Go

"What's that smell?" I asked Giles, surveying the buffet platters of food and hors d'oeuvres on the banquette and dining table. Giles's tartan ascot went askew at the scent of something gone wrong. My Christmas bow tie twitched.

"Freddie, it sounds like the turkey's burning!"

"Oh my God, not the turkey!" We barreled into 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. My stick figure of a body jumped over his pile of blubber and ran to the stove, opened it, and 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 a Giles struggling to get to his feet, ran over to the sink, turned on the faucet, and doused my hands. Water splashed all over my dark red Armani jacket.

"Thank the Lord!"

"Serves you right, you weasel!" Giles stood up and glared at my soaked Armani. He limped over to the stove, grabbed the oven mitts, and pulled the turkey out of the oven.

"Looks like Wiley Coyote after a bomb's exploded. In his face."

So what were we going to do now? We had the Contessa Louisa de Pretenza sitting by our 9-foot tree 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, smoke billowing out of the stove, 300-pound Giles limping, and my about-to-blister fingers. Not to mention Giles's ascot all in a mess. What else could go wrong at this Christmas soiree?

The kitchen door swung open. It was Bunny, her flabby chins bouncing. "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 and Giles limping on his injured foot, only to find Whizzer baring his teeth at the contessa. Why, oh why, hadn't we put him in the basement for the evening? The barking, that's why. He'd have barked his German shepherd head off from the basement, ruining our lovely evening on the social ladder. And there was the countess, a Hedda Hopper hat square on her head, her full-length dress with a Rorschach-blotted wet stain just below the knees.

Giles smirked an apology, grabbed Whizzer, and retreated down the hallway with the dog.

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

"It is not a problem, my dear Mr. Carlton. After all this is only the gown I wore to my introduction to society as the late Count's new wife. This was my dear, departed husband's favorite dress. I assure you, it is no bother whatsoever!" She rolled her eyes and raised her pencil-thin eyebrows into tarantula arches. She telegraphed a silent message over to Letitia Cosgrove, that small-minded bigot who wrote the gossip column for the A-listers of Bar Harbor.

We were FINISHED.