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your own goddamn doorbell.”
    And with that, she flounced back into the house.
    “Mommie Dearest,” Patti said with a roll of 42
    Laura Levine
    her eyes. “You’d think nobody ever answered a door before.”
    Then she took my script out from under the pitcher where she’d been using it as a coaster for her iced tea.
    “Like I said on the phone, your script was fine, but I’ve decided to take it in a new direction. A little less Friends . A little more Grey’s Anatomy .”
    Grey’s Anatomy ??? What the heck did that mean?
    Did she want a wedding, or an appendectomy?
    “The Friends approach was sweet, but I want to capture the sexual tension between the doctors.”
    I was back on Auto Nod as she nattered on about turning Dickie into Dr. McDreamy. At this point, Veronica’s assignment of making lamb “less lamby” was beginning to look like a cakewalk.
    “You understand what I want?” she asked when she finally finished yakking.
    “Sure,” I lied.
    “I need it ASAP.”
    “All righty,” I said, getting up and inching toward the French doors. “I’m on it.”
    I was just about to make a break for it when she got that nasty glint in her eye I’d come to dread, the same look Prozac gets when she’s about to pounce on my panty hose.
    “You and your neurosurgeon still coming to the wedding?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
    “Of course.”
    “Something hasn’t come up to make you cancel? An out-of-town medical conference, maybe?”
    She was thisclose to snickering.
    “I told you we’ll be there, Patti. And I meant it.”

    KILLING BRIDEZILLA
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    “In that case,” she said, whipping out a thick sheaf of papers from a stack on the table, “here’s where I’m registered. I know you and ‘Francois’
    will want to get me a gift.”
    Oh, great. Now I was going to have to use part of my paycheck—the same paycheck I was sweating blood for—to buy this dreadful woman a gift. Argggh.
    I grabbed her stupid registry and headed back inside to the sunroom, where I saw a row of models seated on a rattan sofa. The “bridesmaids,”
    I presumed.
    One of them, a reedy blonde with a Scandinavian accent, asked, “Can we go in now?”
    “Not if you value your sanity.”
    Can’t say I didn’t warn them.
    I was just about to head out the front door when I heard someone call my name.
    “Hey, Jaine. Wait up.”
    It was Veronica, hurrying toward me with her hors d’oeuvre plate under her arm.
    “Can you believe Patti? What a bridezilla, huh?”
    “King Kong with highlights.”
    “I’m on my fifth round of hors d’oeuvres,”
    she said as we walked outside together. “But she’s paying me through the nose. I couldn’t afford to say no.”
    “I guess that’s how she ropes in all her employees.”
    “I actually heard her tell the florist that the roses didn’t smell ‘rose-y’ enough,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

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    Laura Levine
    “I wonder if Dickie knows what he’s getting himself into.”
    “I doubt it. Poor guy is blinded by love. Or lust. Or something. I was there when he and Patti reconnected, you know.”
    “You were at the reunion?”
    “Yes,” she nodded. “I don’t usually go to those things. Why stir up miserable memories? But last year, curiosity got the better of me, and I made an appearance. I was talking to Dickie and Normalynne when Patti showed up, in full-tilt sex kitten mode. She had on a beaded turquoise gown, really short and tight, that left nothing to the imagination. Dickie took one look at her, and it was all over for Normalynne.”
    “Poor Normalynne,” I sighed.
    “Poor Dickie.”
    Our little chat was interrupted just then by a Rolls-Royce pulling up in the driveway.
    “Patti’s stepfather, Conrad Devane,” Veronica whispered, as an immaculately groomed man with a deep tan and graying-at-the-temples hair stepped out of the car. “He’s some kind of home builder.
    Makes more money than God.”
    “I can believe it,” I said,