A stove

"What's that smell?" I asked Giles.

"Sounds like the turkey's burning!"

"Oh my God, what have we done?" We both rushed out to the kitchen. Giles slipped on the shiny white tiles of our nouveau kitchen and his 300-pound tub of a body fell flat on its face. I jumped over his pile of blubber and ran to the stove, opened it, grabbed the turkey roaster with my bare hands.

"O O O O U U U U C C C C H H H H !!!!"

I turned around ... jumped back over Giles, struggling to get to his feet ... ran over to the sink, put my burned fingers under cold water.

"Thank the Lord!"

"Serves you right, you weasel!"  Giles stood up, glared at me, limped over to the stove, pulled the oven mitts off their hooks, pulled the turkey out of the oven.

"Looks like Wiley Coyota after a bomb's been exploded."

So what were we going to do now? We had the Contessa Louisa de Pretenza in the formal salon, holding court with Letitia Cosgrove, Cornelius Armstrong, Bunny Havers, the Underwoods, the de Gooches, and the Huntingdon-Worthingtons. And here we were -- trying to impress the haut polloi, a burned turkey, my fingers about to blister like crazy, 300-pound Giles limping, smoke billowing out of the stove. What else could go wrong?

The kitchen door swung open. "Giles, Freddie, come right away! Your dog's urinated on Contessa Louisa!"

"Oh, no!"

"Saints preserve us!"

We waddled out to the salon, my hands wrapped in wet rags, Giles limping on an injured foot, found Whizzer baring his teeth at the contessa. Why, oh why, hadn't we put him in the basement for the evening? Oh, the barking -- that's why. He'd have barked his German shepherd head off from the basement, ruining our lovely evening with the countess. And there she was -- her Hedda Hopper hat, square on her head, her full-length dress with its Rorschach-blotted wet stain just below the knees.

Giles grabbed Whizzer and retreated down the hallway to the stairs.

"Dear Contessa, are you wet? Did he raise his leg? I'm soooooooooooooooo sorry ... how can I ever apologize enough, dear Contessa?"

"No problem, this is only the dress I wore to my first social occasion after marrying my dear, departed husband, the Count de Pretenza. No problem whatsoever!" She intoned, raised eyebrows broadcasting her disgust with us ... right over to Letitia Cosgrove. Letitia, that small-minded bigot, wrote the gossip column for the A-listers of Bar Harbor.

We were FINISHED.