Instead, we had a season of relative peace and tranquility. Dunemere Real Estate huffily denied they were the agents for grunge singer Courtney Love, rumored to be buying a place. Two neighbors on Huntting Lane, one Old Money, his woman neighbor indisputably New, feuded over her dogs and he was suspected of shooting at them with a BB gun. Deer ticks swarmed once more. Which was why, they said, Billy Joel bred and raised guinea hens at his spread on Further Lane, to keep down the ticks.
Guinea hens like a nice tick.
There were few unexpected personal bankruptcies and not a single front-page suicide. Decent people tut-tutted such yarns as tabloid inventions and piously hoped the couple might work out their differences. Although he, at least, had amusement value. Imported, lavishly housed, fed, and watered at the considerable expense of rich, foolish women who got their names in the columns simply for going to lunch, the Swami affected caftans, working his magic largely in private, levitating and chanting, going into trances, prescribing enemas and a diet of wheat germ, all the while smelling up a lovely, old, borrowed house with incense. Thoughtfully, he promoted his scams, if that was what they were, behind thick and sheltering privet hedges rather than on village streets, where he might frighten leashed dogs or roller-skating children.