sexual orientation like George.
You could say I felt sorry for myself. I knew my own choices and actions had led me to where I was, but I still felt sorry for myself.
If things had somehow worked out with Buster—not that I’d ever been able to define for myself, even before the bust-up, what would constitute things “working out” with a married man plus two kids—would I still be feeling sorry for myself at this point?
Probably, I figured. Because I would have still reached that critical state in a relationship where you realize you’ve let all your friendships die and all you have left is the one relationship.
Not that I’d had any other experience with relationships.
Come to think of it, I’d had limited experience with friendships, too.
I glanced down that first page of #56 and saw that—omigod!—Nancy was still eighteen! How was such a thing possible? I was pretty sure that even Sherlock Holmes, over the course of his many adventures, had aged a few years. So how had Nancy managed to age not one year over the course of fifty-six mysteries? I quickly did the math.
Okay, I went to find my calculator.
Figuring it wasn’t a leap year—because what are the odds? Something like one in four?—I did the division. Let’s see…365 divided by 56 is…6.5178571. 6.5178571??? This…teenager was solving mysteries at the rate of one every six and a half days? What kind of a girl was she? Oh, man, was I sooo not her.
Talk about an overachiever.
But then, after I was annoyed for a really long time, I started to think, How cool!
Imagine having one incredibly long year, the most stretched-out year imaginable, with enough time to get right everything a person needed to get right. What would I do with such a year? I couldn’t change the past. But maybe in changing my present, I could change my future?
I looked at the calendar on the back of my bedroom door, kittens in Greece, the sole present I’d received from Aunt Bea for my birthday: it was April 26. So, calculator time again, I had already lost 116 days so far that year—it wasn’t a leap year—meaning I’d already blown the chance to solve 17.846153 mysteries. But hey, there were still 249 days left, so there was still the opportunity for me to solve the remaining 38.153847 mysteries.
Whatever they were.
If only I could get up to speed real fast.
Actually, I was beginning to think that even I should be able to solve .153847 mysteries. It was the 38 part, I suspected, that would be the problem.
For the remainder of the two months until it was time for me to get on the plane to Iceland, I could read a book a day of Nancy Drew, leaving me five days at the end for shopping, packing and biting my nails to the quick.
Except for the day I went for the job interview, of course. Even someone desperate for a nanny who was willing to leave her life and go to Iceland wasn’t going to hire that nanny without first meeting her in person…. No matter what kind of wonderful things Ambassador Buster had said about her.
chapter 3
Then came the call. It was by one Mrs. Fairly, definitely a Mrs. who would never allow herself to be addressed as Ms., who requested I come to her master’s—master’s?—Park Avenue home for an interview. Clearly, this was a step up from Ambassador Buster Keating’s home, where I’d originally been interviewed and hired by his disinterested wife. I was now to be hired by a minion, which I figured meant I was moving up in the world.
Trying to answer that ever-popular euphonious question, WWNDD—What Would Nancy Drew Do?—I searched my practical wardrobe for the perfect persuasive costume to wear. Rejecting the casual allure of slacks and the confidence-inducing appeal of a dressy dress, I at last settled on a sensible plaid skirt and short-sleeved turtleneck I found in the back of my closet. I had no idea where these garments came from, could not for the life of me remember purchasing them, but when I looked in the mirror I saw they were doing the trick. Adding my mother’s pearls and unassuming flats to the picture, even though the flats gave me none of the height I so badly needed, I was ready to roll.
But first I had to run the gauntlet of Aunt Bea’s children.
“You look boring,” said Joe, the oldest at fifteen. “I’d never date you.”
“That’s a hideous combination,” said Elena, thirteen.
“Who would ever wear pearls with plaid?” sniffed Georgia, nine.
I was tempted to tell her that I was pretty damn sure Nancy Drew would wear plaid and pearls on an interview—hell, Nancy, who always wore gloves when she went out, but for entirely different reasons than why I ever did, would have undoubtedly worn gloves, too—but I didn’t want her to think I was crazier than she already clearly thought me. Plus, I still awaited Aunt Bea’s verdict.
She looked at me long.
“I…like it,” she finally said.
And that scared the shit out of me more than anything that had gone before.
When someone whose taste you don’t respect thinks that whatever you are wearing is the bee’s knees, chances are you’re making a fashion faux pas from which your image is unlikely to recover.
I grabbed a leather bag, black with brown suede trim, that was more satchel than purse, and was gone.
The living room I was led into by an actual liveried servant was big enough to fit Aunt Bea’s entire first floor into and it was quickly obvious that someone around here had an overly enthusiastic appetite for French furniture. Not that I’m particularly heavy, carrying no more extra baggage than the obligatory all-American extra ten, but when the servant indicated a Louis-something chair to me, and I felt the skinny legs wobble back and forth on the slippery marble floor beneath me, I found myself wishing for something more sturdy.
Mrs. Fairly turned out to be as old as Aunt Bea looked, with a staid black dress and her own pearls on—ha! Thank you, Nancy Drew!—that somehow reflected back the glow of her bluish white hair. She also carried an extra twenty pounds to my ten and was shorter than me, which is always a shocker.
I’ve spent my life thinking of my height more in terms of the technical—“I am a short person”—rather than in practice, because I’ve always felt taller and indeed all my life have been told, except by my family, that I don’t look that short, and that I have a much taller personality, whatever that means; even people who remember the commercials I made as a child, upon meeting me, never fail to comment, “You didn’t look like a short child!” Again, whatever that means.
“What religion are you?” she asked.
I would have guessed it was against some kind of law to ask a prospective employee about religious affiliation, unless of course you were hiring a bishop or a rabbi, but questioning the legality of her business ethics right off the bat hardly seemed the best tactic to secure me the position I wanted.
“Jewish,” I said.
“I see,” she said.
I wondered what she was seeing, endeavored to at least look like I was waiting
