The Dirty Book Club

by Lisi Harrison

  “A little something I picked up in Paris.”

  “Syphilis?”

  They purred and then leaned past the Lenox china to get a closer look.

  “It’s an autobiography about a young girl named Rey who had loads of questions about sex and no one to ask so she hides out and reads dirty magazines.”

  “Then what?” Dot asked.

  “She masturb—”

  “Marjorie!” Gloria hissed, pointing at the Smoots’ house next door. “Not so loud.”

  “Does she ever get caught?” Liddy asked, the tips of her ears reddening.

  “No. She becomes a sex maniac. Listen to this . . . ‘I kissed his body, his stomach, his penis, his testicles—’ ”

  Dot snatched the book and wrapped it in her Prim: A Modern Woman’s Guide to Manners cover. Then she shyly raised her hand. “Question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did her husband want to be kissed in those places?”

  “Her husband didn’t know about it,” Marjorie said. “She was doing that stuff with her doctor. Rey didn’t believe in monogamy. She thought it was unnatural to stay with one person for the rest of her life, and I agree.”

  “She circulates,” Gloria said, quoting Neil Sedaka.

  “She’s vulgar.”

  “It’s just sex, Lid,” Marjorie said to the lipstick that was still on her cheek.

  “Exactly. She should keep it to herself.”

  “That’s how I feel when you girls swap recipes. I mean, what’s the point of going public with that?”

  “To find new ideas.”

  “To know if we’re doing it right.”

  “To get better.”

  “Same reasons I read about sex.” Marjorie lit a cigarette. “It’s not like you three are going to teach me anything.” Then to Dot, “If you think Robert would rather have you read about table settings than”—Marjorie closed her mouth around a Kosher dill and poked it against the inside of her cheek—“you’re more blitzed than you look. And, Gloria, try what Rey does on page 126 and Leo will never stay at the Biltmore again.” Then to Liddy, “Rey even does it with women.”

  “Why do you always look at me when you talk about lesbians?”

  “I don’t know.” Marjorie smirked. “Why do you always get so defensive?”

  “What else does Rey try?” Gloria asked. Because what if Marjorie was right? What if this book could teach her things, things that would bring Leo home more often?

  Marjorie raised an eyebrow. “I could read it to you, and if you like it I know where to get more.”

  Liddy reached for her crucifix, accidentally grabbing the room key instead.

  “How many more?” Dot asked.

  “One for every full moon from now until we board that airplane to France. We can start our own secret club.”

  “Robert would not approve.”

  “It’s a dirty book club, Dot! No one would approve,” Gloria said, imagining what old Mrs. Smoot would think of a mother who reads about sex while her baby is napping.

  “That’s why rule number one should be: tell no one.”

  Eyes closed, lips nibbling on a prayer; Liddy seemed to be saying an act of contrition—preemptively repenting for the sins they were about to commit.

  “And rule number two is: a husband’s right to privacy cannot and will not be respected,” Marjorie added. “We have to talk the way we did in high school.”

  “I thought you were against rules,” Dot snipped, as she wrote them all down in her black notebook.

  “Not my own, honey,” Marjorie said, with a playful wink. “Never my own.”

  Dot flipped to a fresh page. “So what are we calling pact thirty-five?” Her pen hovered anxiously above the margin.

  “The Dirty Book Club,” Marjorie said, with a credit-where-credit-is-due nod to Gloria. Then she lit four Lucky Strikes, sealed the pact, and began reading The Housewife’s Handbook on Selective Promiscuity; starting a fifty-four-year tradition that would save them all.

  Fear of Flying

  CHAPTER

  Two

  New York City, New York

  Present Day: Thursday, March 31

  Half Moon

  M. J. STARK opened her Sub-Zero: a fridge named as much for its self-contained cooling system as the amount of food she kept inside. She reached for the bottle of prosecco and began the 3,500-square-foot trek across her hardwood floors, shuffling in fuzzy socks past barren bookshelves and a neon No Regrets sign that had never been turned on.

  Poor prosecco, M.J. thought as she curled into the corner of the sectional and muted Project Runway. Light, sexy, and full of sparkle, this effervescent wine didn’t come all the way from Italy to be lit by the glare of a flat-screen TV or chugged by a woebegone woman wearing a bleach-spotted hoodie and some ex-boyfriend’s silk boxers. It was meant for glitter-dusted models during Fashion Week. Boating on the Mediterranean. Giggling girlfriends and their summery perfumes.

  But Fortune’s wheel didn’t give a shit what prosecco was meant for. It spun when it wanted to spin and stopped where it wanted to stop. And prosecco would have to deal with the outcome just like everyone else.

  And so, with a cynical smirk, M.J. lifted her ill-fated companion to the heavens and drank. Charging the alcohol to haul away her pain like a wounded soldier from the battlefield—hands under armpits, heels scraping along the dirt—until its agonizing cries were no longer heard.

  Then, the jiggling sound of someone tampering with her locks. Holding her breath, M.J. strained to listen above her jackhammering heart.

  Logic pointed to the neighbors in #5F who were constantly jamming turquoise envelopes under her door filled with offers to purchase her apartment. Though M.J. refused to sell, their persistence made a case for buying stock in Kate Spade stationery.

  “Hello?” M.J. called, her voice strained and small.

  Then, click.

  The lock turned. The door creaked open. And then an abrupt jolt. The chain.

  Hands shaking, vision coned, M.J. palmed the cushions for her phone. 9-1-1, she thought, as if Siri could read her mind and make the call.

  “The police are on their way!” she managed.

  “It’s me,” called a familiar male voice.

  Dan?

  M.J. kicked off her socks, hurried to unlatch the chain, and then clung to her boyfriend’s firm torso. A log in a torrent of raging white water.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked. His T-shirt carried the stale smell of economy class. She kept clinging anyway.

  “I didn’t think you should be alone tonight.”

  “So . . . what? You just hopped on a plane?”

  “It was more like a dash,” he half smiled, with a superhero’s attempt at modesty. “But yes.”

  “I look like a homeless undergrad. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You would have told me not to come.”

  He was right. “What if I wasn’t home?”

  “I’d have gone to your office.”

  “What if I was out with friends?” she tried, though they both knew there weren’t any friends, not anymore.

  Dan, glimpsing the half-empty bottle of prosecco on the coffee table, gave her a lucky-guess shrug, then presented her with her usual box of See’s butterscotch lollypops. He knew better than to ask why she wasn’t tearing off the foil wrapper the way she normally did.

  Taking his hand, M.J. guided him to the couch. Adrenaline made it hard for her to stand still and reacquaint herself with his California tan and the gold bursts in his hazel eyes. That, and the awkwardness that always seemed to spritz a mist of shyness onto their reunions. It was one of the drawbacks of their long-distance relationship. Eight months of daily conversations, weekend visits, a carpal tunnel’s worth of texts, and, still, that feeling of always having to start over was impossible to shake. But it was worth it. He was worth it.

  Tonight, though, the mist was thicker than usual. Coagulated by Dan’s surprise visit and M.J.’s as
sertion that this night, above all others, was to be endured alone. Even if she had been appropriately waxed and plucked, she couldn’t swing the primal, make-up-for-lost-time sex he was used to. She could barely eke out a genuine smile. But she had to do something. Because when a tanned thirty-four-year-old general practitioner on the verge of opening his own medical practice spontaneously flies across the country to be with his pasty, probably anemic, workaholic girlfriend on the third anniversary of her family’s death, she should, at the very least, unzip her hoodie and show some cleavage.

  “Is that the journal?” he asked, indicating the leather-bound notebook on the cushion beside her.

  M.J. nodded, feeling the heated pinch of mobilizing tears. Like the prosecco, that journal was meant for better things; story ideas, half-baked characters, and the musings of a thirty-one-year-old aspiring author. She bought it back when she was a copywriter at City magazine, barely making rent on her studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen and sleeping with guys who wore silk boxers, back when everything was how it should have been. When M.J.’s handwriting was fat and happy and she was still using pens.

  Now, knees to chest, she flipped past those old entries and entered the zone where those well-fed letters were now pencil gray and wan.

  “It looks like you were possessed when you wrote that,” Dan noted.

  “I was.”

  Shoulders weighted in alcohol, M.J. told Dan about Dr. Cohn, her grief therapist, who was shiny-eyed with relief when she finally agreed to write about March 31. “He gave me his cup of special pens and said I could use whichever one I wanted.”

  “And you asked for a pencil, right?”

  “Yep,” M.J. said, instantly warmed by how well he knew her. “Of course, he thought I was messing with him until I told him I hadn’t used a pen since the accident.”

  Dan closed his eyes and slowly shook his head from side to side. “Poor guy probably wanted to retire.”

  “You have no idea. I thought he was going to bludgeon me with his You Can Be Right or You Can Be in a Relationship mug.”

  Dan laughed harder than he needed to, probably capitalizing on the last bits of levity before M.J. turned herself over to the anguish, as she always did on March 31, and read her entry.

  “I can’t believe you came,” she said, trying her best to sound appreciative, since what she really felt, ungrateful as it was, was a tinge of resentment toward his surprise visit. Because that screaming pain at the base of her belly was all that remained of her family. Feeling that was feeling them. And now that Dan swooped in with his anesthetizing hugs, the pain would fade—they would fade—bringing her that much closer to them being gone for good.

  “I want to help you,” he said, brushing a lifeless strand of hair from her cheek.

  M.J. thanked him, as if helping her was even possible. But they both knew that Fortune spun her wheel and this is where it landed. And short of bringing them back, Dan, her savior, would have to accept that there was nothing he could do to help. Because in the end, M.J. didn’t want to be saved; she wanted what she once had. And that was gone. So she accepted her fate—yet again—and for the first time in three years, read the entry Dr. Cohn made her write.

  Remembering March 31, 2013

  I’m getting off the subway. Heat, stale as morning breath envelops me like a drunk’s hug. I emerge from the tunnel on Prince Street to the putrid smell of trash and an ambulance siren. I wonder if that’s what it felt like to be born. To go from one extreme to the other, with no time to prepare for the sudden change.

  I arrive at Cipriani twenty minutes before our reservation and sit at the bar. I write in my journal—this journal—while I wait for my parents and sister to arrive. They are driving in from Long Island to celebrate my big news: after years of circulating proofs, balancing trays of coffee, and pitching articles that other, more “experienced” writers got to write, I am going to be published in City magazine.

  “It’s called ‘Dial-Up Parents in a High-Speed World,’ ” I say once we’re seated. “Inspired by your struggle to keep up with technology.”

  Mom pinches a bread crumb from Dad’s beard. “I can’t help taking this personally.”

  “Because it is personal.” I remind her of the e-mail. The one where I told her I was in bed with the flu, and she wrote back: LOL.

  April laughs that phlegmy, rolling laugh.

  Mom scrunches her curls. “I thought it stood for lots of love.”

  “I rest my case.”

  April says, “You have to include the time dad texted me to say I left my phone at his house.”

  She reaches for a handful of my fries.

  I smack her hand. “You have your own!”

  “Oh,” she gasps, as if just noticing her plate. “When did those get here?”

  We laugh and tease one another through a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and all the way into dessert. Dad orders a latte. I check my phone.

  My best friend Katie is around the corner at the Mercer Kitchen and wondering what’s taking me so long. She has four tequila shots and eyes on a “hot Malcolm Gladwell.” She tells me to get my ass over there before some slut with brains clubs him over the head and stuffs him in a taxi.

  Dad signs the check. I stand. Mom motions for me to sit back down.

  “We have something for you.”

  That’s when she gives me the empty Montblanc box.

  I glance at April and roll my eyes as if to say, “What is wrong with these people?”

  “A great writer deserves a great pen,” Dad says.

  “Um.” I wave my hand through the empty box with a Vegas magician’s flair; Look, folks, nothing inside . . .

  “We thought you’d enjoy picking it out yourself,” Mom says. “The store is just around the corner.”

  I appreciate the gesture. I really do. But I thought celebrating my first big break at the Montblanc store with my parents would be depressing.

  So I lie. I say I’m tired and ask if we can go Sunday after our weekly brunch instead.

  They smile, trying not to look hurt. April says she has to miss brunch. She’s going to some fitness convention. I tell her it’s no big deal. I’ll see her next week.

  We hug good-bye on Greene Street. I feel flushed from champagne, the promise of Hot Malcom, the love of my family, and a career that is about to take off. The feeling: that life doesn’t get any better than this, propels me to the Mercer Kitchen and lights me from within.

  Katie is right about Hot Malcolm. And Hot Malcolm says I look like an average-sized Elle Macpherson, so we hit it off instantly. Between shots, Katie is making out with her boyfriend, and Hot Malcolm is telling me the stories behind his assortment of silver rings. We’re contemplating a karaoke bar when my phone rings. The number is blocked. I send it to voice mail. I order another round of shots.

  My phone rings again.

  I do a shot.

  It rings again.

  I finally answer.

  There’s been an accident . . . Long Island Expressway. A truck driver was texting . . . He hit Dad’s junky old Audi . . . it spun . . . slammed into an SUV . . . no airbags . . . everyone killed instantly.

  If only I went to the Montblanc store.

  If only I bought that pen . . .

  If only . . . If only . . . If only . . .

  M.J. closed her tear-soaked journal, curled into the corner of her couch, and sobbed like it happened yesterday. Dan rubbed her feet with his warm doctor hands, injecting compassion into her bloodstream with his magical medical touch. M.J. didn’t know if she should unleash on him for crashing her pity party or write a romance novel about it. She did know that, Dan or no Dan, it hurt like hell.

  CHAPTER

  Three

  New York City, New York

  Friday, April 22

  Full Moon

  TWO MOANS AND it was over.

  Ahhhhweeeeuhhh. Ahhhhweeeeuhhh.

  There was a time when M.J. would have turned inward for hours and searched for the best
way to describe the sound of concert tickets ribboning through her paper shredder. Car tires spinning on ice . . . Shouting, “Are we here?” into a kazoo . . . A sheep passing a kidney stone . . . But these days she flatly referred to it as “another set of complimentary tickets she was too busy to use.”

  Thirty-five floors below her office at City magazine, brake lights strobed to the beat of start-and-stop traffic. Yellow cabs honked. Buses screeched to a lazy stop. New Yorkers rushed, dined, danced, traded, designed, debated, and created. And M.J., a ghostly reflection in her window, floated above it all.

  “Delegate!” said Nicole from graphics as she passed by the open door.

  M.J. swiftly raised her middle finger above the rising towers of submissions and proofs that crowded her desk like the Gotham City skyline. It was a playfully pat response to her coworkers’ needling reminders that M.J. had a competent staff and a sentinel of interns at the ready. She didn’t have to do it all.

  But she did.

  Work was her escape. Deadlines were her lifelines. When she was editing other people’s stories she forgot about her own. That was Dr. Cohn’s explanation, not hers. M.J. didn’t have time for explanations. A hoisted middle finger would have to do.

  “Guess where I am?” Dan asked, minutes later over Skype. Bare-chested and dressed in butter-yellow surf trunks, he was perched on the railing of an outdoor deck holding a bottle of Dos Equis; the emerald-colored bottle green as the ocean behind him. A pair of mirrored aviators resting on top of his head.

  “Spring break?” M.J. tried, though she didn’t have time for games. Truth? She assumed he was calling to wish her luck on her soon-to-be-official promotion and that’s why she accepted the call. His thoughtfulness was irresistible; one of the few things that could tear her away from her prospectus on the future of City magazine. Not that anyone was expecting it. But they would. And when they did, she’d be ready.

  “Nope. Guess again.”

  “Dan, I—”

  “The cottage,” he said. “We got it! I closed escrow today.”

  M.J. softened. Whether Dan genuinely considered his accomplishments theirs, or he used we to keep her from feeling alone in the world, didn’t matter. His use of inclusive pronouns gave M.J. a sense of belonging that made her smile out loud.