The Chicken Sisters(20)

Her mom wasn’t something she wanted to talk about.

Sabrina looked interested. “Wait, is your sister Mae Moore? Who wrote Less Is Moore?” She paused, then laughed. “Oh man. That would be tough.”

Damn it, she knew who Mae was. Did everybody? But at least that made it easy to explain. “Exactly. And it sucks, you know? She literally wrote the book on being perfect, but in real life, she’s not so—I mean, she does do all that stuff, throw everything away, put everything back, keep it all clear—but she’s not so . . . fun about it. She’s more pissed.”

Sabrina again hopped down from her perch on the desk. “I know Mae,” she said casually. “It will be great to see her again.”

She knew Mae? Actually knew her? And Mae might be on her way here, to help with Mimi’s— Was that fair? Sabrina must have noticed how shocked Amanda looked, because the diminutive host leaned down and gave Amanda, who was still seated, a one-armed hug.

“It’s okay! We met a long time ago is all, and I see her around. TV is a small world. It doesn’t matter.” She plopped onto the floor next to Amanda’s chair. “It’s not like we’re friends. She seems like she might be hard to be friends with. I’ve got an older sister who’s like that, and we don’t get along at all.”

Amanda sank down farther into the chair and stretched her legs out. Sabrina had that right—and maybe it wasn’t so bad that she knew Mae if Sabrina and Amanda had so much in common.

“In the book she just sounds so nice and together, and she kind of is, but—” How to explain Mae? It was harder than it sounded. “She’s, like, messy inside. I mean, she probably wouldn’t want me to say that, but it’s true.”

Sabrina nodded. “Isn’t everybody? My sister hates for people to know that about her too. I’m supposed to be the messy one.”

It was nice to talk to someone who really got it. “She knows how everybody should live their lives, just like she knows how everybody should keep everything clean,” Amanda said. “It was okay when we were little. But now, we hardly ever talk, and when we do, it’s like she doesn’t know I grew up.”

When they were little—Mae was Amanda’s rock, back then. Amanda had been easily eight or nine before she realized that in most families, it was the mom who made lunches, who got out clothes for the next day or made sure you did your homework. Barbara did none of those things, but Mae did, so well that Amanda had never felt the lack. It was just that Mae never stopped doing them.

Sabrina was gazing up into her face, smiling encouragingly. “I bet she has ideas about your job, right? Mine’s always saying how I could do better for myself. Every job I get, she puts down.”

Amanda wondered what Sabrina’s sister could do that she thought was so much better than Food Wars, but at least she understood the attitude. “That’s exactly it! And it’s not like she’s perfect. Everybody here knows it, too. She used to smoke, and she got good grades but she always kind of annoyed the teachers. She always acted like she knew better than anyone else. And then she went to college in Dallas, and then New York, and it just got worse.”

“That’s the first time I met her,” said Sabrina. “We had a dancing gig together, when we were both first getting started.”

Amanda looked at her, surprised. Really? Maybe that was what Sabrina’s sister was giving her a hard time about. At least that made some sense. “Seriously? You knew her at”—oh gosh, what would be the right way to say it?—“that place in Dallas? The, uh, gentlemen’s club?”

“The what?”

Maybe that wasn’t the way people said it. Especially if they worked there. “Um, the exotic dance place? The Yellow Rose, or something like that?”

Sabrina stared at Amanda for a second, then hooted. “Wait! No. Seriously? Mae worked as a stripper? No.” She leaned on the desk and laughed, a huge laugh that told Amanda that her earlier laughs had been nothing but polite, a laugh that left her wiping her eyes as she turned to Gordo. “I met her at MTV, we were both in a video, and then we auditioned to be VJs. Not”—she laughed again—“the Yellow Rose of Texas. Oh man, that’s unbelievable. Seriously? Gordo, did you hear that? Tell me you’re dying here.”

Gordo stepped out and stretched, and Amanda suddenly realized he’d been behind the camera for some time, not twitching the lights or setting the scene. “I’m dying,” he said, plainly sarcastic.

“Oh shit, you don’t know her.” Sabrina wiped her eyes again. “Well, maybe you will. If she comes, and now, oh man, I really hope she comes. And then you’ll see. Oh, that’s a total crack-up. Mae Moore, a stripper? Well, you’ve fired the first salvo in the Food Wars big-time, Amanda. Family-Friendly Frannie’s versus—what—Hot-Mama Mimi’s?” She laughed again, but for Amanda, this was suddenly not very funny.

“Wait, you weren’t recording that, were you?” she asked. They would have said they were filming, right? They would have asked her questions about Frannie’s and chicken. “You can’t use that. That wasn’t about chicken or anything. I thought we were just talking.”

Sabrina smiled, her face still full of laughter. “Your first on-camera interview,” she said. “I could tell you might be nervous, so I eased you into it.”