Camaraderie clinked with the cups. In the magic of book club tea, they were alive and beautiful and filled with billowing thoughts of bodily delights.
The door opened and there was a quick flutter of orange wings. When Lily looked up, she saw Hugh Jamison leaning tall and friendly in the well. The butterfly flew past him.
“Is it safe to come in? Anyone reading something to make my ears burn?” He laughed and the women laughed too. Closing the door with a gentle touch, he moved to the librarian’s side.
Lily glowed from tea and desire. “I’m happy to see you.” Everything else faded away.
“We just finished our refreshment, detective.” Aggie pulled Piper toward the door.
Piper grabbed her purse. “Like Aggie said, we’re leaving.”
Hugh escorted the two women out. “Call me Hugh. I came to invite Lily to accompany me to Alsace to return the Book of Cures.”
Aggie waved goodbye. “There is one cup of tea left for him.”
Lily shimmered in the light. She gazed into his eyes, his gray-green eyes.
Their hands touched. He took the tiny cup. The traveling electric current from the touch of their hands blew out the circuits at Nolan Consolidated Electric.
Hugh took a quick swig and the lively potion was gone. “Isn’t the book by Lorenz in the last row? I meant to check it out.”
He drew her to the back of the bookmobile, to the open closet door. His face was a page length away. She leaned forward until only a paragraph separated them, then a sentence, a word and then, a letter. He kissed her. “I’ve been thinking of doing that for some time. Did we ever finish our discussion of chaos?”
“The flap of wings.” She touched his throat and her nerve points tingled.
“The speed of winds.” He stepped down into the door well and flipped the lock.
“Fractals like the edge of ferns.” She pulled the shades down over the front and back windows and rushed back to his arms, her feet skimming over the carpet.
Their bodies zapped together as he kissed her again. “Lily McFae, you fascinate me.”
The errant butterfly quivered and it landed on the cover of Candide. Pieces of clothing floated to the floor. His hand traced the tattoos where her breasts once were. “You are so beautiful. I knew you would be,” he said. “Every part of you.”
“I’m so glad you found me.”
“I followed the butterfly trail and you provided the chaos.” He kissed her ear. “Would you read to me? All night long. Or right now, if you want.” He kissed her ear.
“Are you familiar with Venus in India? It’s quite explicit.”
“Don’t let that stop you.”
She took his hand. “It tells of ‘transparent pajamas, of raging and throbbing.’’’
“Better read it to me quick then, lady.”
“Dickinson’s poem is shorter. Wild Night -Wild Nights!”
“Then that’s the one. Did anyone ever write about wild first encounters in a bookmobile?”
“Not as far as I know.”
He lifted her to entwine them together near erotic novels and poems and essays. Sweet Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And wild tales of Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
In all kinds of places, the colored rain nourished seeds of lively dropped by wandering sparrows. In the landfill near Neubland Pharmaceuticals, along with other medieval herbs, leaves like elf ears appeared amidst composting debris. Next to Lily’s mailbox in Groverly, seeds of the same plant waited for the sun and rain. And in the garden of the Jardin Estate, the seeds continued to renew their story.
Eventually the electric power was fixed at Nolan Utility, but not for a long time. The transformers kept blowing out from strange currents that disrupted the machinery as the couple engaged in pent up passion. Eagerly. Ecstatically. Erotically.
Sampling of Books Found in Lily’s Bookmobile Closet
As Lily told the book club members, “There are varying degrees of heat found in selections of erotica.”
Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice
Boccaccio, The Decameron
Boswell, James, The London Journals of Boswell
Bronte, Charlotte, Villette
Browning, Elizabeth, Sonnets from the Portuguese
Casanova, The History of My Life
Devereaux, Charles, Venus in India
Eliot, George, Mill on the Floss
Grove Press, Lustful Memoirs of a Young, Passionate Girl
Lawrence, D. H., Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Mangeul, Alberto, editor, The Second Gates of Paradise
Manley, Delarivier, The New Atalantis
Nin, Anais, The Delta of Venus, A Spy in the House of Love
Rhys, Jean. The Wide Sargasso Sea
Sand, George, Lelia
Voltaire, Candide
Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway
Wright, F. A., editor, Erotica: Women’s Writings from Sappho to Margaret Atwood
Book Club Discussion Guide
1. Which book club member did you like the most and why? Do you know women with similar characteristics? Lily, lonely and out-of-work; Aggie, a grieving widow, unsure of her position in the community; or Piper, the young salon owner with a health problem who looked for unusual ways to help her through a difficult time in her marriage?
2. Discuss the age differences and backgrounds of the three women. If you have friends of varying ages, what drew you together? Did the book club members form a family?
3. How is communication a real problem for each of the three women? Is it a familiar difficulty in our culture? Did the tea make it easier for the women to tell their personal stories or would it have happened anyway?
4. Lily reveals her deep feelings about libraries and books. What is your favorite thing about books? About libraries? About librarians? Have you visited a bookmobile?
5. Have you been touched by cancer or know cancer survivors? How did cancer affect the women?
6. How did the poetry of Emily Dickinson save Lily? How did reading Christina Rossetti’s poems help Aggie escape danger? What about a sparrow saving Piper and the hymn she remembered her husband singing? Have you ever thought about how one simple thing can change events or lives?
7. What interested you about - Boris, Griffo, Sax, Llewellyn. How were the relationships of the two sets of siblings different or the same? Llewellyn and Elcott. Maxine and Sax. Do people ignored by family members or others find ways to strike back?
8. Did you guess who stole the Book of Cures? Discuss the murder of the duke and the salesman? Do you think psychological problems can cause people to commit such serious crimes?
9. Would you like to visit the Jardin Estate? Have you been to Europe or visited a chateau? Have you lived in a small town or know others who do? What is appealing about such places? Have you shopped in a place that reminded you of the Emporium? Or the Used Stuff Store?
10. Do you garden? Grow herbs? How have you used them? Do you believe in the healing powers of herbs? Discuss the use of herbal remedies by family, others, or in different cultures.
11. Would you like to sip some of Aggie’s tea? The herb named lively is fictional. It’s important to know that these mixes are not intended to be used by readers. Herbal use is dependent on health issues, specific knowledge, and exact ingredient amounts. Some herbs are poisonous. Others have serious effects.
12. Discuss the quirky components of the story, the whimsical or offbeat elements. For example: Gypsies. Goat farms. Collectible knives and daggers. A personal bookmobile. Small town stores closing up for any reason. Tattoos. Do you have a tattoo or know anyone who does?
13. Have you seen or heard about the monarch butterfly migration?
14. Do you have any experience or connection with rare books? Have you heard about book thefts from libraries and private collections?
15. Have you heard of the chaos theory? Did you sense how impending weather - the butterfly effect - was an undercurrent?
16. Are
you curious about erotica? By chance, have you read or considered reading The Tropic of Cancer, Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Fifty Shades of Grey? Other books of erotica? Are you interested in checking out any of the classics listed in the back? Were you surprised at the famous authors whose writing can be found in an anthology of erotica?
17. Or are you happy to read other books and not spend time on this genre? That’s one of the greatest things about reading and book clubs. There are enough books available for every taste.
Meet the Author
How would you describe your novel?
Women’s fiction/nontraditional cozy mystery. It began as a cozy mystery with realistic characters and plot. Paraphrasing Tom Robbins, “Truth above realism,” the truth of the quirky characters sent the novel careening off center. It’s also been called literary fantasy, with its use of nature, weather, and chance.
Are you a naughty or nice lady?
I’m mostly a nice lady, but one filled with curiosity, the kind who reads some of everything, even classical erotica. I’ve met lots of women just as curious. When I decided to write this book, I asked a clerk at a Tucson, AZ bookstore for classic erotica. She made several recommendations and I left with a large stack of books. I was surprised at the authors included.
Are any of the characters from real life?
There’s a starting point for characters, then it turns into a freewheeling process. Lily’s character evolved from a librarian friend of mine and her tattoos came from a woman at a Crone meeting, crone meaning wise woman, not hag. She revealed a beautiful tattooed butterfly on her back. Piper came from my mom’s friend in Wagner SD who owned a small beauty shop. Aggie blossomed from my grandmother’s vegetable and herb garden on a small Nebraska farm. Gypsies wandered into the small town where I grew up. Despite my parents warning to stay away, I was fascinated and snuck off to their camp to watch their activities.
What themes run through your novel?
I’ve made many friends through past and present book clubs, and one storyline looks at the way friendships develop among different kinds of women. The mystery evolved from an old art book my designer daughter brought home from the University of Iowa and left in our library. Totally intrigued by the illustrations of a medieval garden, I knew I’d write about it one day. A collective of Mexican/American women writers called Sowing the Seeds inspired herbal cures passed on by family members. Dealing with cancer and grief comes from my mother’s, my friends’, and my own experience.
Where does the book take place?
The California location is based on a car trip Bob and I took, traveling toward the Pacific Ocean. As we drove along, monarch butterflies surrounded us, a surreal experience I never forgot. On that back road, I found thousands of magical migrating butterflies, or maybe, they found me.
What is your writing background?
I met my husband, Bob, at Creighton University in Omaha, NE. Both of us studied Radio, TV, Communications. After we married, I was writer/producer for our film/video production company and Bob was cinema/videographer, editor and pilot. We traveled the country on interesting projects for large and small companies, received Clio and other national recognition. When we moved to Arizona, I began writing essays, short stories, and memoir pieces and was published in twenty anthologies. I taught writing classes through the U of AZ Writing Works Center, wrote and produced videos for women, and ran workshops encouraging women to write their stories. I’ve published a creative non-fiction, two nature essay books, poetry and a novel.
What were your most exciting career moments?
I had an essay chosen for the anthology The Art of Living, A Practical Guide to Being Alive. Before it was published by Editorial Kairos in Spain, the British editor emailed the names of everyone in the book to the selected authors. I almost fell off my computer chair when I read: The Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra, Mario Vargas Llosa. A similar high point came when I was published in the anthology What Wildness Is This, Women Write the Southwest, with my nature essay appearing alongside the words of Barbara Kingsolver, Terry Tempest Williams, and Susan Tweit. My Wise Women Video Series is archived in Harvard University’s Museum on the History of Women in America. The Desert Eternal was a 2008 Southwest Book of the Year, and The Legend of Brook Hollow, was selected as 2012 top nature book by NLAPW in Washington D.C.
What about your personal life?
Bob and I live in Omaha, NE, by a secret pond, visited by mink, Great Blue Heron, grebes, foxes, and other lurking wildlife.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My lasting gratitude to Bob, Jami, Fae, Valerie, and Judd for their support. Special thanks to Kira Gale for perspective, Jamison Design for book design, Margaret Lukas and Carol Weber for editing, and Omaha/Tucson bookstores and Tucson/Omaha librarians. Heartfelt thanks to the band of women who encouraged me through the many versions, the real world and online readers and friends in Tucson, Omaha, and other parts of the country.
The Erotica Book Club for Nice Ladies Page 32
