SON OF SPAMMEAT-PACKING HEIR GEORDIE HORMEL HAMS IT UP IN PHOENIX SOCIETY

Geordie coaches her on bargaining. "If they ask for $400, offer them $200," he says. "Are you going to buy the silverware?"

"I don't want somebody else's silver," she says with mock dismay. "What if it's got some bad karma stuck to it?" Then, as an afterthought, she asks, "Oh, may I have the credit card?" Once, on a lark, she asked Geordie for a Rolls-Royce, and just as impulsively, he bought it for her. She obviously shares his ambivalence toward money. Their personal living quarters are modest by middle-class standards. She doesn't like the master suites of the mansion. And she doesn't care for the coterie. She hates that silverware disappears from the kitchen to the far reaches of guest quarters, that people get into her room and use her perfume, that the carpets are soiled from the foot traffic. She wants her own small house where she can have her own dishes and linens, away from Geordie's hangers-on. She covets her stepdaughter Gina's house in Phoenix's Arcadia neighborhood for its privacy. At one point, she lost patience altogether and spent the night in Geordie's bus, which is a traveling hotel suite. They moved into the Wrigley for a month, and she loved it.

Geordie called in an architect to redesign their private living quarters. The architect drew up a blueprint with rain forests and a water slide that curved from a second-floor bedroom into a Jacuzzi below. Jamie and Geordie looked it over and fantasized, she at the privacy, he at the creativity--then decided it was really a bit much, no matter how rich they were.

A nanny comes into the kitchen carrying young Geri, Jamie and Geordie's 16-month-old daughter. Geri stands by the table, holding onto a chair for support. She spots a jalape¤o pepper on the floor beneath the table and bends to reach for it. As she stands up, Geordie places a preemptive hand between her head and the tabletop before she can bump into it, and gently guides her out from underneath.

She climbs in and out of laps, then settles on daddy's shoulder and promptly falls asleep. He rises slowly, so as not to wake her, walks to his scooter and zips noiselessly down the long hallway to her crib.

Life is good.