The Bachelor Auction Part V

But just when I thought I couldn’t get any sicker, I heard an unmistakable giggle that grated on every last nerve ending in my body. I watched in horror filled fascination along with everyone else, as a woman with Texas-big platinum blonde hair and even bigger, if phony, tatas strolled to the front of the room. My adolescent nemesis, Candy Froedisher Martinelli.

We had been friends in junior high school, but when we got to high school, suddenly Candy was Miss Popularity, head cheerleader, homecoming queen, the works, while I remained behind in my somewhat nerdy corner. Bad enough that I was often the object of her giggling, whispered innuendoes, but her ultimate betrayal came when she lured David Delany- -my David- -away to be her date for the Senior prom.

While the rest of us had gone off to college and studied things like journalism or criminal justice, Candy had gone to Miami Beach to major in Trophy Wife 101. Her first husband, or so I’d heard, was a minor Mafia enforcer. Freddie “The Pistol” Pestorini liked big boobs and gaudy gold jewelry, and he supplied Candy with both, until she cast her eyes on bigger fish in the pond.

Her second husband had children older than Candy, and was a Mafia kingpin who had died under mysterious circumstances six months ago. According to the news report I’d read, Carlo Martinelli’s body washed up on the Jersey shore with his wrists and ankles shackled. The local police and the FBI had made no arrests, but I would bet my mother’s last petunia that the grieving widow was implicated up to her thickly mascaraed eyelashes.

Eyelashes she was now batting flirtatiously at David Delany--my David!

“That brazen hussy!” My mother hissed near my ear, and I realized that she had been watching the whole spectacle too, along with most everyone else in the room.