Authors: Izabella St. James

Bunny Tales (19 page)

Holly always wanted to match Hef to emphasize that she was his true counterpart. Whenever we went out Hef always wore the same thing, a black Armani suit and one of those custom shirts he has in every color with the white collar and cuffs. Holly wanted them to match when possible, so if he wore a red shirt, she would wear a red outfit. This theme was taken a step further at parties, where she particularly wanted to be acknowledged as his other half. For the Halloween party, if she was a jailbird, then he was a prisoner, if she was an angel, then he was the devil. As for the other parties, whatever color her outfit was, she made him put on matching silk pajamas. One of the weirder things she did was when she would show up for buffet dinners wearing silk pajamas or a silk robe. Some of Hef’s buddies commented to us at dinner how strange it was. She asked him if she could have his vintage Mercedes Benz. It was like she was morphing into Hef. She came up with nicknames for them: Muffin and Puffin. Hef was the Puffin and Holly was the Muffin. I am fairly confident that I never addressed them in this manner, but Susan would often make coy remarks such as, “Oh, Puffin and Muffin, you’re matching today,” and Emma and I would choke down our laughter.

Not everyone disliked each other. Emma and I liked each other instantly, along with Lea. We were a trio. Hef called us the Andrews sisters. When Lea left, another Canadian, Susan, took her place. The three of us bonded and this time Hef called us the Three Muses. We were really like the Three Musketeers, only more like combat veterans, or trauma survivors. At the other end of the group, Bridget became what I thought of as Holly’s illspirited sidekick. Only when she gained more security in the group did we begin to see a different side of her. She allied herself with Holly because none of us was really interested, and Holly did not have any close friends in the group either. But it became more than that. Being close to Hef’s main girl provided her safety; she had a patron. I think she may have won Holly over by feeding into her insecurities, probably by saying bad things about the rest of us. As time passed and the relationship developed, we heard about their elaborate plans on how to get rid of the rest of us so that there would only be the two of them left. But I am sure Bridget knows that in Holly’s master plan, even she would eventually have to go, until only Holly was left. Holly has admitted this much on national television. When Bridget first started stirring the pot, people seemed to notice. Even Mary, Hef’s assistant, told me a couple of times that she was not fond of her. But eventually Bridget started to play cards with Mary and her friends at her house, and she won her over. Mary noticed that “Bridgy” was watching all of the movies with Hef and sleeping with him so she was a good girl, unlike the rest of us. And that was it. The group was divided. There was Holly and Bridget, and then there was Emma, Susan, and me. The other interchanging girls were neutral. Candy seemed to play both sides, but we never trusted her, and Roxy had her own things going on.

When I say we didn’t get along, I don’t mean that everyone, all the time, did not get along. Yes, we all had little squabbles with each other over small things. I even got into a fight twice; both times it was with Roxy. I think she is a nice person and I had many good times with her, but she used to irritate me. I had no patience for her. One incident was the spa receipts fiasco, and the second time it was about a phone call Holly received. Holly said she received a phone call from a friend of hers who was on the way to a party at the Mansion, and told her that there was a guy on the shuttle who said he was coming to see his girlfriend Roxy. His name was JT. Holly told all of us, and we thought it was interesting. We asked Roxy about it and she denied it. We were at our usual Friday-night hangout, Barfly
,
and I remember telling her that I didn’t care if she had a boyfriend, I wasn’t going to tell Hef. She got defensive, and started saying I had a boyfriend with whom I worked at Playboy and we were seen having coffee together. Oh no, not the Henry rumor
again!
I got upset and told her to shut up. She had gotten on my last nerve and I wanted to kick her ass. I don’t know what would have happened if Hef had not intervened. The funny thing is I met JT after I left the Mansion.