The Dirty Book Club(11)

“At least consider it,” Gayle insisted. “Take a few days off. Think about it. I’ll hold the announcement for a week. What do you say?”

M.J. wanted to come back with something so poignant and crisp that it would silence the busy streets below and echo through the empty chambers of Gayle West’s heart for years to come. But her throat was too dry and her words were spinning and colliding and impossible to grasp.

“Wait!” Gayle tried. “Where are you going?”

Without looking back, M.J. replied, “To the fucking beach!”





CHAPTER


Four


Pearl Beach, California

Sunday, May 1

Waning Crescent Moon

SUNSHINE SPILLED INTO the bedroom, waking M.J. like a messenger with urgent news.

She rolled over onto Dan’s pillow and listened to Gayle’s latest voice mail. It was a reminder, her third, that it wasn’t too late to go back to City. But unless Gayle rescinded her offer to Liz, it most certainly was.

M.J. pitched the phone onto the tangle of sheets, stretched lazily across the bed—their bed—and gazed out at the wraparound deck. Dan was there, lying on a yellow-and-white-striped chaise reading Emergency Medicine magazine. The tiny muscles in his shoulder twitched when he turned a page. She wondered what the birds were singing about, why the sky was so freakishly cloudless, and where that chaise might have come from, because it sure as Chanel wasn’t there yesterday.

Pressing a sheet against her naked body, M.J. padded onto the deck and took in the view: blooms of colorful beach umbrellas, cliffs that jutted like buckteeth over the curving coastline, and the blue-green ocean that really did sparkle. Maybe unemployment wasn’t so bad. After months of memorized airline schedules and long weekend visits that never felt long enough, their Sunday wouldn’t end with a tearful curbside good-bye at LAX. Sand had finally stopped slipping through the hourglass. It stood still now and stretched on for miles, theirs to be strolled in barefoot and enjoyed.

M.J. checked her watch; a 1974 Timex with an olive-green strap. “How did you let me sleep until three?”

Dan removed his mirrored aviators, greeted her with smiling eyes. “Is that still on East Coast time?”

“It’s not East Coast time. It’s August Stark time. My dad was wearing it the day he was murdered, and I want it to stay exactly the way—”

“Hold on a minute—” Dan tossed his magazine. It landed with a smack. “Your dad—”

“Stop! I don’t want another lecture on the difference between murder and manslaughter. I already know. But intent or not, someone took his life and—”

“No.” Dan chuckled. “I didn’t know Augie was short for August.”

M.J. plucked a loose thread from the strap. She envied the old watch. How it ticked merrily along as if nothing ever happened.

“So your mom was January, your dad was August, your sister was April, and you’re May-June?”

“We were named after our birth months,” she said, a proud member of this exclusive club. “I was born at midnight on May 31, so they gave me June, too.” M.J. sat on the edge of the cushion. “Now I have a question for you: where did you get this chair?”

Dan hitched his thumb toward the bungalow on their right.

“They just gave it to you?”

“Not exactly. I’m kind of borrowing it until we get our own. Curtis said they’re on a cruise and won’t be back for another week or two.”

“Who’s Curtis?”

“The UPS guy.”

“You know his name?”

“Of course.”

M.J. had lived in the same building for almost three years and didn’t know the daytime doorman’s name. She didn’t remember the names of the couple in #5F who wanted to buy her apartment and never bothered to read a single barista’s tag. But now? Her schedule was wide-open. She could make room for pleasantries. Meet the people in her neighborhood. Sprinkle them with glee.

Dan invited M.J. to sit with a pat-pat on his cushion. “I still can’t believe you live here,” he said, as she settled onto his warm chest and found her reflection in his sunglasses. It was amazing how one week without computers, deadlines, and Ambien could brighten one’s face. What was once pigeon gray was now bronzed and vibrant, as if her electricity had been restored after months of unpaid bills.

“It’s so-real,” Dan said.

“You mean, sur-real?”

“Whatever.”

There was that dismissive tone of his. The one that said, I am a man of science and medicine. Words are not, and need not, be my thing. When’s the last time you set a broken bone? Yeah, thought so.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“When you talk in typos? I’d say mildly charmed at best.”

Dan slid his hands under M.J.’s sheet and playfully squeezed her ass. “I’m talking about you being here. Are you happy?”

“I don’t know, Dr. Hartwell. What are the symptoms of happiness?”

He folded his hands behind his head and lifted his chin toward the endless stretch of blue sky. “Sleeping until noon, dressing in bedsheets, tying me to a bed and having your way with me.”

“You liked that didn’t you?”