Rise and Shine Read Online Free PDF Page A

up as I turned and shook her head. Not you. At least she was direct. I elbowed Meghan. She bent from the waist so she and the little girl were face-to-face. “What’s your name?” she said, and she signed accordingly: “To Kirby. You rock! XOXO Meghan Fitzmaurice.” It was Meghan’s newest autograph salutation. “Please, Mom, stop, you’re killing me,” Leo had said, but it was short and snappy and made Meghan seem hip. It had at least a year before the statute would run and she would move on to something else.
    There was a ruckus at the door directly behind us, a cavalcade of men in black suits with lapel pins. Behind them came a balding man with a bad comb-over and a tux with too-wide lapels. He was carrying a plaque in one hand and fussing with the hair with the other. His face when he saw Meghan was like an acting improv exercise: displeasure, fear, followed by feigned joy and then long-rehearsed warmth.
    “Meghan! My favorite morning host! And the country’s, too!”
    “Hello, Mr. Mayor. How was the ribbon cutting at the Armory?”
    “God, she’s good,” I murmured to myself. I shouldn’t drink at these events. Meghan never does.
    “You know my schedule better than I do. Probably the president’s better than the Secret Service.”
    “The president is at Camp David this weekend, actually, with the British prime minister.”
    “What did I say? Did I call it, ladies? This lady knows everything about everything.”
    “Picture!” said the official photographer, and Meghan and I pulled Tequila into a shot with the mayor, who was hustled afterward to the front of the room by his security detail. If Tequila finally killed her youngest child’s father, a course of action all of us at WOW would support, that photograph would wind up on the front of the tabloids.
    “He’s got to do something about that hair right now!” Tequila said.
    “He’s ridiculous,” Meghan said. “I did an interview with him during the campaign that left him looking like a fool in six minutes, and he doesn’t even have the balls to hold a grudge. I’d respect him a whole lot more if he’d just cut me dead when he sees me. Instead it’s all, Oh, Meghan, great to see you.”
    “Smarmy,” said Tequila.
    “Unctuous,” Meghan agreed.
    “Get the dictionary,” said Alison. “Here come the vocabulary words.”
    “She means the man is one kiss-ass mayor,” said Tequila.
    “Exactly,” said Meghan.
    “You going to keep the lipstick from your goody bag?”
    “I don’t know,” said Meghan. “Is it one of those really bad colors? It’s not easy for redheads, finding good lipstick colors.”
    “You never even take the goody bag,” I said.
    “I might if the lipstick was a good color.”
    Tequila narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “I’m wearing it right now,” she said, “and I’m thinking it’s too pink for a redheaded girl like yourself.”
    The waitstaff eddied around us, crying, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” like some breed of urban bird. The dessert was something pink in a chocolate cup with raspberries and the obligatory sprig of mint. The chocolate cup was the official emblem of charity dinners.
    “Meghan, thank you so much for getting me those tickets last month,” Alison said, lifting her spoon.
    “Oh, no problem. I was happy to do it. Oh, God, I almost forgot, I have to go to the ladies’ room, that’s why I came back here in the first place. And to see you girls, of course. Bridget, come with me. I’m on in about ten minutes and I don’t want to be at the podium thinking I have to pee.”
    “What’d I get her tickets for?” she muttered as we picked our way through the ballroom foyer.
    “No idea.”
    “Oh. Okay, great.”
    Ladies’ rooms are a nightmare for us. This one was not so bad. Only one woman reared back from the sink and cried, “It’s you!” Sometimes they say “It’s you” and sometimes they say “You’re Meghan Fitzmaurice.” Either way they seem to feel that Meghan