The Dirty Book Club

by Lisi Harrison

  “How healthy of you.”

  “I know, right?”

  Addie barefooted into the kitchen, where her prescription bottles were lined up like chess pieces. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, painkillers; she took one of each, then one more painkiller. “Nap time.”

  And then it wasn’t. Destiny called in hysterics.

  “I have to go,” Addie said.

  “Where?”

  “The Majestic. Destiny’s in trouble.”

  “Where’s Jules?”

  “Working. It’s Piper Goddard’s wedding.” Addie found the key to the Mini Cooper in the mail basket. “Later, Salivator.” Then with a giggle: “I have no idea why I said that.”

  “You’re not driving.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just took two Percocet.”

  Addie tossed her the key.

  “Thank you,” M.J. said, appreciating her compliance. “I’ll call a Lyft.”

  Addie was standing in the open doorway, still barefoot. “Lyft? There’s no time for Lyft. One of us is driving and if it’s not me . . .”

  “Dan is on his way home from some medical supply store and then we’re going to Africa. I can’t just drop everything.”

  “I’m not asking you to drop everything, just this bullshit driving phobia of yours.”

  “I don’t understand,” M.J. said, bicast leather sandals planted firmly on the shag. “What’s the urgency?”

  “Chest is dead.”

  “Dead? Well, why doesn’t Destiny call the police?”

  “She thinks she killed him.”

  * * *

  “MY NAME IS May-June Stark and I am fastening my seat belt,” she said, probably out loud, but who knows? It was impossible to hear above the anxiety orchestra crescendoing inside her: heart on percussion, ears on strings, thoughts on brass. “I am adjusting my rearview mirror. My nails are painted Pink Flamenco. The neighbor’s goldendoodle is barking.”

  Addie turned on the radio.

  M.J. shut it off.

  “I am putting the key in the ignition. I can’t breathe. Yes, I can. I can breathe. I am breathing. I couldn’t be talking if I wasn’t breathing.”

  “Are you going to do this the whole way?”

  “It’s one of my tools. It’s how I stay calm.” M.J. swallowed. “I’m going to turn on the car.”

  “Please do.”

  M.J. pressed the start/stop button. The engine giggled its way to a steady hum. “It’s on. I’m sweating.”

  “You’re glowing.”

  “I’m terrified.”

  “You’re a Powerpuff Girl.”

  “Why a Powerpuff Girl?”

  “It’s fun to say.”

  “True.” M.J. white-knuckled the steering wheel, hands at six and three. “What if we get in an accident?”

  “I’ll give you a painkiller,” Addie said. “Now drive.”

  * * *

  DESTINY POKED HER pierced nose through the crack in the door of room 729, before opening it all the way. Smeared makeup marred her face as if she had just collided with an oil painting. And her hair—dyed rebellion black—spilled from her professional bun. Her Majestic Resort uniform, however, remained perfectly intact: crisp white shirt and burgundy blazer with a pleat down her slacks sharp enough to slit a wrist. Or a boyfriend’s neck, as the case might be.

  “What took you so long?” she asked with the urgency of a girl whose afternoon took a turn for the worse.

  “We got pulled over for going five miles an hour in a thirty-mile zone,” Addie explained. “Are you okay?”

  Destiny nodded, though her rasping breaths told another story. “Is she?”

  M.J., who was fanning her face with a Do Not Disturb sign, lied and said she was.

  Inside the room, the cream-colored duvets were fluffed to a five-star standard. The plein air paintings were meticulously centered on the sand-colored wallpaper. Central air sang a pleasant tune called seventy-two degrees. And a shirtless, listless sixteen-year-old boy was lying faceup on the carpet between the queen beds.

  Addie lifted her ear off his shaved chest. “He’s not dead, but he is one burp and a flame away from blowing the place up.”

  “What?” Destiny asked, wringing her hands.

  “He’s filled to the gills with cheap booze.” Addie fired off a quick text. A doctor alerting her nurse to send in the next patient. “Nothing a bottle of Advil and a burger can’t fix.”

  Destiny collapsed onto the bed and cried relief.

  “So what actually happened?” M.J. asked. Someone had to.

  Destiny sniffled. “I was working my shift at the front desk and he just showed up, super wasted. So I got a key for a vacant room and snuck him in so he wouldn’t make a scene, but of course, he thought I was bringing him here so we could do it, and when I said, ‘I broke up with you, so why would we do it?’ he called me a tease and pushed me on the bed, so I pushed him onto the floor and then his eyes closed and he didn’t get up, so . . .”

  Addie stretched out on the couch and yawned. “When did you break up with him?”

  “Last night.”

  “Why?”

  “Sex.”

  “It wasn’t good?”

  “No,” Destiny said, padding off to the bathroom. “It wasn’t . . . anything. That was the problem.”

  “Chest is impotent?”

  “No.” Destiny blew her nose. “It’s me.”

  “You?”

  “I know it’s lame but”—she returned to the bed—“I’m not ready, and Chest was.”

  “Does your mom know?”

  “Why would I tell her?”

  “Because she thinks you’re a slut.”

  “I know.” Destiny smiled wryly.

  “Why do you want your mom to think you’re a slut?” M.J. asked, deciding in that moment that she’d rather give rise to a cancerous mole than a teenaged daughter.

  “It makes her mad, and I like when she gets mad.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  “Because I’m over her whole ‘let’s whistle a happy tune and pretend everything is perfect’ bullshit. Because it’s not perfect. It’s pathetic. I’m a bitch; Dad’s an asshole; she’s literally allergic to her job, and sometimes I wish she’d just get off the friggin’ cross and act like it.”

  “Is this how you talk when I’m not around?” Jules asked from the open doorway, holding a key card and her composure with equal amounts of grace. “Meet me at the bar.”

  “No,” Destiny said. “I’m going back to work.”

  “Not you,” Jules hissed. “Them. We’re staying right here.”

  She closed the door with a reverberating slam that seemed to chase M.J. and Addie down the hall and straight into the elevator.

  * * *

  THE LOBBY WAS their only option since the rest of the resort had been commandeered by the Goddard wedding. Though it lacked the intimacy of the Oyster Bar and the classic dark wooded elegance of the steak house, there were couches and salted nuts and enough alcohol to quiet M.J.’s nerves and flood her blood with an indisputable reason to ditch the car and take a Lyft home.

  “I think my Percocets could use a scotch after that, don’t you?” Addie said, ordering a round. Then: “Look who it is . . .” Her unsteady gaze led to a woman sitting next to the piano, peering above a copy of West Coast Living magazine, foot shaking restlessly inside a neon-green Nike Air Zoom.

  “Britt?”

  Addie limply whipped a cashew at her and laughed, as if they had just ended a pub crawl, not broken up a book club that spanned two generations.

  “Stop!” Britt set down the magazine and heel-toed toward them in a huff. “I’m trying to be discreet.”

  “Then you should have worn different shoes,” Addie said with a self-amused snort.

  “My Spouse Spotter app is saying that Paul is here,” Britt said, ignoring the dig but not the waitress. “Double chardonnay, please.”

  “I’m sorry, miss, do you mean two glasses?�
�

  “I mean, hurry.”

  The pianist claimed his bench and began his set with the creeping notes of Beethoven’s Für Elise.

  “So what are you ladies doing here?” Britt asked. “Have you been”—she removed her tennis visor and revived her flattened bangs—“hanging out?”

  “Not at all,” M.J. downplayed. “Destiny needed Addie, and Addie needed a ride, so—”

  “You drove?”

  Addie rolled her eyes so hard she lost her balance and timbered into M.J.’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t exactly call it driving.”

  “Is she okay?” Britt mouthed to M.J.

  “Probably not.”

  Britt smiled a deep dimple, and just like that, any tension M.J. felt between them was gone.

  And then it was back.

  This time in the form of a petite blond in a cream-colored suit, a voluminous blowout, and a huge bone to pick with Addie.

  “I cannot believe what you did.” Jules sneered.

  “She was trying to help,” M.J. said.

  “Oh, I know exactly what she was trying to do.”

  “You don’t,” M.J. said to Jules’s flared nostrils. “She was genuinely worried, and you were at the wedding and—”

  “S’okay,” Addie slurred, and then tried to stand.

  Before M.J. could stop her, Jules helped her up with a friendly yank. Then she pulled Addie into her arms and said, “Thank you,” into her ponytail.

  “Thank you?” Britt asked, just as surprised. “What did she do?”

  “She texted me and told me Destiny was in trouble, that’s what she did.”

  Jules gripped Addie’s shoulders and grinned.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Addie said, turning away from her high-beaming admiration. “Shouldn’t you be at the wedding?”

  Jules removed her blazer, folded it over her arm, sat. “I was relieved of my duties.”

  “Fired?” Addie gasped. “For leaving?”

  “No. Because the beautician I booked was a no-show.”

  M.J. gave Jules her martini. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said, popping an olive in her mouth. “While Piper was working herself into a lather, yours truly was turning bridesmaids into beauties. Which was no easy feat, let me tell you. And now you’re looking at the lead makeup artist for the new Goddard Cosmetics boutique, opening right here in the resort.”

  Amid squealing congratulations, Britt ordered a celebratory round.

  “What are you doing here?” Jules asked, as if seeing her for the first time.

  “Waiting to catch Paul in the act.”

  “The act of what?”

  “Cheating,” she said, as if it should have been obvious.

  “What do your other friends think about all this?” M.J. asked.

  “I haven’t told them. Everyone thinks Paul and I are perfect.”

  “Maybe you are,” M.J. said.

  “Never doubt a wife’s instinct,” Jules said, her eyes icy blue and sure. “For example, I found this on the passenger seat of Brandon’s car when he drove me home from the hospital.” She pulled out a Ziploc snack bag out of her purse. A dark brown hair extension was sealed between its plastic gums. “I’m like Prince Charming with Cinderella’s slipper. I’ll carry it with me until I find its rightful owner.”

  Britt quickly put on her visor and looked out the window, suddenly taken with the sunset.

  “He told me it was a color sample he brought for Destiny, you know, so he could coax her into dying her hair back to a more approachable shade of brown. I believed him until he told me to quit the club and”—she snapped her fingers—“just like that, my green flags turned red.”

  “Jules, I—”

  She silenced Britt with a flash of her palm. “I mean he didn’t wear a wedding ring. So, really, I can’t blame the women, now could I?”

  “There were others?” M.J. asked on behalf of Britt, whose shaking hand was covering her mouth.

  “Oh, shugah, that boy sowed more oats than Quaker. Not to say that Brandon is a bad man, he’s not. I got pregnant in high school and was trying to do the honorable thing—we both were, but it backfired and Destiny sees right through it. She lost respect for him because he cheats, and for me because I let him get away with it. But that’s about to change.” She shook the bowl of nuts the way a miner sifts gold through a strainer. “I filed for a divorce.”

  “No,” Britt cried. “You can’t. It’s my fault. I fuck-attacked him. I’m the bad one. Granted, I did stop the second I found out who he was, but still, I started this and I’m going to make it right.”

  “There’s no making this right, Britt. Not between me and Brandon, anyway, but you can make it right between you and Paul.”

  “I agree. I’m going to tell him everything tonight.”

  “Like hell you are,” Jules said, plucking a pistachio from the bowl.

  “ ’Scuse me?”

  “Telling Paul will tear you two apart. And what kind of Liaison of Love would I be if I let you do that? No, what you’re going to do is promise me you’ll never cheat on him again and that you’ll do whatever you can to make your marriage work while you still have a chance.”

  “I promise,” Britt said, crossing her heart. “But what about you? How can I make things right with us?”

  “Agree to be my plus one at work parties, you know, if I can’t find a suitable date.”

  “Of course I will,” Britt said, hugging her. “I’m so, so sorry,” she cried.

  Jules pat-patted her on the back. “I can imagine,” she said. “Brandon never was very good in the sack.” Then in a whisper, “Easton is much better.”

  “Easton?” Addie squealed. “Easton is gay!”

  “No, he’s just a liberal Republican.” She cracked down on a pistachio nut. “A liberal Republican who’s got my shy vagina talking a mile a minute.”

  Laughing, M.J. checked the time: Ninety minutes until her airport shuttle arrived. Ninety minutes until the four of them moved on.

  The pianist started playing Norah Jones.

  “Now what’s this Paul of yours like?” Jules asked. “Is he one of those slick nightclub types?”

  Britt laughed at how off-base she was—not just about Paul’s perceived slickness, but the relevance of nightclubs in general. She scrolled through her phone in search of a photo that depicted her husband before he became a ball-powdering pube-plucker.

  “Here he is at the dog-a-thon with our old pug, Maple.” She handed Jules the screen.

  “That’s Paul.”

  “Yep.”

  “No,” Jules said, “that’s Paul. I see him around here all the time. Come”—she scribbled her account number on their check—“let’s catch this critter in the act.”

  * * *

  OUTSIDE, ON THE great lawn, a white tent gave cover to an assemblage of middle-aged wedding guests who, by lubricating their replaced hips and pinned knees with Veuve Clicquot, came to believe that dancing to a cover of “I Feel Good” was in no way painful.

  M.J. wondered why they needed a tent at all. It hadn’t rained in months. And the bride and groom, who undoubtedly paid a premium for the cliffside location, couldn’t even see the sunset, which was now painting the sky with gashes, as if a tiger had run its claws across a mass of blue flesh and drew blood, orange blood that was deepening to red.

  “Why are we standing out here on the grass?” Britt asked Jules. “And where are Addie’s shoes?”

  Jules answered the first question with a switchblade’s flick of her finger, which was aimed back at the resort, where thousands of plants covered the building’s exterior like a patchwork quilt. Some waxy and thick-leafed, others feathery, swordlike, or lily-pad round. And the colors? Chartreuse, aubergine, cucumber green, yellow striped . . .

  “It’s called a living wall,” Jules told them.

  “Trippy,” Addie mused.

  M.J. snapped a picture.

  “What does this have to do with Pa
ul?” Britt asked.

  As if on cue, a small white truck rolled up to the wall, extended its hydra-ladder, and raised the man inside the bucket toward the center of the installation. Once stopped, he turned on his misting hose and began figure-eighting it over the plants.

  “He’s been working on it for months.”

  Britt’s wide eyes darted from Jules to Paul and back to Jules. “What about his back?”

  “He designed it and his team installed it.”

  “Bungee!” Addie swatted Jules on the arm. “He was working on this. He must be part of Paul’s team.”

  “Paul has a team?”

  Jules nodded. “His crew did the installation, and then Paul comes by at night to water it.”

  Britt watched Paul ascend and descend in his bucket, misting his leafy canvas. “No bush in the bush,” she snickered. “That was his motto. Pubes, pit-hair, even eyebrows, he trims it all when he works outside, something about feeling the breeze.”

  “Why didn’t he tell you?” M.J. asked, and then quickly remembered the contract she kept hidden from Dan for months.

  “Because after years of believing in his half-baked pot-inspired dead-end business plans I told him I only wanted to hear about the sure things.”

  “Then he probably won’t say anything for two more weeks,” Jules said.

  “Why? What happens then?”

  “If the plants thrive, Paul will be under contract to build living walls for every Cartwright resort in North America. And if those work, he’ll get Europe, Asia, and Australia.”

  “And if they die?”

  “He’s back on the couch.” Jules lifted her gaze to the brightening moon. After a brief pause she said, “It’s full tonight. We should be having a meeting.”

  “We never got our next book,” M.J. said, because it was easier than reminding them that they quit.

  “It’s probably in that secret room,” Addie said, with a jazzy flash of her hands and a flippant smirk.

  “What secret room?” Britt asked.

  “The one in the store.”

  “Does Verizon know about this?”

  “No.” Another jazzy-flash. “It’s a secret, remember?”

  “How long until these Percocets wear off?” M.J. asked.