The Hot Flash Club

by Nancy Thayer

“To let me know he loves me, of course. And to thank me.”

  “To thank you?”

  “For being here. For taking care of him. For not pestering him with chores or money worries, for letting him rest. Honestly, that poor man works so hard at the firm, he takes so much shit from the junior partners, he really hates it there, and I don’t blame him.”

  “Why doesn’t he quit?”

  “Quit! He couldn’t possibly. He’s got to be a lawyer because Laura’s perfect father was a lawyer. Ouch.”

  “Sorry.” Shirley freed her fingers from Jennifer’s hair. Hearing Laura’s name almost confirmed Shirley’s fears.

  Innocently, Shirley asked, “Do his in-laws live in Massachusetts?”

  Jennifer nodded. “In Newton, only a twenty-minute drive from their apartment in Cambridge. Lars says they’re both really nice, but Laura’s their only child, and she’s spoiled. Her father died last year, so he’s automatically Saint Daddy, with whom no man can ever compare, and Laura’s always running home to Mommy, she never cooks dinner for him, he feels so alone, and his family lives in the western part of the state, he grew up there, his friends live there, he has no one to turn to, really.”

  Lars, Shirley thought. Jennifer actually said his name. Even though she’d never set eyes on Laura Schneider, she felt her heart kick with pity for the young woman, and for her mother Faye, who seemed so very nice.

  “I mean,” Jennifer continued, “he gets home from work stone tired, to find the apartment is a complete pigsty, no food on the stove, no food in the refrigerator, and his laundry is never done, and there are no clean towels so he can shower. No one’s there to ask him how his day was, and when Laura is there, all she does is cry and complain.” At Shirley’s request, Jennifer flipped over on her back for the last part of the massage. “I’ll tell you, if I ever have children, I’ll never treat my husband like that!”

  “Sssh, now,” Shirley whispered. “It’s time to relax completely. Drift away a little while I finish your massage.”

  “All right,” Jennifer replied, and dutifully shut her mouth.

  All Shirley had to do for the HFC was find out whether or not Lars was having an affair with his secretary. Drawing her hands up and down Jennifer’s perfect calves, rubbing her delicate pearl-polished toes, Shirley sighed deeply. She shouldn’t have offered six massages. She’d completed her HFC assignment. What on earth would she do with the next four? She felt like a traitor, listening to this sweet girl.

  When she was finished, she brought Jennifer a glass of water, then excused herself to use the bathroom, where she changed clothes and combed her hair and redid her lipstick.

  “You look great!” Jennifer told her when she came out of the bathroom. “Do you have a lunch date?”

  “Not exactly.” Her optimism bubbled up irrepressibly. “I’ve got a business meeting.”

  “That sounds exciting.”

  Shirley couldn’t resist smiling. “It is, actually. I have some plans for expanding my business, and my financial advisor and I are meeting with some interested clients.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful. Here,” Jennifer said, “I made you some cranberry-walnut brownies. Perhaps you can have them at your meeting.”

  “Oh, honey, you don’t have to—”

  “But I want to! I love to bake, and since you’re giving me these massages free—”

  “They’re not free. As I said, someone entered your name, and you won them. The, um, store that sponsored the contest paid me for the massages.”

  “Still, oh, you know what I mean! I don’t like to seem ungrateful. I’m enjoying the massages so much, and besides, I feel so much better, talking to you about my— my life. I don’t dare tell anyone else about Lars, I moved here from the Cape, you know, but anyway, I don’t want to tell my friends down there that I’m in love with a married man, because they’d tell my mother and she’d kill me if she didn’t die of shame first! I’m just so grateful to you for listening to me like you do, not judging me, I can’t tell you what it means. So please,” she finished breathlessly, “take these brownies.”

  “I will. Thank you, honey.”

  Jennifer hugged her warmly, then Jennifer opened the door. Shirley hefted her massage table on her right shoulder, balanced her new, invisible, but very real burden of guilt on her left, and hurried back down the stairs and over the driveway to her car.

  Oh, Lord, how could this child be so trusting? She looked down at the warm bag of brownies. It was as if she were carrying a bag of guilt in her hands.

  23

  Alice parked her black Audi behind Shirley’s VW Rabbit, tightened the sash of her Burberry raincoat, and stepped out into the rain.

  “Hello!” Shirley bounced out of her car, sunny in a yellow rain slicker, holding up an umbrella printed with dogs and cats. “Hey, perfect timing!”

  “You did specify one o’clock,” Alice reminded her. Shirley needed to get harder-edged if she was going to pull together a business.

  “Right.” Shirley stared at Alice as they hurried up the walk to Julie Martin’s house. “Are you limping?”

  “No, I am not limping!” Alice snapped, then sighed. “Sorry, Shirley. I don’t mean to bite your head off. Yes, I suppose I am limping. I have arthritis, and the rain exacerbates it, and it seems to be getting worse.”

  “Massage is great for arthritis, and I can show you some exercises and recommend some herbal—”

  “Maybe later. Let’s concentrate on this right now.”

  “Okay.” Shirley unlocked the door, and the two women entered the dark house.

  “We’re here!” Shirley called. “I’ve brought a friend, Julie!”

  Alice hung up their coats in the hall closet while Shirley whipped through the house, opening curtains, switching off the computers and TV, banging around in the kitchen setting out cups and turning on the burner beneath the teakettle.

  A hunched figure swiveled in her desk chair, peering anxiously at Alice, who, knowing her height and general appearance could intimidate, immediately dropped down onto the sofa. She jerked her head toward the kitchen. “She’s a regular little tornado, isn’t she?”

  Julie Martin’s mouth quivered in a semblance of a smile.

  “I’m Alice, Shirley’s friend.” She held out her hand.

  Julie extended her own as timidly as a fox moving toward a trap. “Julie,” she whispered. Her hand was a brittle icicle in Alice’s.

  “That bull run at the end of trading yesterday was exciting, wasn’t it?” Alice asked.

  Julie’s eyes lighted up. This was language she could recognize. “Yes, it—”

  “Great!” Shirley exploded into the room, clapping her hands. “You’ve introduced yourselves! I’ve made Tension Tamer tea, which will help us think, and I brought some snacks to munch on while we brainstorm.”

  “I think we should sit at the dining room table,” Alice said.

  “Oh, well, I’m not—” Shirley glanced at Julie, who was obviously still mentally attached to her computers. She nodded. “I mean, she doesn’t have a dining room table. But I agree, it will be easier to take notes at a table, so let’s go in the kitchen.”

  Julie’s eyes widened like a skittish horse, as if Shirley had suggested heading for Antarctica. Noticing, Shirley went over and placed her hands on Julie’s shoulders. “I’ll just give you a quick little shoulder massage to help you loosen up.”

  “I’ll make the tea.” Alice hurried off toward the singing kettle.

  Finally, they were all settled around the kitchen table with their tea, their notepads, and pens. They were, Shirley realized, an odd group, Shirley in her best batik blouse and purple velvet gypsy skirt, Alice in her severe taupe suit and boxy power heels, Julie slumped and bulging in sweatpants and a stained T-shirt.

  Shirley took a deep breath. “Julie, the reason we asked you to let us meet with you like this is because I’ve been wanting to open my own little health retreat. It would be a tranquil place, where people could check
in a few times a year, as often as needed, to get mentally, physically, and spiritually refreshed. We’d have a nutritionist to draw up healthy, reasonable diets, and a doctor to evaluate your physical health, and therapists to counsel you, and an astrologist—”

  Alice tried not to wince.

  “—to prepare your astrological chart. We’d have musicians, and aromatherapists, and instructors to teach you yoga, or aikido, or tai chi.”

  Julie’s face was a perfect blank.

  Alice cleared her throat. “I think it’s an excellent idea. As vice president in charge of administration at TransWorld Insurance Corporation”—She saw Julie’s eyes flicker as she realized the woman in the kitchen with her worked for one of the most dynamic companies on the stock market—“I believe a retreat like Shirley’s could be extraordinarily effective at improving executive performance. I’m going to invest some of my own money in Shirley’s venture. Next week we’re going to have an organizational meeting with several others to discuss fund-raising to start up her retreat.”

  “Okay,” Julie said.

  Alice could tell that was, for Julie, a display of wild enthusiasm, so she moved on to the next point. “One of the reasons we’ve come to you is that Shirley has three thousand dollars of her savings she’d like for you to invest for her in some high-yield, quick-turnover stocks. Of course that’s a pittance to start with, but we have to start somewhere, and we’re hoping that after the organizational meeting, we’ll have more for you to work with.” Including some of your own zillions, Alice silently e-mailed her.

  “I see.” Julie’s eyes wiggled like a physicist working through a calculation of Einsteinian proportions as her thoughts latched onto the words invest, stocks, and yield. Shirley and Alice could see the moment Julie got it. “Oh. I’d love to make some money for you, Shirley. Let me show you a list of stocks—”

  Shirley flinched as if Julie had offered to set her on fire. “No thanks! I don’t do stocks. You do stocks, and I’ll work on ideas, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And Julie,” Shirley pressed on, “I know how much you hate leaving your house. So I’m wondering whether we could have my organizational meeting here at your house next week. I’d clean up afterward.”

  Julie looked as if she was about to throw up. “People . . . here?”

  “People with money. Potential investors,” Alice told her.

  “Well . . .”

  “It won’t be a crowd or anything. Just seven or eight of us.”

  Julie looked grim.

  “Or we could have it at my place,” Alice interjected. “I’ll pick you up and drive you.” She’d suggested this strategy to Shirley before they came in: make Choice A so terrifying, Choice B, which by itself might seem scary, would feel absolutely comfortable.

  “Well, that might be okay.” Julie sighed and nodded one-half inch, agreeing.

  Back outside, Shirley grabbed Alice in a bear hug. “Honey, you’re awesome! You speak with such authority! And you got Julie to agree to leave her house!”

  Alice laughed. “I’m just a businesswoman, Shirley.”

  But as she drove back to her waterfront condo, Alice couldn’t help smiling. Working on the design and wording of the preliminary brochure was fun, finessing Julie was fun, planning the Golden Moments sales pitch was fun. She was having a great time, and damn, it was nice to be appreciated!

  24

  Over the past several years, Marilyn had enjoyed a lively correspondence with the eminent British paleontologist Richard Fortey. This exchange existed only in her mind, yet it sustained Marilyn through her worst days. She kept copies of two of his books, Trilobite and Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, on her bedside table to read from every night because his belief, couched in elegant prose, that the smallest scientific discovery, linked with others, would eventually lead to a better understanding of the natural world made Marilyn feel less alone, less insignificant.

  Now she stood in her lab on Saturday morning, staring down at the trilobite she’d been painstakingly excavating from its shale tomb, waiting for Fortey’s consoling words to speak to her.

  Instead, she heard Barton Baker whisper, “Oh, dear God, Marilyn, I really want to take you to bed.”

  She felt so weak in the knees she nearly fell on the floor.

  Of course, Barton wasn’t there in the MIT lab with her right then any more than Richard Fortey was, but ever since their insane, adolescent make-out session in his car, every word he’d whispered to her ran flashing on a circular loop through her mind like a Times Square streamer ad.

  What was happening to her? She didn’t even recognize her own mind! It was like being on some kind of rare drug; hell, it was like being on another planet!

  She looked down at the ancient creature resting in its rock coffin. Trilobites had witnessed cataclysmic geographic events, but at this moment the image of a volcano hurling boulders into a steaming sea couldn’t compare to the memory of Barton’s fingers stroking her neck. His warm mouth, his thrusting tongue, his hot hand on her breast—

  This was ridiculous. She was deranged. Clearly she needed to have sexual congress with someone, and since she was married, she’d better have it with her husband. Even if it had been months—years?—even if she’d thought whatever flames once burned between her and Theodore had been extinguished, she still was his wife, and they were both still alive, and she would just go and—why she would just find her husband and seduce him!

  Marilyn switched off the light, left the lab, and headed through the maze of corridors to her husband’s office.

  She’d just entered the biology building when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see Faraday McAdam.

  “Hello, Marilyn! My God, what have you done with yourself! You look gorgeous!”

  Faraday looked pretty gorgeous himself, with his blue shirt accentuating his startling blue eyes and his whole huge body radiating good health. Why, Faraday was sexy, Marilyn realized, and it was like an epiphany, although a rather uncomfortable one. What was happening to her? Had she become some new kind of sex addict? Was it possible, at her age?

  “Hello, Faraday,” she said weakly. “I’m just on my way to see Theodore.”

  Faraday leaned against the wall, blocking her passage. “Oh, well, are you sure he’s there? It is Saturday morning.”

  “Oh, yes. He left a note for me at home this morning saying he had to go to his office. His trip out to Hawaii made him fall behind in his work. But I thought I might be able to grab him for lunch—”

  “Why not have lunch with me?” Faraday asked. “I’ve been wanting to ask you what you thought of Morris’s new book.”

  “I’d love to discuss it with you,” Marilyn told him with genuine enthusiasm. “But some other time.” She turned away.

  To her surprise, Faraday linked his arm through hers. “Well, we can chat while we walk.”

  “Um, okay.” Marilyn allowed him to pull her so close their hips almost touched as they walked.

  Faraday said, “I read a new essay on the Trident-bearing trilobite from the Devonian of Morocco—”

  Marilyn looked up at the tall Scot. “Faraday, this isn’t walking. This isn’t even crawling. Are you all right?”

  Faraday blushed, which, since his cheeks were already naturally ruddy, turned his entire face crimson. “I’m fine, Marilyn, I just, I suppose, in my excitement over, uh—”

  Marilyn narrowed her eyes. It wasn’t like Faraday to stammer. What was going on? She knew Faraday didn’t like Theodore. But he seemed to be attempting to keep her from getting to Theodore’s office.

  With a click, one and one made two.

  Marilyn jerked her arm from Faraday’s and took off down the hall. She climbed the stairs two at a time, turned right, came to Theodore’s door, and turned the knob.

  It was locked. But she heard movements inside.

  “Theodore?” She rapped on the wood.

  “Marilyn, dear,” Fara
day panted, storming up behind her.

  Marilyn grabbed her keys from her purse, found the one to Theodore’s study—he’d given it to her several years ago when he sprained an ankle and needed her to fetch some scientific journals for him to read from the comfort of his bed—and opened the door.

  There was Theodore, frozen like an exhibit in a glass case: Middle-aged Man Committing Adultery. A woman, younger than she was pretty, lay across Theodore’s desk, her head pressed against the computer monitor, her skirt up around her waist. Theodore bent over her, presenting to Marilyn and Faraday the unfortunate view of his naked, sunburned buttocks and the thin white strip of flesh that had been shaded by his Speedo thong.

  For several long moments, no one breathed.

  Then Theodore commanded, “Shut the door!”

  Marilyn obeyed.

  25

  Sunday morning Faye awoke determined to get into the secret room. It was the best opportunity that had presented itself so far. Margie had the day off and had, after tidying the kitchen Saturday night, gone into Boston to stay with her sister. That morning Faye fulfilled Margie’s duties, preparing fresh coffee, bowls of chopped fruit, and slices of dry lite toast for the three Eastbrooks to eat in their bedrooms. Shortly after that, Mrs. Eastbrook informed her that the three of them were off to church, then to the country club for lunch with friends. If Faye would be kind enough to remove the breakfast trays and tidy the kitchen, and also throw together a large salad for the family to have later that evening . . .

  Of course, Faye replied. Sunday was not officially her day off, it was Margie’s, but Faye’s duties were light. Someone had to be at the house, and there was always bookkeeping needing doing, or laundry and ironing.

  Faye watched from the kitchen window as the three Eastbrooks settled into the Jaguar and drove away from the house. Hurriedly she fetched the trays, carried them down the back stairs to the kitchen, and did the washing up, her mind buzzing with thoughts as she worked.

  On the housekeeper’s key ring were all the keys to most rooms of the house, except for the private door off the family room, but Faye did have the key to Eugenie’s office, and she knew Eugenie kept her keys in the right-hand drawer of her desk. Both maids had the day off and would stay down in their quarters in the staff house. Margie and all the Eastbrooks were gone. It was the perfect opportunity.