The Dirty Book Club Read online

  * * *

  THE DAYS THAT followed were uneventful and wonderfully routine. Filled with the “married people moments” M.J. had longed for when they lived on opposite coasts. A good-bye peck from Dan as he dashed off to a meeting. A hello peck when he returned. His day was always great, and hers could only be summed up with a You wouldn’t understand sigh. Because Dan Hartwell could never sit alone in a beach cottage searching for the perfect way to describe the differences between New York and California. He’d never make a list called Ten Ways to Describe Sunlight on the Ocean, and if he did, “raining diamonds” would not be on it. Dan would not waste time on thoughts because thoughts don’t save lives. People do. But M.J. was fresh out of those.

  She had tried contacting the DBC girls several times, but they were too busy for lunch and not interested in dinner. Hannah found out about the pregnancy and left David. And Catherine and Winsome were in Haiti. Dan sensed the return of M.J.’s loneliness and urged her to give it more time. But time was the problem, not the solution. M.J. was drowning in it. Free time. Spare time. Downtime. Quiet time. Alone time. Me time . . . And drowning women don’t want more water. They need someone to stop the flow; something Dan thought he was doing when he came home from work one night with a bottle of Bordeaux, an army-green backpack, and the need to open both on the deck.

  “What is all this?” M.J. asked, glimpsing the legal pads, pens, energy bars, sunscreen, and O.B. tampons. “I don’t get it.”

  Dan handed her an envelope. Inside were two tickets to Bangui M’Poko International Airport.

  “Hawaii?”

  “Central Africa.” He beamed as he filled their glasses. “Destination: about 186 miles west of Bangui in a village called—”

  “What?” M.J. laughed, though she found none of this funny. Even if he was joking, still, not funny. “Why?”

  “Measles outbreak. There’s a team there now, but they’ll need relief. Marco, Catherine, Winsome, and Aaron will get there a few days ahead of us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes, us.” Dan chuckled. “We take the red-eye September sixteenth.”

  M.J. gazed out at the last traces of Catalina Island before the navy-blue darkness swallowed it for the night. “I thought you were done with that.”

  “I was until my incredible girlfriend told everyone at dinner that she wanted to be a field reporter.”

  “I never said—” M.J. paused to admire the way hope could light someone’s face. “I was trying to be nice, Dan. I didn’t mean it.”

  The light faded. “Well, you sounded pretty darn convincing.”

  “Maybe you were hearing what you wanted to hear.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you want to go. You want to go so badly you’re willing to believe that I’d go with you.”

  “But you said—”

  “It doesn’t matter what I said, you know me. I don’t have the constitution to work in a refugee camp. I wish I did, Dan, but I don’t.”

  “You don’t even know what it’s like.” He was looking at Catalina, too.

  “How about we drink that nice bottle of wine and you can tell me all about it.”

  “And then?”

  “And then . . . I’ll know what a refugee camp is like.”

  “Is there a chance you’ll consider it?”

  “There’s always a chance.”

  “How big?”

  “Invisible to the naked eye.”

  “But there is a chance?”

  “Yes.” M.J. laughed. “On one condition . . .”

  Dan took her hand. “Anything.”

  “If I decide to go—and that’s a big, huge if—I get to pack my own bag.”

  “Done.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-Three

  New York City, New York

  Monday, September 12

  Waxing Gibbous Moon

  GAYLE SNAPPED A breadstick and released both halves to her plate. “You look relaxed, too relaxed. Are you even wearing a bra?” She waved an arm, thin as six o’clock, at M.J.’s yellow maxi dress, then peeked under the tablecloth to assess her braided sandals. “What are those made of? Hippie hair? God, did I look this bohemian back when I was getting laid?”

  It was then that M.J. realized how out of place she looked among the tucked and belted power lunchers at Del Frisco’s. “Bicast leather,” she said in defense of the ethically friendly footwear she bought from a local surf shop. “No animals were harmed.”

  “Then why bother?” Gayle unfolded her napkin, laid it across her black Herve Leger dress. “If you were a goalie I’d be able to get one past you without even trying.”

  “Did you just make a sports analogy?”

  “I oversee seven magazines now. Unfortunately, Ballers is one of them.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “No one is sorrier than I.” Gayle raised her pinot grigio. “Anyway, welcome home.”

  They grinned over the rims of their wineglasses, casting off months of resentment into the clamor of clinking forks and background chatter.

  “And now for your belated birthday present.” Gayle lifted a maroon crocodile embossed satchel out from under her chair, held it proudly by her side. “Many animals were harmed.”

  “Alexander McQueen?”

  “Thank God,” Gayle said, hand to chest. “It’s really you.”

  “I found a leather alternative,” M.J. said, “not Jesus.”

  “In that case, it’s yours.”

  M.J. sniffed the bag; it smelled like new car and compliments. “Are you serious?”

  Without waiting for an answer, M.J. transferred her things into Gayle’s $1,800 apology.

  “What are those?” Gayle asked, as M.J. moved a handful of turquoise envelopes into their new silk-lined home.

  “Offers to buy my apartment. The doorman gave them to me on my way out. His name is Hamlet,” she added because she finally could.

  “You’re not going to sell it, are you?”

  “Dan wants me to. He thinks it will prove I’m committed. But I can’t. Not yet. I bought it with the money I got after my parents—” She lifted her eyes to the stained-glass ceiling, and drank. “Hopefully, packing up my stuff and shipping it across the country will be proof enough. At the very least it will prove we need bigger closets.”

  Gayle’s eyebrows leveled. Her smile sank. The good-time glint in her dark eyes turned matte. Small-talk time was over. “You’re going back to that beach town?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “And how, exactly, is that going to work with City?”

  “You got the article I sent, right?”

  “I did.”

  “That’s how.”

  Gayle flicked her wrist at a passing waitress, signaling for another round. “What you sent was a woo-woo piece comparing life to waves. I assumed it was another accident.”

  “No.” M.J. laughed, though she knew Gayle wasn’t joking. “It’s my solution.”

  “Staring at the ocean and contemplating life? I don’t understand.”

  “I want to live in Pearl Beach and write for City.”

  Gayle reached for M.J.’s glass of wine and drained it. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am.”

  “That’s your big proposal?”

  “It is.”

  “My God, M.J., what have those bohemians done to you?” She leaned forward, hands clasped on her empty plate. “Forgive me, darling, but are you saying that the cute little musing about your summer vacation was actually—”

  “My submission? Yes,” M.J. said, trying to remain upbeat. “The first of many.”

  “I’m not a magazine editor anymore, I’m the CEO of Pique Publishing Group. But allow me to spare you the humiliation of a rejection letter. City won’t run that. It’s too—”

  M.J.’s phone buzzed. It was Dan. She sent him to voice mail. “Then, I’ll submit something else. I’ve been working on a piece about the differen
ces between the coasts. Like, have you ever noticed that New York looks like film and Los Angeles more like video?”

  “M.J.—”

  “Seriously. It has something to do with the position of the sun and light saturation. And then there’s the psychological differences: work ethics for example. New Yorkers are fiercely driven, and Californians are laid-back. Why? Because everything you see in Manhattan was built by humans, whereas Californians are surrounded by nature: the ocean, the desert, mountains . . . Everywhere they look, they’re reminded of a power greater than themselves. So they’re more, to use your term, woo-woo.”

  “M.J.—”

  “It sounds out-there, but I’ll write it in a way that works for City. I know the tone of that magazine better than anyone else and—”

  “M.J.!” Gayle’s palm came down on the table. “You can’t pitch these California-stoner stories to a magazine about New York.”

  “City has a global section.”

  “And Pearl Beach isn’t global, it’s in Orange County, which by the way, is the only nod to color in that entire region. Colleges hand out affirmative-action scholarships to tanned people because they can’t find anyone darker.”

  “So it’s a race thing?”

  “Show me one black person who isn’t there because of a wrong turn and we’ll talk.”

  M.J.’s phone started to buzz: Dan, again. She let it ring. “What about Central Africa? Is that black enough for you?”

  Gayle, reaching for her breadstick, paused.

  “Picture me in a refugee camp 186 miles west of the capital Bangui with a team of rescue workers from the Red Cross.”

  “This conversation is over.”

  M.J. pushed back her chair. “Why?”

  “Because I no longer believe this is you.”

  “It’s me. And I’m going to be me on this trip, that’s the point. It will be a real fish-out-of-water story. I’ll roll tampons in my hair instead of curlers and sleep in my Louis Vuitton steamer trunk,” she enthused, grateful that Dan wasn’t there to witness the salacious tabloid-sized crap she was about to take on his benevolent mission. “Imagine the opportunities for product placement. Energy bars, Evian water, fitness apparel. Advertisers could sponsor food drops, and if I photograph it all with my iPhone, maybe we can get Apple on board.”

  Gayle tapped her cheek imagining the possibilities. Had she always worn this much foundation? “I still don’t see it for City, maybe Travel Bug, but that said, I really don’t understand why you’d want to do this.”

  “Dan really cares about these missions and he wants me to go,” she said, like a dedicated girlfriend and not the determined writer who would say anything to get herself published. “I guess it’s what you married people call compromise.”

  “Darling, a compromise is, ‘I’ll do Indian tonight if you’ll do Japanese tomorrow.’ Not, ‘Give up your career, follow me to a refugee camp.’ ”

  M.J. realized it did sound ridiculous when put that way. “My therapist thinks it’s good for the relationship and it will help me fill a void.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think . . .” She paused while the waiter topped off their wine. “I think I’m not giving up my career, because I don’t have a career. You took my career and you gave it to Liz, remember?”

  “And now . . .” Gayle placed the contract on the table, slid it toward her. “I’m giving it back.”

  “I can’t work with her.”

  “What if I let her go?”

  Something like an elastic band snapped behind M.J.’s chest. “You would do that?”

  Gayle flicked her chin at the pages lying between them, inviting M.J. to see for herself.

  Dan was calling. Still, M.J. pulled the contract closer and flipped to the final signature page. The only name at the bottom was hers.

  Shock waves, warm and tingly, rippled throughout her body. There was too much to consider, too much at stake, too much sludge churning inside of her. What was she supposed to say? What did she want to say? She had to stop drinking wine and think. She had to pee.

  Her phone dinged. It was Dan again, only this time he sent a text:

  ADDIE IS IN THE HOSPITAL.

  He used words like blood, hemorrhaging, and head wound. Though weak in the knees, M.J. stood. “I’m sorry, Gayle, I have to go. It’s an emergency.”

  “So now what?”

  “Give me a chance to write the Africa piece. Let me prove I can do this.”

  “And if it doesn’t fly?”

  “It will,” M.J. said.

  Then she stuffed the contract inside her crocodile purse, on the off chance that she was wrong.

  * * *

  ADDIE DRAGGED A hand sluggishly across her face. “You’re judging me,” she muttered. “I can feel your condescending glare widening my pores.”

  “I’m not judging,” M.J. said, over her pinot grigio headache made worse by six hours in a middle seat, an in-flight chicken wrap, and a long crawl home from the Los Angeles airport in a Lyft that smelled like cumin. And now beeping machines and whiffs of steamed asparagus. She tried to open the window. It was sealed shut.

  “If you’re not judging, why do I feel all hot and melty?”

  “It’s the pain meds,” M.J. said. She needed a hot shower, a toothbrush, and an explanation as to why Addie had a baby-carrot-sized lump on her forehead and tubes in her arms. She sat in the nubby chair by Addie’s bed and refused to faint.

  “What happened?”

  “Cramps,” Addie said, her complexion beige as the curtain that divided the room. “One minute I’m helping Easton pack up the bookstore and the next, I’m on all fours.”

  “Why?”

  “Verizon is buying it, can you believe? Ew, right?”

  “No, why all fours?”

  “Worst. Pain. Ever. Like a cat inside my stomach clawing its way out. And the blood? It wasn’t a super-plus tampon amount, it was a shove-two-mattresses-up-there amount. The Wrath section looked like a crime scene.”

  M.J. gripped her tingling knees.

  “I don’t have insurance, so I called Dan. After that I’m not really sure what happened. I passed out at some point”—she indicated the lump—“and I woke up in here after a transfusion, CT scan, and surgery.”

  M.J. hung her head between her knees while the nurse checked Addie’s vitals, changed her bags, updated her charts, and adjusted her tubes.

  “Who knew miscarriages were so grizzly?” Addie said after she left.

  M.J. lifted her head. “Miscarriage? You said you had an abortion.”

  “Did I?”

  M.J. helped herself to Addie’s ice chips. “Okay, now I’m judging. Why would you lie about that?”

  “I didn’t want David to know I was keeping the baby, and you were like, the last person I trusted.”

  “I’m lost.”

  Addie rolled onto her side and faced the window. “When he found out I was pregnant he broke up with that little girlfriend of his and proposed.” The beeps on the heart machine quickened, the wavy lines became jagged spikes. “How messed up is that?”

  “It’s not messed up, Addie, it’s sweet,” M.J. said. “He loves you. And I know you love him.”

  “I do.” Addie breathed, her throat too dry for sound. “But I don’t want kids.”

  “So you told him you had an abortion?”

  Addie nodded, loosening her tears. “I’m going to Europe,” she said. “He never would have known, everything would have been fine.”

  “Except for the part about you being pregnant and not wanting kids.”

  “I was going to have the baby there and then put it up for adoption. Think of all those women like Liddy who wanted . . . and couldn’t—” Addie turned back and looked at M.J. for the first time. Her gaze was hollow and unsteady, her electric-green eyes dim. “It felt like the right thing to do.” The beeps on the machine slowed. “Did you come back from New York to tell me what an idiot I am?”

  “No.” M.J.
grinned. “I came back from New York to hold your hand.”

  Addie thanked her with a weak squeeze and a grateful smile—a smile that returned one hour later when she woke up and saw that M.J. was still there.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-Four

  Pearl Beach, California

  Friday, September 16

  Full Moon

  NOTHING SAYS REFUGEE camp like a hot paraffin wax treatment and two coats of Pink Flamenco,” M.J. said when she returned home from her mani-pedi, hands splayed to avoid smudging. “Wait,” she said to Addie, who was jamming the last of her satin robes—of which there were many—into her suitcase. “You’re leaving?”

  “I’m not the one leaving, you are,” she said. “Unless you’re finally over this whole Africa thing.”

  “Nope. We’re going tonight. But I thought you were staying here while we’re gone.”

  “I was, until David said I could have Michael’s old room until I leave for London, which, according to Dr. Dan should be in about two weeks, and I’d rather not be alone.” Addie stood carefully, hand on belly as she scored her pain with an old person’s grunt. At least she could stand. It was progress. Color had returned to her face, which was thinner now, her cheekbones sharper, and yet her edge had softened.

  Hands still splayed, M.J. began folding the sheets and blankets that Addie had used during her stay. “So why Michael’s room? Why not David’s?”

  “Hannah’s back, and I’m not sure she’d like it,” Addie said. “Though I’m not opposed.”

  “So, what—you’re, like, platonic now? How long will that last?”

  “At least until my stitches come out, but hopefully forever.”

  M.J. cut a look to the yellowing bruise on Addie’s head. Had that fall somehow loosened the part of her brain that was stuck in high school and hurtled it into adulthood?

  “We want different things,” she continued, as she gathered her hair into a ponytail. “David really wants kids and I really, really don’t.”

  “What do you want?” M.J. asked, playing the role of Dr. Cohn.

  “I want him to be happy, and I want him in my life. So platonic it is.”