
    The waiter appeared at her side with her drink. Jazz lifted the highball glass, half-filled with amber liquid. She took a hefty swallow, the heat of the Jack Daniels making her eyes water. “God, the library is a dry and dusty place. Did you realize, though, that about thirty percent of the women in America were on tranquilizers or diet pills in the fifties? The fifties! No wonder all of those women wore cinched-in dresses and smiled while they cooked three meals a day. If I stayed wasted, I could be a good wife, too.”
    “Maybe even pleasant,” Andromeda added. “Dexedrine to diet, Valium to sleep. That way you don’t worry your darling hubby with your hunger pains or basic human needs. By the time he gets home, you’ve maniacally cleaned, and the Valium has kicked in. Yes, it would make the world a thinner, happier place.”
    Jazz flipped through a yellow notepad. “Seconal was the drug of choice. And Preludin was one of the more popular diet pills. Valium didn’t come into really common usage until the 1960's. Remember Quaaludes?”
    “Yeah.” Andromeda’s smile was dreamy, her eyes hidden by the glasses. “Quaaludes. I haven’t thought of those things in years.”
    Mona put her wine glass down gently, but with a definite movement. “Don’t you find that drugs, especially those with a