Christmas Wing-Ding with Salmon Mousse and The Beach Boys!

Everyone's attired in smart small achromatic frocks and dinner jackets at Cindy's pre-Christmas deepening in her lovely Santa Barbara home. There's garlicky lamb roasting, a fire roaring, bubbly corks are flying, vocalizing and laughing, the dining room tabular array is put with sparkling crystal and fragrant Casablanca lilies galore.

The telephone rings.

It's Lulu. She's depressed that her ex-husband ditched her 14-years earlier for a spandex-wearing teenager, and have just now injested a bottle of pills washed down by a magnum of champagne.

'How many pills, Lulu? What kind? Can't hear you." I moving ridge at my friends to pipe-down. No 1 notices. I steal off a high-heeled sandle to canvas across the room to set down amongst them to acquire their attention. It plops into a bowl of salmon mousse that spatterings whipped salmon with fresh Anethum graveolens pinpoints all over everyone. The smilings vanish, and they morph in a incorporate version of The Scream.

"Lulu took a bottle of pills," I mouth. Dr. Bill, a pedigree Equus caballus trade, runs to my side and cuts in pencil across a tablet. "What Kind?" and throws it to me. Now everyone else gatherings around, too; and it's Charades with fish-splattered people. I throw the telephone out as Smasher states what she took. Our fish-smattered Grecian chorus says, "Ohhhhhh."

She won't die, but will be very sick, Bill says. "Ahhhhh," they intone.

We necessitate to travel there immediately.

We scatter, douse candles, bend off the stove, tamper down the fire, squeal six autos in and out of the private route until we have got one big adequate to throw eight, positioned to travel with Bill, the lone completely sober person, at the helm.

Sardined into the SUV in our party-regalia, we race through the starry violet sky, over the Riviera behind the Santa Barbara Mission, and down the back, winding, eucalptus-lined state road to Montecito. For some incomprehensible ground we're wailing along with the Beach Boys clump version of, "Let's Get Together and Make It Again." Over and over again we sing it into the night, not able to acquire our fill of Bash it Again:

"Its automatic when I

Talk with old friends

The conversation turns to

Girls we knew when their

Hair was soft and long and the

Beach was the topographic point to go

Suntanned organic structures and

Waves of sunlight the

California misses and a

Beautiful coastline

Warmed up weather

Lets acquire together and

Do it again

hey now hey now hey now hey now hey now

dit, dit, dididit, dit, dit, dididit. Ow!

Lets acquire together and make it again. Yeoww!"

It's flip blackness outside Lulu's, with just the full moon providing some ambient light. Bill
screechings the SUV to a halt. I leap out, shoeless, on the pea-gravel drive, and pick-up the entry phone.

Lulu answers.

"We're here, Lulu. Buzz us in."

"Go 'way," she sounds like Sir William Wallace Beery imitating a intoxicated woman. The line travels dead.

"Move the SUV closer to the wall," I direct the action like we're in a Bourn film. I climb
over so once inside I can force the opener in the garage. My new achromatic lacing frock is chopped in the
battle over the stone walls, and while fretting over that, I falter into the pool behind the garage. Now I'm in a
drenched wet and in a tatterdemalion dress, but the Gates are open.

The eight of us slink across the presence pace and around the Fe cervid statues like a company of Inspector Clousseaus. Tipsy, giggly, and and dripping of fish; we attain the Gallic doors to her sleeping room on the east side patio, and equal in. "Shhhsss."

The room is huge and achromatic as heaven.

White thick carpets, puffy duvets, bed curtains, and mounts of downy pillows, with her achromatic poodle, Lovie, perched at the top. And there in the centre of all that cloud-like purity, is Smasher is in her achromatic chiffon robe, long strands of pearls, and her glistening jet-black bob, like Catherine Of Aragon Zeta Mother Jones in Chicago, framing her film-star perfect face.

"What IS all of that?" I say, squinting at what looks like 100s of brownish leeches. Bill forces the door manage and we tumble-in.

"Zis IS emergency!" Our interior designer friend, Stevich, squeals. "Call za dermatologist! Get za bathroom scale! Get za manus weights!"

Covering the achromatic sweep of the bed are 200-hundred empty brown, mini-Snicker parallel bars wrappers. Bill runs Smasher into the bathroom; where she can now be heard tossing-up in a gut-turning cosmic purge.

We're all about to notice when the dual doors from the terrace explosion unfastened and two Rent-A-Cops enter; sweaty, beefy, red, guns drawn.

"Hands-up!"

"Genttteeelmen, this eeeesn't za Wild Western," Stevich protests.

"ShudItUp. UP!" The 6'6" ruddy-faced cat barks.

Our custody hit up. We zip up it.

Cindy, who was standing beside the door, and out of view, steals outside. I see her but state nothing. The
lone sound is Smasher losing those 200 mini-chocolate bars.

"What's going on here?" The rent-a-cop infers something sinister.

I presume my sensible Nancy John Drew pose, but when I state we all just arrived from Cindy's, the bull demands to cognize who and where she is. Helium descries my glimpse outside, looks around, then tosses a electric switch that bathes delicacy Cindy in a flood-light worthy of a gala affair movie premier. She's holding up her skirt and squatted over a flower-pot. "Nooooo!" She cries.

Everyone, including the security cops, bend into frickin' hyenas, just as the existent bulls run in.

"Freeze!" They say. But we're all doubled-over, it's impossible to stop. Some of the work force mime Cindy. "Noooooo!" Which do us express joy until it's hard to take a breath and crying fill up our eyes.

The new reachings allow their guns autumn to their sides, expression perplexed, and sniff. "What's that smell?"

I croak, "Hey now, hey now, Fish acquire together with high-heeled shoe. Dit, dit, didi, dit. Yeow."

Now Bill and Smasher are howling from the bathroom.