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BEST FRIENDS by Consuelo Baehr

BEST FRIENDS

By

Pub Date: Sept. 30th, 1980
Publisher: Delacorte

Best Friends--clever Sara, beautiful Natalie, waif-like Miranda--get jobs, make babies, have the hots a lot. . . before a sad ending. All three were classmates years before at St. Mildred's Academy, but before they are reunited here, they will wade through sizzling affairs and cope with a few nasty surprises. Natalie is married to creepy millionaire Alden Van Druten, but her baby Jeremy is really the child of actor Sam Johnson, who doesn't know he's a pa until Natalie's pregnant again, this time by Alden (who jogs a lot and doesn't seem to like women); also, while yearning for absent Sam, Natalie spends a few athletic hours with crude Rudy Sorbentino (she's doing PR for Rudy's politico boss). Sara, apparently happily married to scientist Reynold and mother of two, takes on a freelance writing job for a women's magazine and has a throbbing affair with exec Bill Waring. Miranda, poor and single, has been ditched by screenwriter Sanche Ray, the father of her unborn; is helped out by nice, gay neighbor David Laver; but loses a cushy job when she objects to the physical punishment dealt out by a freaky client of her firm. Things start to get sticky when Alden enters David's life as lover and money-lender, then uses David in a kidnapping scheme involving baby Jeremy. And it all ends drearily when Alden, determined to finish off Natalie, presses the gun barrel against the wrong pregnant rum. So: Natalie gives birth and is reunited with Sam; Sara is back with Reynold; and poor Miranda is a Best Friend and Dead Duck. Sludge.