The Scarlet Letter Society

by Mary McCarthy

  They laughed.

  “I’m already shopping for my prom gown,” said Maggie. “Now hand me that cheese tray.”

  “So how’s your little whore club coming along?” asked Wes.

  “We don’t call it a whore club,” said Maggie, raising an eyebrow. “That’s an offensive term and besides, we’re not getting paid. Our Scarlet Letter Society is simply for women who are- well, to put it in some kind of bizarre politically correct term, I guess, who are fidelity challenged.”

  “Mmhmm, whores. Well at least they aren’t still stoning you or burning your asses at the stake anymore,” said Wes, passing the havarti and rice crackers. “The funny part is, you’re in a club you technically can’t even be a member of because you’re not even cheating on your pretty little boyfriend! Unless you count the fact that your divorce isn’t even final, which hardly counts.”

  “So technically, I’m still married,” responded Maggie, “and thus a practicing adulteress, if you ask the Catholic Church.” Making the sign of the cross while rolling her eyes, Maggie added, “And since I’m cheating on both of my husbands with Ted, I’d say I’m not just the founder of the Scarlet Letter Society, but also a quite active member.”

  “Well, Sister Margaret Katherine. ‘Veteran Vixen Vaginas’ would be a great name for your website,” said Wes. “You should totally lock down a Twitter handle for that.”

  “We’re starting to read a book each month for the Scarlet Letter Society meetings,” said Maggie. “Historical or modern fiction about women who cheat on their husbands. I mean, the novels are usually written by men and end up with dead women, but it will be interesting to get the perspective on how things have changed. Or haven’t. We’re beginning by reading The Scarlet Letter.”

  “Ooooh! It will be like the HO-prah Book Club!” squealed Wes, clapping his hands.

  “Let’s watch the movie, goofball,” Maggie said warmly.

  Subdivision streetlights cast the only light through the bedroom curtains as Lisa snuck out of bed to check her email. As the floorboards creaked in a house that was only built three years before in this McNeighborhood she loathed beyond words, she knew Jim would hear her.

  “Where are you going?” slurred Jim gruffly. “Don’t you remember I’m going to be going away for a few days to the conference?” he asked, pulling her back into bed.

  Lisa grimaced slightly.

  “I was just going to get some shop paperwork done before I go into town.”

  So much for Jim leaving for his trip before she woke up. And here came the scene she had been hoping to avoid.

  “I guess there’s no time for a foot rub then,” said Jim in the whiny voice that made Lisa want to drive icepicks through her own skull. She looked over at him in the bed, and then she saw it. A bright red Christian Louboutin stiletto peeked out from under his pillow.

  “Jim! Those are $6000 shoes!” said Lisa, exasperated. “Why are you crushing one of them under your pillow?”

  “I bought them for you, Lisa,” responded Jim, sulking. “You know I got them online for way less than that, and it’s not my fault you continually refuse to indulge my fantasy.”

  Lisa shuddered. A foot fetish, of all things. How had she managed to marry someone with such an annoying addiction? She would never wear those stupid shoes. They weren’t even new. Gah! Who knew where they’d been, or what she’d have to clean off them.

  She thought to herself, I have already honestly tried to go along with the whole “fantasy” thing, as he called it. Remember when I wore the thigh high black leather boots (and nothing else) to bed? Or how about the time I let you masturbate into a gold pair of stripper heels bought especially for the purpose? But she was sick of him being more interested in her feet and her footwear than her preferred parts.

  “Honey,” she said, “I need to get to the bakery. Maybe you could just pack the shoes in your suitcase for the trip.”

  “Don’t be mad that I spent the money. They’re beautiful! Like you,” said Jim.

  “You damn well know we need that money for the fertility treatments,” said Lisa. “I don’t even want to look at them!”

  She went downstairs, grabbed her laptop, and headed to the downtown bakery. Beautiful, my ass, she thought.

  “Welcome to Keytown!” the town’s sign cheerily welcomed her, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Bakery therapy. She arrived at her shop, prepared batter, popped the first batch of cinnamon buns into the oven, and washed her hands, absentmindedly wiping them to dry on her apron. She sat down at the counter stool, opened her laptop and hit “compose.”

  from: Lisa lswain@blackbirdspie.com

  to: Ben bnidale@starfishdesign.com

  date: Tuesday, May 2, 2012 at 8:10 AM

  subject: My logo

  Ben,

  It’s hard to believe we have met three times and I still don’t have a mockup of my new logo. I demand customer service.

  Sincerely,

  Lisa Swain

  * * *

  She smiled as she hit ‘send.’ And her friends thought she was licking cherry juice off this guy? Geez, wouldn’t that be amazing. So far in real life versus Scarlet Letter Club fantasy league, she’d simply had two “brainstorming” lunches and a shop visit to “gather information.” And of course the email fluttering back and forth like middle school notes passed from classmate to classmate. Is Ben taking a long time to produce my business materials so he can prolong this? Lisa thought, doubting herself. Or am I just being silly? He’s probably just busy.

  Ping, came the sound of a new email, and her heart rate quickened.

  from: Ben bnidale@starfishdesign.com

  to: Lisa lswain@blackbirdspie.com

  date: Tuesday, May 2, 2012, 8:13 AM

  subject: Your pie

  You know that I feel strongly about the image that is presented for your business, and that I feel I’m trying to get a feel for the message you want to send to your customers. Don’t try to rush the creative process.

  Are you free for lunch? We can discuss this further, as customer satisfaction is my goal.

  Ben

  * * *

  The blush crept up from her neckline to her face as Lisa nervously wiped her hands off again on her apron before hitting “reply.”

  from: Lisa lswain@blackbirdspie.com

  to: Ben bnidale@starfishdesign.com

  date: Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 8:17 AM

  subject: Customer satisfaction

  Thank you for your prompt response. I agree a lunch meeting is in order. Meet me at Provence at noon.

  L

  * * *

  Oh yeah, middle school was definitely on the phone, wanting their geeky note-passing routine back. What was it about written communication that made it so sexy? Lisa stood up, realizing she had just sent out a lunch invitation. She looked at the clock, and down at her beat-up Gap jeans and worn cotton t-shirt. I can’t wear this to the Provence. A visit to Maggie’s shop for something to wear was in order as soon as those cinnamon buns came out of the oven.

  Zarina smiled as the women entered the shop for their monthly meeting.

  “Good morning, Zarina,” said Maggie as she came in. “Always good to start the day at Z’s!”

  Zarina’s mom had never really ‘decorated’ the shop per se, just covered it in a scattering of 80s memorabilia she’d picked up over the years at yard sales and online auctions. Pac Man memorabilia, Bon Jovi posters, shadow boxes of scratch-and-sniff sticker and Garbage Pail Kids cards, plastic Gremlins, and other vintage trinkets bedecked the shop. On the wall hung a large 80s-font print featuring a shop-namesake quote: “Screws fall out all the time; the world’s an imperfect place.”

  Eva and Lisa crossed to the brown leather couch area as Zarina locked the door behind the ladies. She didn’t flip over the ‘open’ sign since their monthly meeting was private and the shop didn’t technically open for another hour. She busied herself getting their standard order ready: two Neo Maxi double espressos, a caramel macchiato
for the bakery lady, Lisa, plus warming up the blueberry muffins she baked last night.

  “So how’s everything with Ben, Lisa? And have you figured out a way to deal with that foot fetish husband of yours?” Eva smiled.

  “Ben and I took a walk the other day to Bailey Park,” said Lisa, “and we ended up having sex in broad daylight under the covered bridge.”

  Maggie and Eva laughed. “Well that’s a new one,” said Maggie. “Bravo, kid. You’re lucky Keytown’s finest weren’t patrolling the park at the time—or worse, some poor mom and a toddler going for a walk.”

  Lisa grinned, cursing herself for making up such an outrageous story.

  “Well I got a can of homemade whipped cream unleashed into my vag,” said Eva, breaking into laughter. “The chef had prepared it especially to be organic.”

  “That was thoughtful,” said Maggie. “I mean, you wouldn’t want any of that trashy-ass grocery store canned whipped cream up there.”

  “It was of course delicious, too, when I sprayed some on him and got to taste it during the expert blow job I served up.”

  Lisa, ever the junior member of the club, asked, “Where did you learn to give great blowjobs? I mean, I’ve been married for five years and dated before that, and of course there’s Ben now, but I’ve always worried I’m not good at it. Not to mention I don’t like it. I did order the spray we talked about last month…”

  “Art of the Blowjob,” said Maggie and Eva at the same time, chuckling.

  “What’s that?” asked Lisa, fishing her journal out of her purse.

  Maggie replied, “It’s a website where this auburn haired chick does instructional videos on how to give the perfect blowjob. It’s not porny or tacky. It’s quite helpful!”

  Eva added, “You have to admit it is kind of hilarious that there is just this, like, DICK that appears from the left side of the screen. You never ever even see the guy.”

  “He must be a pretty happy guy,” said Lisa.

  “Yeah, nice work if you can get it, huh?” said Maggie.

  Eva took a sip of her coffee. “So what’s the latest in your ever-active lovelife, Mags?”

  “Divorce number two will be final pretty soon. Everything is going fine with Ted, but I actually have a new friend now, too.”

  “Holy Mary Magdelene loving Jesus!” declared Eva. “Can you ever just be shagging one person, Margaret Hanson?”

  “Well if that ain’t the tramp kettle calling the slut pot black, I don’t know what is,” snorted Maggie as a grin spread across her face, now lined with smile lines at 47. She crossed her vintage cowboy boots and adjusted her brown corduroy skirt.

  “It so happens,” announced Maggie, “that I’m sort of cheating on my lover with a very adorable professional in town.”

  “A professional what?” laughed Eva with an eyeroll. “So what’s this one’s name?”

  “Well, smarty pants,” said Maggie, “I’ll have to tell you all about it later.”

  As the women left the shop, Zarina raised the store’s front window shade and flipped the sign to “open.” Then she texted her boyfriend, Stanley. He loved to come over and hear all about the morning meeting, especially since it always made her a little horny for some reason. Flying estrogen? She entered two words into her battered iPhone 3: “Booty. Call.”

  When Maggie asked if Zarina could have two copies of The Scarlet Letter (Eva read on a Kindle app), she was happy to accommodate her favorite customers, and appreciated them supporting the store. She found three gently used copies at a great price, ordering the extra copy for herself. Ha! I will be in their book club and they won’t even know it, she thought, laughing to herself.

  Zarina smiled at Stanley as he entered the shop a short time later.

  “Yes, I’m here for one Booty Latte, extra cream, please,” he smiled.

  “Coming right up,” said Zarina, winking at him.

  I love how much fun we have together, thought Zarina as she made his coffee, and how he makes me laugh.

  Stanley interrupted her coffeemaking by grabbing her from behind and planting heated kisses on her neck. She turned, put down the cup, and pulled him by the belt hook of his jeans into the small bathroom. She locked the door. Just the necessary amounts of clothes peeled away as he scooped her up onto the bathroom sink. Nothing like forbidden sex, thought Zarina, smiling at the possibility of a customer coming into the store at any time.

  Ten minutes later, Stanley and Zarina were sitting on the couch next to each other, playing Words with Friends together on their phones.

  Stanley looked at Zarina.

  “Thanks for being my old person,” he said, and gave that silly, crooked grin that simply undid her.

  When Stanley came into her shop for coffee one day, they just sort of clicked: finishing each other’s sentences, laughing at stupid things no one else would think were funny. Stanley joked that they were kind of like… old people who would play on a Scrabble board in their retirement community in the same way they played WWF on iPhones. It’s the same game, seriously, he’d said.

  “I love being old people with you,” she said.

  Love is awesome, thought Zarina. Except when it sucks. She listened to the ladies at the SLS club each month, and they talk about doomed love and who’s having sex with whom. I mean Jesus Christ, she’d tell Stanley, these bitches are horny!

  “Maybe they’re in some kind of full blown mid-life crisis,” Stanley had said, “but man, they do seem to be gettin’ it on.”

  Zarina believed, despite it sounding “all hippy-dippy” as her mom would say… she believed love is the thing, not sex. It was about the personal relationship; the intimacy of spirits, not bodies. You can have sex with anybody. Love only happens with someone really, really special.

  She put down the Words With Friends game she was currently winning and brewed some coffee. It made the world go round, and all.

  Her day’s first customer checked out and left, and the sound of the door clicking behind her threw Maggie into a trance.

  The dreaded sound: a soft click of the front door locked behind her mother as she left. 9-1-1 was written in huge letters next to the phone. Maggie always pretended to be asleep so her mother wouldn’t worry she’d been awake and frightened. Maggie would watch the minutes tick by on the old-fashioned alarm clock, and sometimes it would be 2:35 or 3:07. And then one day, her mother packed Maggie’s things into two brown paper grocery store bags and brought her to the home of a foster family. She told her she loved her, that she didn’t want her to feel cold or be in the dark anymore, and then she was gone. Maggie was six. She never saw her mother again.

  The gentle tinkling of the small bell that hung from the handle of the 1884 original door to her Victorian commercial building once again served as an alarm to Maggie’s daymare. She grabbed a pill from her purse and chased it with a sip of her coffee. Putting down her copy of The Scarlet Letter, she saw Ted as he entered the shop. He was holding a handful of peonies. When she saw the flowers, she knew two things: that they’d come from the huge light pink bush near his building across town, and that he’d already taken them inside to wash off all the ants that perpetually plagued the sweet-smelling blooms.

  “Good morning, beautiful lady,” he said, dramatically presenting the handful of freshly cut (and only slightly drippy) blooms to her.

  Maggie smiled like a schoolgirl. She loved the way he always said “good morning” to her, even if it wasn’t morning. She thanked him, took the flowers and put them in a big, old turquoise Ball jar on the counter.

  “Thank you for that ant removal service, dahlin,” she said, and Ted grinned at her pronunciation: her New England accent had always been sexy to him. “It was nice of you to remember I love peonies, but hate ants.”

  When she finished with the flowers, she walked around the counter and put her arms around his neck. He returned her kiss eagerly with a soft, exploratory prod of the tongue followed by a gentle grazing of her upper lip with his teeth. She slapped him
playfully on the butt of his worn, faded jeans.

  “You know, I’m open for business around here, mistah, and it’s not that kind of business.”

  “I’d like to have you open for business right now upstairs, ma’am,” said Ted. He grabbed the curly auburn ponytail through the hole in the back of her baseball hat, looked into her green eyes, and pulled the cap of her hat aside so he could kiss her.

  Maggie found herself glancing over at the clock. 10:30. Hmmm. It was a slower time of morning, but she didn’t know if she could risk someone coming into the shop, especially close to lunchtime. She narrowed her eyes at him. He looked back at her, his tall frame in a fake slump, his hazel eyes drooping, and a ridiculous cartoonish frown on his face. It was the glance down at those faded jeans that won her over, for it was there that she saw his very enthusiastic interest in her. His passion for her never seemed to end, and she sighed.

  Looking directly at his rising erection, she said, “You win. The customer is always right.”

  She walked over, quickly locked the door to the shop, and hastily hung the “Back in 30 Minutes” sign on the door.

  She took off her red vintage 1980s Snoopy half-apron as she walked toward the back narrow staircase to the upstairs apartment. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at his fake running motion and wide eyes.

  She stopped on the fifth step up.

  “I don’t think I can make it all the way up to my apartment,” she smiled sheepishly.

  “No need,” said Ted.

  He stopped on the third step and grabbed her around her waist. He lifted the vintage Sesame Street t-shirt and kissed her belly. She raked her hands through his curly mop of dark hair and kissed him with all the desire she’d felt from the moment he’d entered the shop. They never seemed to be able to get enough of each other.

  She eagerly dashed her tongue into his mouth, moaning when he returned the kiss with equal excitement. She leaned back on the wooden step and lifted her hips to feel the full effect of his complete hardness.