The Dirty Book Club

by Lisi Harrison

  In the weeks that she had been in Pearl Beach M.J. had lost her confidence, her sense of purpose, and now this bet. Though she hadn’t gotten her period in months, she was bleeding out. And only one thing could stop it.

  After Dan left, she yanked the restaurant delivery list from their junk drawer, ordered a buffet amount of Chinese food, and hate-ate her way into a decision: she would sign the contract and overnight it to Gayle. Because if home is where the heart is, and that heart is gone most of the time, the mind was all M.J. had left. And that would be gone by Thanksgiving if she didn’t get back to work.

  * * *

  THE FIRST FEW times her phone beeped, M.J. was able to ignore it. Because when one combines a tearful good-bye and a generous intake of MSG, to an already existing hangover, the nap is death-deep. But the beeping continued and it was relentless.

  Groggy, M.J. sat up on the couch and checked her text messages.

  ADDIE: 911 @ the bookstore. Pls come.

  BRITT: Did u see Addie’s txt? Heading to the bookstore now. Need a ride? I still have the Mini, remember?

  ADDIE: Where r u?

  BRITT: Last chance for a ride.

  BRITT: Leaving now. Maybe ur not going. J isn’t. She’s still pissed at Addie for offering D a vibrator.

  BRITT: Maybe you’re already there. K. Bye.

  M.J. shouldered her way through the wall of gawkers to find a blue-collar ballet of first responders: police officers cordoning off the storefront with caution tape, a fireman climbing toward Addie’s bedroom window, the man in the Doyle Plumbing shirt at the foot of his ladder with the low ponytail, hand-over-fisting him a giant blue hose.

  Addie, as if posing for an album cover, was leaning against the building—sole of her sneaker pressed against the black brick facade, arms folded and hair coaxed into a come-hither tousle. And Britt was dutifully by her side cupping a venti whatever it was.

  “You’re still wearing that nightgown?” Britt said as M.J. hurried toward them, the heels of her Gucci clogs clunking against the sidewalk.

  “I thought it was an emergency.”

  Addie pushed herself away from the wall. “It is,” she said, lifting the caution tape and waving Britt and M.J. under.

  “Ma’am, it’s not safe in there,” called one of Pearl Beach’s finest.

  “We’ll only be a minute, officer.”

  “Hold up!” Jules called as she scuttled toward them, her key necklace knocking against her chest.

  The afternoon sun revealed no sign of the previous night’s damage. Her cheeks had been blushed to a rosy rebirth, the merlot-colored puffs under her eyes drained and concealed. Even her hair, now cornrow-free and curling-iron-kissed had been restored to its original factory settings. “Just because I’m here doesn’t mean I forgive you for being vulgar in front of my daughter.”

  Addie reached under the caution tape and yanked Jules toward her. “I’m fine with that.”

  “Ma’am!”

  “We’re just grabbing our purses, officer, we’ll be right back.”

  He cut a look to the tote hanging from the crook of Britt’s elbow, the cross-body bag at M.J.’s hip, the clutch tucked under Jules’s arm. “I’m sorry, ladies, but I was told not to—”

  “Thanks.” Addie beamed as she shoved the girls inside and locked the door behind her.

  “Where are the lights?” M.J. asked.

  “Um, electricity might not be the best idea right now,” Britt said, pointing at the buckling ceiling, where water leaked in incontinent dribbles and the bookmarks, once stiff and robust, now coiled in shame. And that smell—wet dog and chemicals—it was as if the walls were sweating out the toxins.

  “What in the ham sandwich happened?” Jules asked.

  “The bathtub challenge, that’s what,” Addie said. “I never would have brought Bungee back to my apartment if you hadn’t—”

  “Bullshit,” Britt rasped.

  “Fine, but we wouldn’t have taken a bath together.”

  “Bullshit again.”

  “Okay, but I wouldn’t have tried to aqua-come. I would’ve moved to dry land for that.” Addie lifted her sundress and revealed her bruised kneecaps. “Bone meet porcelain, porcelain meet bone. I had to down half a bottle of Macallan to dull the pain.”

  “Ah-ha! So you admit it, then.”

  “Admit what, Jules?”

  “That it’s impossible to, you know, in the bath.”

  “Not when you run the warm water and spread your legs under the faucet.”

  Jules examined the tips of her hair as if checking for dead ends. “Is that a thing?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Did it work?”

  “No,” Addie said. “But only because I passed out.”

  “And Bungee?”

  “No clue. When I came to he was gone and my bathroom was flooded, so I went to buy bagels.”

  “You just left it like that?” M.J. asked, realizing that Addie must have known about the deluge when she had stopped by Jules’s earlier that morning.

  “No, I didn’t leave it like that. I opened the windows so it would evaporate.” Above them a water pump began to rattle. Bookmarks fell from the ceiling like soggy autumn leaves.

  Britt, Jules, and M.J. exchanged a worried glance.

  “Will you help me tarp the shelves before the books get ruined?” She held her hands together in prayer. “Please?”

  “If you promise to quit having irresponsible conversations with my daughter.”

  “Masturbation is not irresponsible, Jules.”

  “Oh, really?” She stabbed her index finger toward the sagging ceiling. “Then how do you explain that?”

  Addie managed a clench-toothed smile. “Fine, I’m sorry, okay? I was only trying to help.”

  “Help?”

  “These girls need someone to talk to. Someone they can trust. And I can be that person.”

  “Why? Because you have a daughter?”

  “No, Jules, because I don’t. Not to mention I work in a women’s clinic. And every day our waiting room is full of daughters. Daughters hiding under the hoods of high school sweatshirts begging our receptionist to get them in to see a pregnancy counselor before their lunch period is over so they’re not late for class.”

  “Well, please leave my Destiny out of it, okay?” Jules released a cleansing sigh and then twisted her hair into a low chignon. “Now let’s get to work, shall we? I didn’t cancel a meeting so I could stand around and look pretty did I?” She giggled. “I’m just playing. I mean, I did cancel a meeting, but I don’t think I look very pretty.” She glanced toward the door marked HOLY WATER. “Hey, is Easton around? I’m sure he’d be a big help.”

  “I told him to take the week off because the building was being sprayed for termites. If that busybody finds out this was my fault, Liddy will find out. And if Liddy finds out she’ll make me pay for the damage, and if I have to pay for the damage I won’t be able to go on my trip, and if I don’t get out of this town I’ll die and haunt you for—”

  The rattling water pump stopped.

  Then, a new sound, like the crack of a tree branch before it breaks.

  “Look!” Jules indicated the bulge overhead. “The ceiling is pregnant.”

  “More like crowning,” Britt said.

  There was a distant rumble, like thunder, and then—

  “Run!” Britt shouted as Addie’s bathtub—a five-foot, claw-footed mass—fell from her apartment and crushed the Pride aisle to dust.

  CHAPTER

  Seventeen

  Pearl Beach, California

  Friday, July 22

  Waning Gibbous Moon

  “TWENTY-EIGHT,” M.J. COUNTED. She had checked her in-box twenty-eight times that morning and, still, no word from Gayle. The contract arrived in New York yesterday and, according to the shameless call she made to the mailroom, Gayle had signed for it herself. So where was the celebratory phone call, the welcome-back fruit basket, the company-wide announcement that their
beloved M.J. would be returning to City magazine in September as editor in chief? Fine, coeditor in chief, but still, a little acknowledgment, please. Unless Gayle had sent the e-mail to M.J.’s old work account and not her Gmail address. “Twenty-nine. . . .”

  The doorbell rang.

  M.J. answered to find Addie—hair big and makeup bold—wearing a tight white lab coat and pink Crocs. She looked more like a porn star pedaling nurse fantasies than a pregnancy consultant on her way to work.

  “I need some advice.”

  “Is it about those shoes?” M.J. teased.

  “Shoes?” Addie said as she peered at the Goldens’ house.

  “Oh, I see what’s happening here,” M.J. said, suddenly realizing, “You don’t want advice. You’re here to stalk Da—”

  Addie slapped a hand over M.J.’s mouth. “Shhh!”

  “Relax. He hasn’t moved in yet.”

  Addie lowered her hand. “I thought Britt said Friday.”

  “She did. But it’s only eight thirty,” M.J. said, tempted to lecture her on “playing it real,” but she was hardly qualified. So she invited her in for tap water instead.

  “I’d prefer a frittata if you have one,” Addie said. “My anorexic friend Loo’s apartment is a bad place to wake up if you don’t like mustard for breakfast.”

  “I have five beers, half a bottle of prosecco, a burnt bagel, and some leftover Chinese food.”

  “Don’t you eat?”

  “Not when I’m stressed, which is most of the time.”

  “So . . . the Chinese food?”

  “All yours.”

  M.J. led her into the kitchen, where Addie helped herself to the take-out box, sniffed the corpse-colored dumplings, and then returned it to the empty rack. “Wear a hazmat suit when you toss those.”

  “So do you really need advice or was that the stalk talking?”

  “Mostly the stalk,” Addie admitted. “I mean, I am asking my boss, Lara, for an advance today so I can fix the ceiling before Liddy finds out. But I don’t really need advice. That woman will do anything to get me into bed.”

  “She’s gay?”

  “No.” Addie reached for the burnt bagel, took a bite. “But she is human.”

  * * *

  HUMAN.

  The word, though not particularly lyrical, sang in M.J.’s mind long after Addie left for work. It split into syllables—hu-man, hu-man, hu-man—that scored her footsteps as she walked to the coffee shop and claimed the corner table. It remained through two refills and an hour of reading her Prim-covered copy of Henry and June. But it wasn’t until she came upon the phrase white-heat living, that M.J. understood why.

  Though written by Anaïs Nin to describe the kind of intensity one finds in lovers and mistresses, M.J. got that charge from Addie’s visit. The unexpected break in routine stirred her senses, woke her to her surroundings, and made her feel human again. It reminded her that she could be a friend’s destination. And that she, like the French author, used to journal about those feelings, too.

  M.J. took a note card out of her purse and wrote, “Of Anaïs’s many relationships, the most intimate was with her journals. Privy to the full extent of her struggles, passions, and longings, they were her most trusted confidants. They were white-hot truth, unaffected by the opinions of lovers, purely her.”

  Then she considered the Moleskine journal Dan had given her. The pencil. The thoughts that circled her head like airplanes in a holding pattern, waiting for a place to land. Unlike M.J.’s more creative days, those airplanes weren’t transporting story ideas, compelling characters, quippy one-liners, or middle-of-the-night revelations. They were carrying fear. Fear of being alone, fear of the unknown, fear of disappointment, fear that at thirty-four years old, her best days were behind her, and now fear that her journals will never measure up to Anaïs’s, so why bother?

  “They’re not supposed to measure up,” Dr. Cohn told her on the phone during her walk back to the cottage. Though he didn’t dare say it, M.J. could tell by the vim in his voice that he found delight in the unexpected topic of this week’s long-distance session. At least she’s thinking about writing, she imagined him noting. “Journals are dumping grounds for embarrassing thoughts and first-grade grammar. They’re not supposed to be art. They’re supposed to help you sort through the sludge so you can get to the good stuff. Don’t let Anaïs take a crap on that.”

  With a smile, M.J. promised to get started the moment she got home—Anaïs and her white-hot writing be damned!

  But Addie was there when she returned; lying on the porch swing, pink Crocs kicked to the curb.

  “What are you doing back here?”

  Addie sat up. Her eyes were swollen and red. “Do you still have those beers?”

  “I do,” M.J. said. “Want one?”

  “No. I want three.”

  M.J. reappeared with the beer, some flat prosecco, and her Moleskine. Not that she had any intention of writing while Addie was there; she simply wanted the journal nearby so they could bond.

  “Are we celebrating?” M.J. asked, sitting. The swing dropped like a hot testicle.

  “I knew I put on weight.”

  “It always happens with two people,” M.J. lied, because though she had sat on it many times, it had always been alone. “Did you ask for the advance from your boss?”

  “Yep.”

  “And did she bite?”

  “Oh, she bit all right. Sank her adult braces right into my head and ripped it off.”

  “She got mad at you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  Addie peeled the label off the bottle, rolled the foil paper between her fingers. “Because I was doing my job.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Knocked up, Samantha?” Addie said, earnest as a 1950s public service announcement. “Abortion is a very serious decision. Would you ever consider keeping the baby? No? Well, there are thousands of loving couples in this country looking to adopt. These pamphlets will help you understand the process. Is there a grown-up you trust? Someone to support you during this process? No? Well, you can trust me. I’ll be your grown-up. I’ll support you.” She took a sip of beer. “That was my job. Lara gave me a script and I delivered it.”

  “So what was the problem?”

  “After I delivered Lara’s script, I’d deliver my own.”

  “Which was?”

  “Sexual urges are perfectly natural, Samantha, and masturbation is the safest way to explore them. You can’t get an STD, you won’t get pregnant, and you’ll never feel pressured or used. And the best part? You’ll have an orgasm. Then, I’d give her a vibrator and make her promise not to let another guy in her pants until it was the right guy. Someone who made her feel better than the vibrator. . . .”

  While Addie talked, M.J. took in the high pitch of her cheekbones, the full lips that looked puckered but weren’t, and those curves. Her sex appeal was undeniable. It was the skeleton key to every locked door that stood in her way. But to understand Addie was to know that she’d rather open those doors with an impassioned kick than a key; that she only used the key when a kick didn’t work.

  “Anyway, some of the moms found out about my little giveaways and threatened to picket the clinic if I wasn’t let go, and Lara did what any spineless script follower would do and fired me.” Addie shrugged like it was no big deal. Then gave way to her tears because it was.

  “Why didn’t Lara defend you? It’s her clinic. She obviously knew about the vibrators,” M.J. said, suddenly outraged. Mostly for Addie, but for herself, too, because where the hell was Gayle? It was five o’clock on the east coast, why hadn’t she acknowledged the signed contract? “Screw these bosses with their team-building retreats and trust-fall exercises. They’re supposed to have their employees’ backs and catch us when we’re going down. Instead, they just get out of the way and let us crash.”

  “Lara didn’t exactly know,” Addie said, in the tiniest of voices. “The vibrators were mine.
I bought three hundred during a fire sale because I thought they would help. I never made a dime off them. I swear.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her lab coat.

  “It’s not fair.”

  “It is now,” Addie said. “I snagged a bunch of condoms, birth control pills, HPTs, and a model of the uterus on my way out. I also took Lara’s Weight Watchers lunch from the staff room. Zucchini lasagna. Want some?”

  “I’m not a zucchini person.”

  “Good.” Addie sighed. “Because I’m starving.” She padded barefoot across the grass, and popped the trunk of her Mazda Miata. It was overflowing with contraband. “What do you need, and don’t be shy, there’s enough here to last us until menopause.”

  “Malnutrition is my method of choice,” M.J. said, then realized how glib that must sound to a women’s health advocate.

  “Seriously, I’m not going to charge you.”

  “I am serious,” M.J. admitted. “I don’t get regular periods because I tend to be underweight so—”

  “So what?” Addie folded her arms. A disappointed school marm. “NYC Ninjas can’t get knocked up, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Maybe you’re not getting your period because you’re already pregnant.”

  M.J. leaned against the Miata, her legs heavy from the prosecco, or maybe the realization that she and Dan had unsafe sex because she was skinny and he was a doctor so what could possibly go wrong?

  Addie removed a cardboard box and Lara’s lasagna from the trunk, then closed it with a self-righteous slam.

  “It’s a little late for birth control.”

  “It’s not birth control, they’re home pregnancy tests.” Addie stomped up the porch steps and opened the front door. “To the latrine.”

  “What? No! Forget it.”

  “It’s okay,” Addie said. “I’ll be your grown-up.”

  Inside the bathroom, which still carried a trace of cherry-almond shampoo from her earlier shower, Addie bit through the silver foil wrapper and handed the stick to M.J. “Pee.”