Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral (Electronic book text)


"Chapter One
"
There is a hole the size of a golf ball in the right side of Katherine Givins's black Bali bra.
This is the one article of clothing that has made her feel sexy for the past 3.6 years in a row, and even though the straps lie at half-mast on her fine shoulders, the elastic exploded last summer and the hooks have been pulled so many times she has actually used a needle-nose pliers on them, Katherine cannot bear to throw the bra away.
"Shit," she says, turning into the mirror and then leaning so her nose practically touches the glass to make certain there really is a hole. It's there, and getting wider every second, as she puts her finger in the middle and realizes that one wrong move could explode all of the seams and send her breasts into orbit.
Just as she grabs them and begins laughing hysterically at the long-held notion that the bra, like her lost marriage and her fabulous mother and the man she thought she loved two men ago or even the one she loves now, would last forever, the doorbell rings and makes her scream herself back into reality.
Her scream, the kind you might make when something normal--like a doorbell--flushes you from a very far-away place--reaches the UPS woman on the front step who is glad as hell that someone is home so she doesn't have to leave a note and come back the next day. In the UPS world, screams, especially those coming from anywhere in front of the brown trucks and not under the rear wheels, are very good signs. So the UPS woman waits.
Katherine does not care who is at the door immediately because she is already in mourning about the loss of her bra. The bra that held her up and saw her through when her daughter announced that she had her first kiss (3.1 years ago) and then snapped the back of her mother's Bali bra instead of performing the regulation high-five; when she found out her ex-husband Michael was about to be married (2.8 years ago) as she was sorting wash and the bra moved from her fingers and into the black depths of a dark load; when finally a man emboldened by vodka martinis put his hand down her strategically placed low-cut sweater and ran his fingers very slowly past the elastic top and curved his hand around her left breast; when her father came to her one night (2.1 years ago) and said that he could no longer care for his wife, her mother, and could Katherine "please, please, please" help him find the right place, and then leaned into her, clutched her shoulder, his sad and tired arm thumping against the metal hook; when she let Alex finally make love to her (1.8 years ago) and he turned her around, lifted her blouse and took his sweet, sexy and fabulous time unhooking the Bali and then replaced it with hands that spoke seventeen languages; when she leaned over her mother's coffin (.8 years ago), the metal from the underwire tapping against the edge of the coffin as she ran her hands through her mother's hair one last time and then wept so long and hard that the funeral started almost an hour late, and just now the hole emerging like an omen of age and change slapping her upside the head and making her wonder, "What next? What in the hell is going to happen next in this life of mine?"
The doorbell.
Katherine, angry at the unseen intruder who h

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Product Description

"Chapter One
"
There is a hole the size of a golf ball in the right side of Katherine Givins's black Bali bra.
This is the one article of clothing that has made her feel sexy for the past 3.6 years in a row, and even though the straps lie at half-mast on her fine shoulders, the elastic exploded last summer and the hooks have been pulled so many times she has actually used a needle-nose pliers on them, Katherine cannot bear to throw the bra away.
"Shit," she says, turning into the mirror and then leaning so her nose practically touches the glass to make certain there really is a hole. It's there, and getting wider every second, as she puts her finger in the middle and realizes that one wrong move could explode all of the seams and send her breasts into orbit.
Just as she grabs them and begins laughing hysterically at the long-held notion that the bra, like her lost marriage and her fabulous mother and the man she thought she loved two men ago or even the one she loves now, would last forever, the doorbell rings and makes her scream herself back into reality.
Her scream, the kind you might make when something normal--like a doorbell--flushes you from a very far-away place--reaches the UPS woman on the front step who is glad as hell that someone is home so she doesn't have to leave a note and come back the next day. In the UPS world, screams, especially those coming from anywhere in front of the brown trucks and not under the rear wheels, are very good signs. So the UPS woman waits.
Katherine does not care who is at the door immediately because she is already in mourning about the loss of her bra. The bra that held her up and saw her through when her daughter announced that she had her first kiss (3.1 years ago) and then snapped the back of her mother's Bali bra instead of performing the regulation high-five; when she found out her ex-husband Michael was about to be married (2.8 years ago) as she was sorting wash and the bra moved from her fingers and into the black depths of a dark load; when finally a man emboldened by vodka martinis put his hand down her strategically placed low-cut sweater and ran his fingers very slowly past the elastic top and curved his hand around her left breast; when her father came to her one night (2.1 years ago) and said that he could no longer care for his wife, her mother, and could Katherine "please, please, please" help him find the right place, and then leaned into her, clutched her shoulder, his sad and tired arm thumping against the metal hook; when she let Alex finally make love to her (1.8 years ago) and he turned her around, lifted her blouse and took his sweet, sexy and fabulous time unhooking the Bali and then replaced it with hands that spoke seventeen languages; when she leaned over her mother's coffin (.8 years ago), the metal from the underwire tapping against the edge of the coffin as she ran her hands through her mother's hair one last time and then wept so long and hard that the funeral started almost an hour late, and just now the hole emerging like an omen of age and change slapping her upside the head and making her wonder, "What next? What in the hell is going to happen next in this life of mine?"
The doorbell.
Katherine, angry at the unseen intruder who h

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Product Details

General

Imprint

Bantam Books

Country of origin

United States

Release date

December 2005

Availability

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Authors

Format

Electronic book text

Pages

352

ISBN-13

978-5-551-49884-1

Barcode

9785551498841

Categories

LSN

5-551-49884-0



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