She decided now that despite her best efforts, she would never measure up.  Something was always just a little off in her presentation.  Maybe because she was winging it, with no guidance or support.  Or maybe she knew that everything she did was a phony attempt to imitate someone or something she had seen in the movies or read about in her books.  Behind her façade lay the familiar bundle of insecurities forming the same old person she had always been.  Who was she, anyway, but the abandoned single mother of a fearsome toddler, who challenged her at every turn?  A former fatty striving to maintain a svelte image without ever really pulling it off.

And, like every other time when faced with the grim reality of her life, she longed for a good book, a box of chocolates and blissful anonymity.  But instead, she glanced up to see Gwendolyn approaching with a bottle of wine and three stemmed glasses.  “Here, it’s time we all had a private toast.”  And she poured, handing the glasses to each of them in turn.  “I think we’re all very simpatico, here, don’t you?”  She glanced meaningfully between the two of them, her brother and assistant, as proud at her maneuvering as a maestro at the end of a successfully wrought orchestration.

Suddenly bursting into nervous giggles, Merrilee tapped their glasses lightly and sipped.  She loved that familiar warm slipping-down feeling of the wine.  She’d had two glasses with dinner, and now as the golden liquid made its way down her gullet, she realized that it was almost as satisfying as food.  Maybe more so, in some ways.  And she gave herself over to the glowing feeling.