The Dirty Book Club

by Lisi Harrison

  “It’s packed on a Friday night.” Jules pouted. “But I’m pretty sure my villa has a minibar.”

  Henry and June

  CHAPTER

  Sixteen

  Pearl Beach, California

  Wednesday, July 20

  Full Moon

  FIRST A SWIFT metallic swoosh, then daylight. Aggressive, aggressive daylight. M.J. splayed her palms into the mattress—whose mattress was another matter entirely—and pushed herself upright; a cascade of miniature liquor bottles rolled toward her thigh and settled with a collective clink. It was too soon for upright. The nausea was so unbelievably disorienting. Through a squint that was framed by a headache, M.J. saw a backlit figure of what appeared to be a sickly, possibly mentally ill woman: fuzzy socks, robe limply tied, and hair in cornrows. Behind her, the parted curtains swayed to a stop.

  “Jules?”

  A whimper.

  “God, you look as bad as I feel.”

  “How many Claritin did I take last night?”

  M.J. leg-swept the miniature bottles onto the floor. “I don’t think it was the Claritin.”

  “Shoot,” Jules said, in a whisper. “I’m not supposed to take antihistamines with a cocktail.”

  “You didn’t take it with a cocktail.” M.J. flipped her pillow to the cold side. “You took it with an entire minibar.”

  Jules’s breath hitched. “Did you hear that?” She cocked her head and froze. A deer after the chik-chik of a hunter’s rifle. “It’s Destiny! She can’t see me like this.” She hurried for the bathroom. “Can you let her in?”

  “I’m not sure,” M.J. said to the room service cart that was lodged in the bedroom doorway. Silver trays were stacked high but unevenly. It was a carpet-cleaning fee waiting to happen. M.J. summoned her strength, which was none, and shoved.

  The cart didn’t budge, but the tray tower collapsed and toppled. A dirty bomb of syrup-soaked pancakes, french fries, bacon bits, and shrimp tails spilled onto the cream-colored rug. Over was the only way out.

  Shielding her eyes from the brain-biting sun, M.J. opened the door to find not Destiny, but Addie, in an ivory dress and pigtails, radiating youth and innocence. The whites of her eyes were actually white and her forehead dewy with hydration.

  “Did you ride that here?” M.J. asked, glimpsing the skateboard pinned beneath Addie’s high-top sneaker.

  “I’m low on gas.” She handed a grocery bag to M.J.

  “What’s this?”

  “Hangover helpers.”

  M.J. peeked inside and found a glorious assortment of bagels and artisan cream cheeses. “Carbs! How did you know?”

  “There were messages.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes. You wanted to know if Bungee was in my bathtub, if we were having sex in my bathtub, and if I came in my bathtub. Then you all sang ‘Aqua-come’ to the tune of ‘Aqualung’ and laughed for, like, fifteen minutes. Alcohol was obvious, the hangover implied.”

  “Are you sure it was me?” M.J. asked. Not because she was incapable of blowing up someone’s phone with drunk messages and goofy bastardized songs. She had done it hundreds of times in college. But that was college. And this was now.

  Nodding a mighty yes, Addie flashed her phone log. There were eight missed voice mails from NYC Ninja.

  “NYC Ninja? That’s what you call me?”

  “Only behind your back. Skinny New York Chick Who Dresses Like She Works at the Morgue was too wordy. God, it smells like a beer burp in here.” Addie eyed M.J.’s lavender nightie upon which was one very coy looking Minnie Mouse sniffing a bouquet of tulips. “What’s that about?”

  M.J. glanced down. “I have no idea.”

  “Hey, Sweet Child,” Jules chirped. She dislodged the room service cart and breezed past the spilled food, coral caftan billowing around her calves, floppy hat shading her face.

  “Stand down,” M.J. said. “It’s just Addie.”

  “Oh.” Jules removed the hat. “Make yourself at home,” she said, then shuffled back into the bedroom.

  “What’s up with your hair? Are those cornrows?” Addie asked as she followed Jules with the self-righteous prance of someone who hadn’t pickled her kidneys. “Who did that to you?”

  “M.J.”

  “Well, can she undo it?”

  Jules starfished onto the bed. “Decapitate me. It’s easier.”

  Addie cast a sweeping glance around the room. “Where’s Britt?”

  “Probably at home,” M.J. said. “Why?”

  “She has the deed to the bookstore. Will you call her for me? The speaker on my phone is waterlogged. It got wet during the bathtub challenge.” Addie’s lips curled into a wicked smile. “So did I.”

  Jules lifted her head. “Does that mean you . . . ?”

  “It means if Easton calls me ‘boss’ one more time my nipples will invert. I need to send that deed back to France and be done with this nightmare. Then we can talk about the bath.”

  M.J. found her phone under the bed along with four missed calls from Dan and a chain of texts, none of which she remembered.

  DAN: Hospital fire in Boston. If ur near a TV turn it on. Might be terrorism.

  DAN: Not terrorism. It was electrical. Oxygen from tanks and incubators made it worse.

  DAN: Evacuating. Terrible.

  DAN: Answer ur phone.

  DAN: U still at the beach club?

  DAN: Are u getting these?

  DAN: Why aren’t u picking up? Should I be worried?

  DAN: OFFICIALLY WORRIED.

  M.J.: Hey, s’me. Ha, my font just slurred.

  DAN: Where are u?

  M.J.: Majestic. In Jules’ room with bro.

  M.J.: I mean bro.

  M.J.: I mean Britt.

  M.J.: Duck I hate auto-correct.

  M.J.: DUCK!

  M.J.: I mean fuck! This phone keeps iJacking my texts.

  M.J.: iJacking instead of hijacking cuz it’s an iPhone. Get it?

  DAN: When will u be home? I have to talk to u about something.

  M.J.: Minnie mouse is a lesbian.

  DAN: U wasted?

  M.J.: Wayyyy-stud!

  M.J.: Ha! Way-stud. You’re a way-stud. Get it?

  DAN: What are u drinking?

  M.J.: More.

  “Shit,” M.J. said. “I have to go.”

  “Not yet!” Addie snatched the phone and called Britt, anxiously twirling a finger around one of her pigtails while she waited for the call to connect. Once it did, they heard the soft strum of a harp. It was coming from under the sheets.

  It strummed again.

  Then again.

  Jules pulled back the duvet to find Britt with half a head of cornrows, a brown M&M stuck to her collarbone, and the phone resting on her cheekbone.

  “You’re here?”

  “No.” Britt pulled the duvet back over her head just as Destiny appeared in the bedroom doorway. She was dressed in denim cutoffs, a black mesh tank, and devil-red sneakers that maintained a safe distance from the scattered food. “What’s going on, Mom? Why do you look like Stevie Wonder?” She cut a look to M.J. and Addie. “Who are they?”

  “I left a window open last night and the raccoons got in. My friends offered to help me tidy up. Destiny, I’d like you to meet—”

  “You have friends?”

  Jules giggled. “ ’Course I do, silly. Now tell me, how was Oceanside? How’s Daddy?”

  Destiny’s upturned nose crinkled. “You don’t know how your own husband is?”

  “Of course I know. What I meant was how was he with you? Did you have fun?”

  “Yeah, Mom, we raged.” Her gaze lifted toward the three pairs of underwear hanging from the blades of the ceiling fan. “Not as much as those raccoons, though.”

  Jules managed a tight-lipped smile. “Are you working the reservation desk today or the Kids Club?”

  “I gave my shift to Krista.”

  “Why?”

  “Chest has the day off so we’re gonna h
ang.”

  “Chest? Who’s Chest?”

  “My boyfriend.”

  “I thought you were seeing Alex from back home.” She brought a hand to her heart. “Did you two break up?”

  “No, we just call him Chest because he never wears shirts.”

  Addie snickered.

  Jules lowered onto the edge of the bed. “So where will you and Alex be hanging?”

  “Around.”

  “And what will you be wearing?”

  “This.”

  “You’re just pickin’, right?”

  “No.”

  “Destiny, honey, you’re going to get old and new monia dressed like that. How about a pair of jeans and that cute white top from Brandy Melville?”

  In a glyph of teenage impatience, Destiny rolled her heavily lined eyes toward the heavens, as if God was the only one who could possibly understand the extent of her intolerable existence. “I have to go.”

  “Keep your phone on and please be home by five.” Jules stood and pulled her daughter in for a hug. “Actually, home by three would be better, you know, before it starts getting dark.” Destiny stiffened, arms hanging limply by her side. “And make good choices.”

  “I’m not going to an orgy, Mom.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Addie mumbled.

  “Addie!” Jules snapped.

  “You’re Addie?” Destiny stepped into the room. “Addie Oliver?”

  “Guilty.”

  “You know her?”

  Destiny ignored her mother’s question and introduced herself. “Some girls at the beach were talking about you the other day.”

  “All bad stuff, I hope,” Addie said.

  “They said you showed them how to—” Destiny widened her eyes, goading Addie to read her mind.

  “Surf?” Addie guessed.

  Destiny shook her head.

  “Skateboard?”

  Another shake.

  “Make Botox?”

  “No! How to use a—” She lifted her index finger and made a buzzing sound.

  “Vibrator!” Addie called, a charades player with the winning answer.

  “Yes.”

  “What?” Jules yelped.

  “It must have been Laura and Amy,” said Addie.

  “No.”

  “Mary-Elizabeth and Stephanie?”

  “It was Jenn and Camille.”

  “Right, I remember them. They stopped by the women’s clinic last week for—” Addie stopped herself. “Actually, I can’t tell you why they were there, that would be unethical. But, yes, I did teach them how to use a vibrator.”

  Jules’s nostrils flared. “And that’s not unethical?”

  “I didn’t demonstrate! I hooked them up with a gift bag and a couple of Duracells. It was nothing. Know your own body before you share it with someone else, I always say.”

  “Why?” Jules asked.

  “Why, what?”

  “Why do you always say that?”

  “Because young girls need to take control of their sexuality. Especially, when they’re coming into the clinic asking for birth control.” Addie slapped a hand over her mouth. “Shit! You didn’t hear that.” Then to Destiny, “I can put a package together for you if you want.”

  Jules wedged herself in the narrow space between them. “My daughter does not need a package.”

  “She’s right,” Destiny said. “Mom’s the one who needs the package. At least until Dad moves up here, which will probably be never.” With that she turned on the heel of her red sneaker, leaving Jules to vomit on the Majestic’s fine linens—a mortifying embarrassment that she would later tell Housekeeping was the unfortunate result of the stomach flu. Destiny’s, of course.

  * * *

  “HUNDREDS OF SCENARIOS went through my head last night when I was trying to get in touch with you,” Dan said, when M.J. staggered into the cottage. “And Disneyland was none of them.”

  It took a moment for M.J. to realize that he was referring to Jules’s Minnie Mouse nightgown, which she was still wearing. She would have explained that putting on leather leggings while hungover was like forcing a twin sheet on a California king. On a boat. During a category four hurricane. But that required speaking, and her headache demanded silence. So M.J. didn’t ask about the khaki duffel bag by the front door. Instead, she would spoon the couch pillows and wait for Dan to shed some light (dim, please!) on what appeared to be some sort of exit strategy, minus the strategy.

  “I wanted to talk to you about it first, but . . . ,” he said, lifting himself to sit on the kitchen counter.

  She needed him beside her so she could sniff his coconut-scented skin like smelling salts, enmesh herself in the ropy muscles of his arms, let him do the breathing for them both. But Dan’s heels, which were knocking against one of the cabinets, were too restless to spoon.

  “I have to go to Boston for six days. Seven, max.”

  Shock propelled M.J. upright. “Boston? Why?” There was a high-pitched quiver to her voice. She needed water. She needed central air-conditioning. She needed this to not be happening. Not again. “Are you leaving because I didn’t come home last night?”

  “No. I’m leaving because of the hospital fire. Makeshift wards are being built all over Boston and the Red Cross needs experienced volunteers to set them up.”

  “Like hospital pop-up shops?” M.J. peeped, though she wasn’t sure why. Neither of them seemed amenable to cutesy comments, least of all her.

  “A guy from the team I worked with in Jakarta asked if I could help.”

  “Of course he did.”

  Dan slid off the countertop, opened the fridge. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you say yes to everyone.” M.J. bit the insides of her cheeks. “Except me.”

  “Are you implying that I’m not here for you?”

  “No, Dan, I’m stating it quite directly,” she wanted to say but didn’t dare. Not while Dan was glaring at her with such narrow-eyed contempt, a glare so chilling it literally made her shiver. Not a single ember of amusement warmed his face. This time, for the first time, M.J. had gone too far.

  She should have apologized, blamed her snark on the hangover, erased his memory with a mind-numbing blow job. But the four chambers in her heart were pumping pistons, loosening the dormant feelings that had been calcifying inside her for months. “You tricked me.”

  “Tricked you?”

  “You sold me on a life that doesn’t exist.” She watched him twist the top off a beer and toss the cap in the sink even though he knew caps went in the trash. “I moved here so we could be together and you’ve been gone ever since.” She was crying now. Leaking tears and snot and all the selfish sentiments she wished she didn’t have. “I want to be supportive, I really do. I know these people need you, and I admire you for wanting to help, but I gave up my career for you and—”

  Dan slammed the bottle on the countertop. “Seriously?”

  Unable to meet his eyes, M.J. watched the wedding bands on her thumb blur and distort through her pooling tears.

  “You gave up your career for me? That’s not what happened, M.J., not even close.” He was pacing now, traversing the kitchen floor like an animal trapped. “I was your rebound, remember? The one you ran to after Gayle broke your heart. I wasn’t your first choice. City was. But I never let that bother me. Why? Because you’re my first choice and I’m happy to be with you any way I can.”

  “Said the guy who keeps bailing on me,” she mumbled, still to her blurring rings.

  “I’m not bailing on you, M.J., I’m doing my job.”

  “You don’t work for the Red Cross, Dan.”

  “And you don’t work, period! It’s like you’re purposely trying to not make a life for yourself here. Like you’re . . .” He ran a hand through his damp hair, spiking it into dark brown hackles. “Most of your things are still in New York and you’ve made no effort to get them. Are you having second thoughts? Is that it?”

  A fly la
nded on M.J.’s knee. She banished it with a spiteful swipe. “Dan, you’re the one who keeps leaving, not me.”

  He hung his head and exhaled. Then, calmer, said, “You were fine with all my leaving when you lived in New York.”

  M.J. searched for a suitable response. But Dan was right. She was fine with it. Or rather, she had been too busy to notice.

  “You used to love how we gave each other space to pursue our goals. That we weren’t needy or possessive. And now . . .” He stopped when he saw her fresh spill of tears and sat beside her. His expression was softer, his touch warm and sincere. “M.J., if you think I’m doing this because I’m not committed to you, you’re wrong.”

  “Well, you seem to be chomping at the bit to get away,” M.J. muttered.

  “Champing.”

  “What?”

  “It’s champing at the bit, not chomping.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It is not.”

  M.J. dried her cheeks on Minnie Mouse, then rested a hand on Dan’s wrist. Come sunset that wrist will be gone. “Wanna bet?”

  “Sure,” Dan said, embers and sparks returning to his face. “What are the stakes?”

  “If you’re right, you have my blessing to go to Boston.”

  “And if I’m not?”

  “You stay.”

  They agreed with a firm handshake, drew their phones, and woke their search engines.

  Dan’s lips moved as he read the results. “Shit.”

  “Yes!” M.J. trumpeted, hangover be dammed. Of course she felt guilty taking Dan away from the displaced patients of Massachusetts General. She wasn’t a monster. But the Red Cross could replace Dan, M.J. could not. “Unpack your rucksack, Dr. Hartwell. Because Bost-on is Bost-off.”

  He lowered his phone. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” She beamed. “They’ll find another volunteer.”

  “No, are you sure you want to do that,” he pointed at her bicycling legs.

  “You mean celebrate?”

  “I mean gloat.” Dan practically pressed his screen against M.J.’s nose.

  She scanned four pages of search results before conceding. And when she did she felt as if her bones had liquefied and her soul had been swept away by the current. Not only because she was forced to say good-bye to Dan—again. But because she had said good-bye to her former self at the same time. The self that knew its way around the English language better than most, definitely better than Dan.