“The only thing I could think to do was to call somebody who knows how to fix things like this. I can’t say who it was; let’s just call him Blackbeard. He told me how to get rid of her body, so I did.
“The next day I found out she was a grifter. She’d been robbing a string of johns, so in a way she deserved it. But I’m not a killer, I swear. I’m not a killer.”
“Well, in the eyes of the law you are,” Detective Casey said, “and I hate that you’ll like this, but turn around. I have to cuff you.”
“Can she do it?” the mayor asked as he gestured toward Olivia.
“No,” Detective Casey said, disgusted. He then led the mayor to his car.
After they were out of earshot, Coco turned to Olivia. “Okay, missy. Who are you, and what have you done with Olivia?”
“Umm…. well…. I don’t know.” Olivia trailed off, then turned and walked toward the door. Before she exited, she stopped, turned back to Coco, and said, “I guess I don’t like bullies either.”
At the police station Bailey, CJ, and Malcolm grew impatient waiting for the rest of the gang to arrive. When CJ got the call from Detective Casey, he realized they might be waiting awhile, so they went inside. Chief Bruno saw them come in and became effusive. This was a very different Chief Bruno than the one they had met the first time around.
“Hello, CJ, Bailey, Malcolm. What are you doing here?” he asked with a big fake smile.
Malcolm took charge right away. “Well, Detective Casey asked these two to come in, and I’m an old friend of CJ’s, so he asked me to come along, to make sure everything’s okay.”
“Oh, in that case, why don’t you get settled in the conference room and make yourselves comfortable? I’m sure he’ll be right here.”
As they made small talk, Bailey started texting CJ under the table.
• This is bullshit. Why don’t we try that number for Blackbrd.
• Definitely. I’ll do it since I’m closest to the door. What’s the number?
Bailey sent the number, and CJ stood up to make the call.
“Would you excuse me for one second?” he said, as politely as his finishing school instructor would have liked, as he stood and walked toward the door. “The men’s room…. this way?”
“Yes, just down the hall,” Chief Bruno said as he continued his small talk with Bailey and Malcolm.
Just outside the door, CJ dialed the number. As it began to ring, he contemplated hanging up, panicking that he was out of his depth. Meanwhile, Bailey noticed that the phone in Chief Bruno’s pocket began to ring. She looked over at CJ and scrunched her face, nodding toward Bruno. But before they could figure out what to do, they saw the chief look at the caller ID, furrow his brow, then answer anyway. This all happened in an instant.
“Excuse me,” he said to the room. “Hello?” he said into the phone. “Hello?”
He clicked the phone off but seemed suddenly alarmed. He excused himself and went into his office, shutting the door behind him.
“What the hell was that?” Malcolm asked.
CJ walked back into the room and held up his cell phone. “We just found Blackbeard.”
By the time Detective Casey showed up with the others, Chief Bruno was gone. He was paranoid that something was going down, and he was right. CJ told the detective about the phone call and endured Casey’s wrath—and rightfully so—for meddling where he’d been told not to. Just then CJ looked up and was shocked to see Olivia, Coco, and the handcuffed mayor in tow. He looked at Coco. “Are you kidding me? What happened?”
“Oh, Mary, you are never going to believe this one.” Coco beamed. “You think Bailey being a lesbian was news, just wait. Your wig is gonna do backflips!”
“I told you, I’m not a lesbian!” Bailey protested.
“Dessert at the diner, everyone? I think we’ve earned some cake, don’t you?” CJ said. “I can’t hear this story on an empty stomach.”
“Yes!” Olivia was excited. “I love cake!”
“I’ll meet you there shortly. Gotta tie up some loose ends,” Detective Casey said and leaned down to kiss Olivia.
“See you in a bit,” she said to him as she linked arms with Bailey and walked out the door.
Coco smiled a knowing smile, and as she walked away she watched Malcolm steal CJ’s silly Elmer Fudd hat off his head and run to the car. It made her think how nice it was to be there for the beginning of their relationship. Who knew how it would turn out? What she did know was that she would be there for CJ no matter what happened, and that he would be there for her as she worked through her issues with Sam, sexual and otherwise. Then she watched Olivia and Bailey walk arm in arm toward the car and thought how strange Bailey’s newfound love was, but she felt comfort in the fact that she would be there for her too, and that Bailey was comfortable talking about it with her and the others. Coco also felt happy for Olivia and Rob, who seemed to be starting something wonderful. But what she was most happy about was that, no matter what happened with any of these relationships, the four of them now had the kind of friendship she had always hoped for.
Coco began to think about all the different kinds of relationships you have in life. There are relationships with everyone from the person who watches your dogs and the nameless guy who parks your car every morning at the office to work relationships that aren’t that close but are necessary; and family, who are supposed to love you unconditionally. But nothing in the world, she thought, compares with the friendships you’ve created by choice. The ones with people who choose to love you, and whom you choose to love.
And sometimes those relationships come from the strangest places—if you aren’t open to those moments, you limit the possibilities of building amazing friendships with people you would never have imagined choosing. Especially three people who wore the same costume as you, at a party you never wanted to attend, in a town where you didn’t feel you belonged.
Epilogue
September, the following year
The Belle Haven Club was part of a long-standing tradition, but not the one you would imagine. This tradition had nothing to do with legacy, family, money, or even Greenwich. This tradition was about the vital economy of the wedding market.
That’s what Coco always abhorred about weddings: the events themselves. In her circle, one wedding day could run you from thirty thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands. If you were going to spend money on a dream you’d had as a kid, why not buy that pony you always wanted, or rent out a candy store for a weekend? Of all the childhood fantasies to indulge, Coco could think of a lot better ones than the big wedding. The biggest insult was the year of planning, the arguing, and the hurt feelings. All over just one day.
Coco despised the whole concept of the American Wedding, yet there she was contemptuously wearing a white wedding dress and fabulous shoes because that’s the other thing about weddings: you get to marry the person you love. She realized that if a wedding was what Sam wanted, that was all she needed to know.
“Oh, Mary (sob)…. you look…. so…. (sob).” CJ couldn’t get the words out he was crying so hard. “I’m sorry…. You just look beautiful. I’m so happy for…. (sob) you both. That ceremony was…. (sob).”
“Here,” Malcolm said. “This is the last tissue. After this one I’ll have to get you toilet paper from the men’s room.”
“Never!” CJ bellowed through his tears. “I need aloe tissues, you know that.”
“Fine, I’ll go out to the car.”
“Thank you, dear. Isn’t he lovely?” CJ said to Coco.
“Yes, he is,” she acknowledged. “Is it next weekend that you guys go up to Martha’s Vineyard?”
“It is. We’re meeting my parents up there. Fingers crossed,” he said.
Coco showed CJ her own crossed fingers before she was pulled away by a cousin wanting to know if Sam’s friend from college was single.
CJ’s life was relatively back to normal. After Nanny moved in with her ancient cardiologist, CJ had no c
hoice but to go back to his own apartment in Chelsea, not far from Malcolm. He had also decided to try to mend fences with his parents. He took the sex columnist Dan Savage’s advice and gave his parents one year to freak out, ask him stupid and inappropriate questions, sulk and be angry. But, he told them, after that year was up they had to be cool with his homosexuality and his relationship with Malcolm. After a year they had to respect him as an adult if they wanted him in their life. They had six months to go. He expected Martha’s Vineyard to be awkward, but it was a step in the right direction.
After Coco introduced her cousin to Sam’s college friend, she walked over to Bailey and Gertie, who were still sitting at their table.
“No, no. I was the love interest. Adrien was the one who sang the songs in The Crooner, not me, but thanks for asking,” Gertie said to a guest who asked if she would go up and sing some of the funny songs she sang in that movie.
“Sigh. They’ve been bugging her all night,” Bailey said to Coco as she took Gertie’s hand.
“No, it’s okay, everyone’s been really nice. I don’t mind,” Gertie said as she turned back toward the other guests at the table.
“You sure you guys are okay? I don’t need to call security on my uncle Bernie, do I?” Coco asked Bailey privately.
“No, no, she gets this all the time,” Bailey assured her.
“I was,” Gertie said.
“No, you weren’t,” Uncle Bernie said.
“I was,” Gertie said.
“No, you weren’t,” Cousin Doug chimed in.
“I promise you I was on King of the Hill. I played one of Bobby’s girlfriends, I swear!” Gertie maintained.
“You guys wanna come and sit with us?” Coco asked Bailey.
“Nah, your family is funny, we’re having a good time,” Bailey said.
“Okay.”
“The ceremony was beautiful, by the way,” Bailey said.
“It really was! I especially liked your friend the right reverend asking us all to ‘testify.’ Very funny,” Gertie added. “Haven’t you guys had enough testifying in the past few months after all your court appearances?”
“Thanks. Don’t sit here all night, you two. Make sure you come dance later,” Coco suggested.
“We won’t,” they said almost in unison, then said “Jinx!” together and laughed at themselves.
Just then Olivia came running through a crowd of guests, plowing into Coco, almost knocking her off her five-inch heels.
“Careful. I already have a bit of vertigo in these things. I don’t know how long I can stay all the way up here,” Coco said. “What’s going on?”
“There is a major typo, major, on the cake plates. I don’t know what to do!” Olivia was in full panic mode.
“What’s the issue?” Coco asked.
“They wrote ‘Just Marred’ instead of ‘Just Married’!”
Coco thought for a second. “Hmmm, seems more appropriate, don’t you think? I say leave it, and let them eat cake…. on them!”
Olivia had appointed herself maid of honor. Coco hadn’t wanted a wedding party, or the obligation of inviting friends and making them suffer through the whole thing. Heck, she barely even wanted a wedding. But Olivia had insisted on it. “You can’t get married by yourself!” she’d said. Coco had acquiesced and put Olivia in charge. She realized later what a good idea that was, since Olivia was willing to do everything Coco didn’t want to, which was basically everything.
Coco secretly suspected that Olivia was only trying to make some good wedding planning connections, since she and Rob had just gotten engaged. He’d waited until he was promoted to chief of police, and then at his induction ceremony, when he got up to give an acceptance speech, he popped the question in front of his whole squad. They hadn’t stopped giving him shit about it yet.
But it was because of Olivia and the Scooby-Doo bunch that he made chief. Arresting the mayor and taking down Chief Bruno was more than a regular detective would do, let alone a Greenwich detective. On the advice of counsel, the mayor pled to manslaughter and got four years plus an additional six months for blackmail and hiring a prostitute. Police Chief Bruno, who was known as Blackbeard to the FBI, was not an informant so much as he was a rat opportunist who would sell anyone out to save himself. But this time he had nobody to put on the chopping block since the mayor had already been arrested. When Rob Casey caught up with Chief Bruno, the FBI had several counts of corruption against him, so he wasn’t getting away easily this time. Detective Casey turned him over to his buddies at the Bureau, and that was the end of him.
“When are you going to start dressing him better?” CJ said to Olivia. “This is Greenwich you know, not Arkansas. He’s still in those cheap detective suits. Now that he’s the chief of police, he needs better clothes. More Dolce and Gabbana, less Sears, Roebuck.”
Olivia played with Rob’s hair and said, “I love him for who he is, bad suits and all.”
“My suits are bad?” Rob said, a bit hurt.
“No, sweetie, they’re great, I’m just saying…. See what you started!” she said to CJ.
“Girl, you’re the one who has to look at him! I’m not expecting costume changes like at a Cher concert. I’m just saying, a little more panache.”
Just then Coco and Sam stood to get everyone’s attention and grabbed two microphones. Sam put his arm around the waist of his new bride and said, “We both have a song we wanted to dedicate to all of you. This was playing on the radio the day we met and it’s been our song ever since, and appropriate even to this day.” Then Coco turned to the DJ and said, “Hit it,” and together they started karaokeing their song, LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out.”
Don’t call it a comeback
I been here for years …
Rory leaned in to CJ and said, “You know our Halloween party is a month away. You guys are coming, aren’t you?”
CJ looked at him, rolled his eyes, and said, “Honey, you have a better chance of getting the Virgin Mary to give you a lap dance.”
NAMASTE
The Yoga Club
Cooper Lawrence
Reading Group Guide
1. Coco, CJ, Bailey and Olivia are an unlikely group—do you think if they hadn’t witnessed the mayor’s crime together, they would ever have become friends? Why or why not?
2. Where did you meet your best friend(s)? What do you feel is the most important element of close friendship?
3. When the four friends witness the mayor’s suspicious behavior, their instinct is to turn around and forget it ever happened. Have you ever been in a situation where you saw something you wish you hadn’t? What did you do?
4. Do you have a favorite character in the book? Who is it, and why is he/she your favorite?
5. The Yoga Club is a comic novel, and might be described as a caper. Generally, this means that certain plot elements may be exaggerated or extreme. Do you think that was the case here? Did you find the story believable? What about the characters? Did that affect your enjoyment of the novel?
6. All of our main characters are shown in various romantic—and sexual—relationships throughout the book. What do you think about the way sexuality is used/portrayed in the novel?
7. Is there a message underlying The Yoga Club, or is it “just for fun”? What do you think the author intended to convey in writing this novel?
8. A lot of the novel hinges on gossip—between friends, about celebrities and politicians, and more. Do you consider celebrity reporting, like Bailey does, a form of gossip? Do you think gossip is harmful? Can it be helpful? Have you ever been a gossip or been gossiped about?
9. What’s the importance of yoga in this book? Do you think The Yoga Club is the right title for the novel?
10. Have you ever tried yoga? If so, what did you like/dislike about it? If not, do you have a hobby or activity that serves as a refuge or ritual? What is it?
Suggested activities for book clubs:
• Come in costume! Whether it’
s your best Sarah Palin disguise, or an idea of your own, this could be a fun way to emulate the book’s Halloween party ( without witnessing a crime, of course!).
• Bring yoga mats and lead the group through a sun salutation or two! Even yoga beginners may enjoy some gentle stretching to loosen stiff necks and shoulders from reading. (As with any activity, be careful and check with your medical professional before trying something new.)
• Go around the room and invite everyone to share a “secret” about themselves—something that not everyone knows.
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