Worrying About the Recession Has Banished Joan Collins to McDonalds

Lucky sank her pristine porcelain teeth into the triple-decked burger. Her canines slid through the yeasty bread but encountered the slightest hesitance with the oatmeal-textured beef. It had been years since she'd had such meatiness within her grasp. She'd completely forgotten how through some dark magic the artificial flavoring had perfectly captured the essence of flame-broiled cow. The dusky juices dripped down the back of her throat as the tang of a perky dill wedge rang in her head and a squirt of secret sauce splashed against the roof of her mouth.

"YES! YES! OH, YES!" she screamed as her violet eyes rolled back, like a gay shark in a feeding frenzy. Wait, she thought, her glossy peepers dancing across the restaurant's neon orange interior: had she actually shrieked that out loud, or was it confined within her immaculately-coiffed head? It didn't matter. She was swept away, intoxicated, hypnotized by the burger's juicy meatiness, and like a junkie with a dime bag she was unable to tear herself away.

In an adjoining booth, three-year-old Chauncey Wopner watched as Lucky's head bobbed up and down with a jungle rhythm, each dunk wresting off another hunk of her resigned prey. It was only when the entire carnivorous treat was gone that the animal portion of her brain receded and she once again resumed her identity as the wildly successful Valentino-clad CEO of Portsmouth Associates, the number-one travel agency in the mid-Atlantic region that specialized in Tuscany.

Bachelors had chased after Lucky for years -- from brash cattle baron Tex McInerney to one-eyed banker Stavros Nikropolos -- but ten minutes from now she'd make them look like three-legged dogs after she felt that first tentative cramp in her tiny stomach and made a mad dash for her personal marzipan-hued ladies room bedecked with Frechet linens and a glass jar holding some air-freshening reeds.