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Suddenly she's popular Nice Girl. (Large Purse.)By Rick Horowitz A little town the size of this one, you might figure nothing ever happens worth a second glance or a minute's conversation. Don't you believe it. Down at the Lunch 'n' Munch, we've always got more things to talk about than time to do the talking. But what's got everybody's tongues wagging these days is one thing and one thing only: The Courting of Vera Mae Thirdparty. Folks around here, we've known the Thirdparty clan for years, we never would have figured Vera Mae for all this sudden attention. She's nice enough, as far as that goes, but she's a skinny little girl, not at all the kind of look that makes the boys drop their chores and come running. Plus she's got that Thirdparty thing with her eyes -- the left one cocked just a little bit off center, the right one kind of glowing in the dark. "She's peculiar," some folks at the Lunch 'n' Munch insist, though most of us are willing to settle on "distinctive." Whichever -- it didn't seem to slow down that nice Mr. Buchanan. Once he decided Vera Mae was the girl for him, he came at her like a tornado. "Run away with me, Vera Mae!" he's been shouting at her window every night. (He has that big strong voice from selling fertilizer on the television all those years.) "You're different from those other girls!" Down at the Lunch 'n' Munch, there've been plenty of raised eyebrows, that's for sure. Everyone knows perfectly well that Mr. Buchanan has been chasing after one of those "other girls" practically forever. It wasn't till the widow Pachyderm -- Patrice Louise Pachyderm by name, though everyone calls her "Grand Old Patty" -- it wasn't till the widow Pachyderm turned him down three different times that he suddenly discovered the virtues of Vera Mae Thirdparty. "Run away with me, Vera Mae!" Mr. Buchanan is too much of a gentleman to even mention the inheritance -- but that hardly keeps the rest of us from speculating. Everyone knows that Vera Mae Thirdparty stands to come into a bushelful of money the minute she ties the knot with someone. Twelve million dollars, somebody says, and the lucky gent who wins Vera Mae's hand will be right next to her pocketbook, too. For that much money, we figure, Mr. Buchanan might be willing to forget Grand Old Patty once and for all. But then there's that nice Mr. Trump, who's very big in real estate over in Appleville. For someone like Mr. Trump, 12 million dollars is pretty much pocket lint, but lately he's been camping under Vera Mae's window almost as often as Mr. Buchanan does. "There's nobody like me," he whispers up to her every morning. "You'll be crazy about me." Mr. Trump has more girlfriends than he can keep track of -- starlets and beauty queens every last one, girls with shapely bodies and eyes that point where they're supposed to point. Vera Mae Thirdparty is the absolute farthest thing from his type, so naturally everybody's chattering away with their particular theories about why and what for. Of course, that could be reason enough for Mr. Trump. If there's one thing he likes even more than his starlets and his beauty queens, it's having people chattering away about him. And what about that nice Mr. Ventura? He says he can't get involved with Vera Mae right now, that he's fully committed to another relationship up north somewhere. But it's the strangest thing -- every time he says it, he sounds more and more like he'd like to get out of that other relationship and into something with Vera Mae instead. And when you tell him that, he just smiles at you. And don't forget the man who first stole Vera Mae's heart all those years ago: that strange little Mr. Perot. He wants everyone to think he's out of the courting business, but you never know with Mr. Perot. So which one will get her? Mr. Buchanan? Mr. Trump? Mr. Ventura? Mr. Perot? Or someone else we haven't even thought about yet? She's nice enough, Vera Mae Thirdparty, but nobody figured it would go like this. At the Lunch 'n' Munch, we're watching all the intrigue, and we're lapping up every last bit of it. Strange business, love. Posted 10/26/99.
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Rick Horowitz