Whispers From God (paperback of Oh The Hell Of It All) by Pat Montandon

a devastating divorce that Pat did not think she could survive, leads to a life beyond imaginings.

$16.99

Paperback

I knew I wasn’t in Oklahoma or even San Francisco anymore, when I looked out my kitchen window and saw Ellen Degeneres and Porche de Rossi jogging by. They waved. I waved back.
    A few days later while I was watering my camellias a handsome silver-haired fellow, walking his dog, said good morning. I returned his greeting.
    “Oh,” I said to Susan Gold a visiting friend and the former producer of my San Francisco TV show. “That was what’s his name, the host of that show, you know the one, on television, a silly game show where teams are pitted against each other to answer questions on a tote board.”
    “Patsy, you know as much about celebrities as you did when you were on KGO.” Susan said. “You got the names of the actors so mixed up that my phone shrieked like a car alarm when you talked about who was in the film that day. Every morning, on the dot, as soon as you opened your mouth, my phone would ring.” she laughed. Susan and I can fall down laughing over our TV antics or over nothing. Susan and her husband Donald had long ago moved to Southern California so I was thrilled to reconnect with my long time friends.
    Starry eyed when I first arrived in Beverly Hills, 90210, I quickly awakened when I discovered that the lush emerald lawn surrounding a Colonial style home I admired, was 100% artificial. Yeah, that’s right...Astro Turf or New Grass or Phony Green-Stuff?
    Star Beings, looking like the rest of us, were everywhere I went it seemed. Walgreen’s, Trader Joes, Ralph’s Market, sandwich shops. Oh, was that what’s his name?,...Simon, Simon Cowbell the American Idol meanie eating pizza at a sidewalk café on Beverly Drive? At my dentist I sat in the waiting room with, lordy, what’s her name? Uh...Minnie Driver! She looked pregnant. When another woman-in-waiting complimented Minnie on her acting ability, MD thanked her in that lovely Australian, or is it British, accent. In another doctors waiting room, this time my cardiologist, Charlie Sheen, whose name I knew, or was that the son?, was hurried into a back room before I could be sure.
    In 2007, during the first Spector trial, the famous writer Dominick Dunne was in Tinsel Town covering the trial for Vanity Fair. A friend brought him to my house for an early supper. Let me tell you...that man knows how to dress. He was so well groomed and so courtly that I immediately fell in love with him. I admired his beautifully cut navy suit, French cuff white shirt, tasteful blue tie, handmade shoes, and his trademark round tortoise frame glasses. And he smelled delicious, not like Romance in a Bottle but like Bulgari Pour Homme Soir.    
    For desert that evening I served rolled chocolate dipped cookies. Dominick kept saying he loved those cookies and proved it by eating one after the other. But my heart sank to the floor when I saw the deep lines from the corners of his mouth to his chin becoming a speedway for warm chocolate. A river of chocolate was oozing its way through the canyon of his smile lines in-route to his chin and would quickly drop in a large glob onto his crisply starched shirt collar if I didn’t act.
    There was no time to dillydally. I rose from my chair like Mother Russia rescuing her child from a collective farm, and with napkin in hand I reached across the table, over burning candles, and without a word blotted the runaway chocolate from Dominick Dunne’s chin. I had save him and his shirt although the famous writer seemed unaware of it and continued eating cookies.
    Last year my son Sean called to ask if he could invite a few well-known friends to dinner when he visited the next week.
    ”I’ll cook,” he said.
    “Who are you inviting?”
    “Eve Martin for one.”
    “Eve Martin? Who’s Eve Martin?”
    “Mom, Steve Martin!”
    “Steve Martin,” I laughed. “I’ve heard of him. Ean, unfortunately I’m beginning to lose S sounds. Might have to get a hearing aid, but, golly, damm, I sure dread taking that step.”
    The evening of the party I told Steve that he was Eve to me, and then I told him why. I imagined he would give me that bumbling Inspector Clouseau grin and say something clever. Instead, he told me he was also losing the S sound and then cupped his ear to show me his hearing aid.
     I didn’t have the nerve to ask what brand it was. Perhaps I’ll run into him at Trader Joes, I’ll can ask him then