The Hot Flash Club

by Nancy Thayer

  Alice had suggested that Shirley tone down her astrologist’s appearance and try to present a more businesslike front for this crucial meeting. Accordingly, Shirley had braided her wild red hair and twisted it at the back on her neck, securing it with pins. She’d left off the purple eye shadow and dressed in brown slacks and a white shirt. Then, being Shirley, she’d added a silk shawl swirled with ambers and golds.

  “You look perfect,” Alice told her.

  They sat around the coffee table, going over the packets Shirley and Alice had put together. A handsome brochure announced the opening of “Golden Moments, Spa and Wellness Clinic.” Alice still flinched at the word “wellness,” but Shirley assured her it was part of the vernacular. On the front of the brochure was a photo of a person receiving a massage, seeming so blissed out that Alice relaxed just looking at it. Inside were the list of treatments the clinic would offer, and on the back the director of the clinic and her board were listed. At the moment, Alice, Julie Martin, and an MD and his aromatherapist were on the board.

  Accompanying the brochure was a folder to be handed to each prospective board member that night when they arrived. Inside, compiled by Alice, were charts costing out the initial investment, the proposed time frame, and the dividends to be, eventually, paid out.

  “Looks good, Shirley,” Alice said. It should; Alice had put it together on her own laptop. Consulting with Shirley, she’d written every word. And Alice felt as giddily nervous about it as she had when her boys starred in kindergarten plays.

  The doorbell rang.

  It was an odd group who arrived. Gruff Dr. Peter Donovan, a psychiatrist, grumbled in with his fey aromatherapist wife Reya fluttering around making his scotch and water just the way he liked it, asking in whispers if he needed another pillow for his back. Suzanne West, the astrologist, had a surprisingly gravelly voice for someone dressed in layers of pastel chiffon. Nora Salter, Shirley’s wealthy socialite client, made a stately entrance, leaning on a cane.

  Tom Warren, a yoga instructor, was Alice’s age, and attractive, his bald black head shining, his movements gentle, almost delicate. Shirley thought he might be a prospective beau for Alice, who had insisted she wasn’t interested in anything like that, so Alice was amused at her disappointment when she realized he was gay.

  Jennifer D’Annucio was invited even though Alice knew the young woman had no money—she needed to meet other people, Shirley had insisted, and Jennifer, delighted to meet a new set of people, had brought along some of her hand-concocted canapés. Fred and Ted, who owned the beauty salon where Alice had her hair done, were also there, at Alice’s request. Not only did they have plenty of money, should they want to invest, they also would be great word-of-mouth advertisements for Shirley’s retreat.

  Alan had picked up Julie, whom he now escorted into the room. Shirley hurried to greet the timid young woman, who had gone wild and pulled on a pair of khakis and a clean, if unironed, blue cotton shirt. She’d even combed her hair.

  Shirley put her arm around the young woman. “Julie, you look great! Come sit down here, I’ve set a chair for you right next to me.”

  For a while, Alice and Shirley let the others mingle, drinking coffee or tea, admiring the view. Then Alice invited them all to have a seat. She remained standing.

  “I want to thank you all for coming this evening,” she said. “As you can see, you’re part of a very small group of select individuals. We’ve invited you here to announce the creation of a new enterprise.”

  As she spoke, the conversation she’d had two days ago when she and Shirley discussed the sales pitch danced mischievously at the back of her mind. “It’s not an enterprise!” Shirley had asserted. “It’s a retreat, a shelter, a haven, a—”

  Alice had interrupted. “Do you want people to invest money?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “It’s an enterprise.”

  “Okay.”

  Alice continued. “We’re all aware of the way our lives are changing. Everything moves faster. Music’s louder. People want more of our time, our money, our attention. Everything’s competitive. Everything’s tugging on us. No matter how much we do, we can’t get everything done, which makes us move faster and fall farther behind.” As Alice spoke, she realized she meant exactly what she said.

  “Shirley Gold wants to create a shelter for those of us who are superstressed. She wants to create an environment where we can relax and be refreshed. This is where we, adults who take care of so much, can be taken care of, ourselves. As vice president of TransWorld Insurance Corporation, I find Shirley’s idea brilliant. I’ve spent time with Shirley, having massages, and it’s been good for my body and soul.”

  She paused dramatically. “As a businesswoman, I’m getting in on the ground floor, being one of the first to invest in Golden Moments, because I think it will be good for my checkbook.” She smiled around the room. “I’ll let Shirley tell you more about her concept.”

  Shirley stood. At first, she was dry-mouthed and obviously nervous. As she spoke, she became calmer and more assured. Explaining her dream, she was caught up in the excitement of its possibilities, and soon she was waving her hands around, trying to conjure up pictures in the air. She was irrepressible, and Alice felt almost maternal as she watched.

  Really, she didn’t know when she’d felt so—content? Was contentment what she felt? Well, how would she know? She’d never felt it before. Triumph, yes, she’d felt that, many times. Pride, exultation, self-respect, all consequences of her disciplined labors, her self-determination, her ambition to succeed. Of course she’d felt love: carnal and romantic love for her husband, Mack, and her lover, Bill Weaver. And she’d adored her two sons, adored them still, love for them was woven into the matrix of her heart.

  But content. No, she couldn’t remember when she’d felt that. Part of it came, no doubt, from being a component in the creation of a new enterprise. If there were an entrepreneurial gene, it was built into her DNA. She had always thrived on challenge.

  But this was different somehow. More personal. More healthy.

  More fun.

  27

  “This is it.” Barton Baker unlocked his apartment door and ushered Marilyn inside. “Pretty basic, isn’t it?”

  The room was small, square, and gray. The gray sectional furniture sat on a gray rug that ran right up to the gray-and-white faux-marble tiles of the chrome-and-gray kitchen.

  As far as Marilyn was concerned, the place was done up in leopard skin and fur. However it looked, it was the lair of a single man, a man ten years younger than she was, a man who had just taken her out to a heavenly dinner and kissed her so passionately in the elevator on their way up Marilyn thought her clothes might ignite.

  “Nervous?” Barton asked. He ran his hands through his already disheveled black hair, a sign, Marilyn thought, that he was excited.

  Marilyn nodded. They were still standing just inside the door. Marilyn’s knees were so weak she wasn’t sure she could take another step. She hadn’t spoken with Theodore since she caught him with the grad student, and just then she didn’t care if she ever spoke to her husband again.

  “I am, too.” His voice cracked endearingly. “I’ve got some good white wine. Unless you’d prefer cognac?”

  “Cognac,” Marilyn croaked.

  “Hey.” Barton put his hands on Marilyn’s shoulders. “Don’t be afraid. We won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

  His touch was enough to bury her fears in a landslide of lust. Marilyn lifted her head and took a step forward. His arms went around her, his mouth lowered to hers. He pressed his body against hers, and someone moaned. Marilyn was pretty sure it was she.

  Barton was taller than Theodore, and both slimmer and more massive. His chest was hard, his stomach flat, his hips, oh Lord, what was that? It had been so long since she and Theodore had made love, and it had been years—decades—since he’d pressed a big long erection against her loins. She’d forgotten how perfectly configured the bi
ological system was, how the circuitry of the human body was wired superbly for this—mating.

  “Let’s have the cognac later, okay?” Barton asked, his breath making every little hair on her neck stand at attention and tingle like antennae.

  “Okay.”

  He led her into the bedroom. More gray. He tossed back the duvet and lowered her with him onto the bed. In his hurry, or perhaps out of kindness, he didn’t turn on the lamp but let the light from the living room drift in through the open bedroom door to bathe the room in silver. Still, as they removed their clothes, Marilyn felt like the contemporary little pill bug related to the trilobite, who rolled up in a ball whenever frightened. She almost wished she could curl up in a ball herself, defending and hiding her ancient body, so inscribed with the stretch marks of her pregnancy with Teddy, her skin speckled like a duck egg with millions of tiny pink moles that had blossomed all over her during the past two years. Her breasts were full, with unusually wide, dark nipples that resembled those rubber plugs used to stop drains, and that morning in the shower, she’d found several white hairs in her pubic hair. She’d yanked them out, but all day long she’d been so worried about the coming date with Barton she’d probably grown in a new white crop.

  But his hands, warm and gentle, slid gently over her body. His palm brushed one nipple, then the other, then circled down to crush her pubic hair. His hand slipped between her legs. She wanted to pull a pillow over her face and bite it hard. She settled for burrowing her face into his chest. She laced her fingers through the curly hair on his chest, pressed her hands against his ribs, arched like an arbor over his abdomen, which was softer than bone but compact and firm as a carapace, and sliding her hand down, she accidentally touched his swollen penis, and they both gasped.

  “I can’t wait,” Barton said.

  “I can’t either.”

  He twisted away from her to open the drawer on his bedside table, and in a flash he took out a foil-wrapped condom, which he ripped apart. He pulled on the condom and rose over her. Marilyn closed her eyes.

  He entered her.

  She sank down through ocean depths to the soft and unfamiliar muddy floor where the planet’s own skin churned, sliding open and apart, while volcanoes thrust lava into the water, hardening, contorting, fracturing into crystals. As the ocean surged and shoved, eye-less creatures were overwhelmed by the roiling elements, squeezed, dissolved, crystallized, and Marilyn was there with them, in that elemental turbulence, she was tossed, raised, and compressed until she was too changed to be Marilyn who was afraid, and she became only a creature subject to nature’s gorgeous domination. Her own body fractured open, spilling poppies, lilies, camellias into the sea.

  A trilobite crawled up to nibble on a petal.

  “Good God,” Barton gasped, collapsing next to her.

  Marilyn opened her eyes. They were both drenched with sweat. “That was wonderful,” Marilyn whispered.

  He held her tight. “Amazing.”

  “I saw a trilobite,” she murmured.

  “A what?”

  “A trilobite. A minute little creature composed of calcite who lived 500 million years ago.”

  Barton was quiet a moment. “You saw a trilobite while we were making love?”

  Marilyn nodded. “It was one of the most glorious experiences of my life.”

  He raised himself on one elbow and peered down at her. “Um, I’m not sure I understand.”

  Marilyn stretched luxuriously, still dazed with sexual pleasure.

  Barton persisted, “I mean, why would you see a trilo— whatever—when we were making love? Why would you want to see one?”

  “Because I’m a scientist. I study them.” Turning on her side, Marilyn walked her fingertips through the jungle of Barton’s chest hair.

  “You’re a scientist?”

  “Well, in my own way,” she confessed modestly. “I have a Ph.D. in paleontology, and I’m a professor at MIT.”

  “Then why,” Barton asked gently, “are you working as a secretary?”

  Marilyn blinked. The intoxicating nebula of sexual pleasure lifted off, leaving her stranded, naked, and foolish. “Oh, dear.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve just done something terrible.”

  “I think you’ve just done something pretty great, myself,” he teased, tracing the circle of her nipples with the tips of his fingers.

  Sensations as elementary as the planet’s minerals spun through her at his touch. She gazed up at him, amazed at the sheer beauty of his face. His eyes were tender, guileless, and she felt his renewed erection pressing against her thigh.

  “I think I’m falling in love with you,” Barton said.

  Marilyn’s entire body flushed with the shock of his words, and when he raised himself up over her once again, a force as powerful as the moon sent tides of pleasure surging through her. She closed her eyes, surrendered, and sank into the subterranean world where fire burst into ocean depths.

  After that, they slept for a while. When they awoke, they were both starving, so Barton stalked naked from the room, returning quickly with two glasses of cognac and a bag of potato chips. “Not elegant, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  Marilyn sat up in bed, pulling the covers up to her breasts. Salt surged into her mouth from the potato chips, it was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted, she wanted to grab the bag from Barton and cram them into her mouth, she wanted to find the salt shaker and cover her tongue with salt, and when she drank the cognac, she almost wept with delight.

  Wide-eyed and addlepated, she turned to Barton. “I think I’m drunk.”

  “I doubt it. You had only one small glass of wine at dinner.”

  “Then I’m drunk on sex,” she decided.

  “Did you see a trilo—whatever this time?”

  She smiled. “No. What did you see?” she asked, frivolously.

  He put his hand on her face. “You. I saw you.”

  She almost fainted. Barton’s handsome face was soft, his expression so earnest he almost reminded her of her son Teddy, who could be so vulnerable. She was profoundly moved with a desire to protect this sweet man. “Barton, I’m not who you think I am.”

  “Oh, right. You were going to tell me about that.”

  “If I tell you,” Marilyn said, “you mustn’t tell anyone else.”

  “All right.”

  She sucked the salt off her fingers, and handed the potato chip bag to Barton.

  “No more chips? Must be pretty serious.”

  “It is. It really is.” The words stalled in her mouth. Was this the wrong thing to do? She was supposed to find out whether or not Alison Cummings wanted to edge Alice Murray out and take over her job. Perhaps if she were honest with him, he would be honest with her. He had said he was falling in love with her. He made love to her as if he cared for her. She could trust him. Still, she urged, “Promise me you won’t tell anyone else.”

  “I promise,” Barton said.

  28

  Shirley had the blues. Sometimes, after a day of good luck—and God knew those had been rare enough in the past few years— sometimes, right when you think you’re actually going to get your shit together and haul your flat, wrinkled ass a few steps up out of the mire of your life, then it seems the gods look down from where they recline on their clouds, sipping nectar and nibbling pitless peaches, and decide, if not to pull the rug out from under you, at least to jiggle it a bit under your feet, just to remind you they can. It was one of those days. She awoke, full of optimism and energy, still high on the drug of the previous night’s wonderful meeting at Alice’s place. She jumped out of bed—well, that was the first disappointment. She only tried to jump. She actually jerked and stumbled, landing on stiff legs, falling sideways, wrenching her spine. Good Goddess! Her back had been bothering her more and more, recently. Wearing those damned high heels to the meeting, instead of her comfortable sneakers or clogs, had pulled something out of alignment. She absolutely hobbled into the kitchen, he
r limbs and joints as brittle and wooden as Pinocchio’s.

  After a breakfast of cleansing green tea and muesli, she took a hot shower. She still didn’t feel up to par, so she broke down and took two aspirin, and as much as she hated to admit it, the damn aspirin helped. Her mood rose.

  Then the phone rang.

  “It started again,” a woman sobbed.

  “Oh, honey.” Shirley listened while Betsy Little grieved because her period had arrived; once again she’d failed to get pregnant.

  “It will happen,” Shirley promised forcefully. “All your medical reports indicate you’re a healthy young woman with no physical problems. You only need to relax—”

  “No more!” Betsy wailed. “No more advice, no more massage. I’m canceling, Shirley. Today’s session and all future sessions. I’ve got to find someone else. You’re bad luck.”

  “Betsy, honey—”

  But the line went dead.

  Shirley clicked her phone off and thumped her forehead down on the kitchen table. She understood that today, probably nobody could say anything that would console the other woman. Betsy would just have to walk through her particular pain on her own. Still, it killed Shirley that Betsy thought she was bad luck. It really, really hurt.

  Plus, there went a chunk of her income.

  Before her thoughts began a downward plummet, she slammed the brakes and reminded herself to be positive.

  She had to remember: With Alice’s help, she’d soon be starting up her retreat. Golden Moments. Now that was something to be joyful about! Shirley grabbed the phone and punched out Alice’s number, eager to discuss the investors’ meeting.

  “TransWorld,” said the receptionist.

  “Alice Murray, please.” She wouldn’t keep Alice on the phone long. She knew Alice was overwhelmed with work, but she just wanted to hear her voice, to regain that electric connection.

  There was a brief silence. Then, “I’m sorry, Alice Murray isn’t here.”

  “Oh.” Shirley checked her calendar. It was a weekday. “Is her secretary, Marilyn Becker, there?”