The Dirty Book Club(12)

“Yes. Yes, I did. Until you played the girl-on-girl porn.”

M.J. blushed at the memory of her previous night’s blunder. “Most guys love that shit.”

“Most guys don’t have lesbian mothers and four younger sisters!”

“I know. I’m sorry. I forgot,” M.J. said, cheeks burning. “Hey, we should go up to San Francisco tomorrow. I’d love to meet this family of yours.”

“I can’t.” Dan indicated the unfurnished cottage, where boxes and bulging suitcases seemed to whimper like neglected puppies. “I’m scouting locations for my new clinic tomorrow and I don’t even know where my shoes are.”

“Right. Well, leave the unpacking to me,” she chirped.

Like the birds that now woke her in the morning, M.J. would whistle while she worked. She would flit joyfully about in a state of meditative mindfulness as she discovered the pleasures of living a simple life. Molt her city skin and start fresh. Smell roses, smile at strangers, walk the beach five mornings a week, get a wax.

She kissed the top of Dan’s head. His hair was hot from the sun.

“Where are you going?”

“To look for your shoes.”

Dan flashed a dubious smirk. “You’re really going to unpack?”

“Indeed I am.”

“Not a team of professionals or exploited interns?” he asked. “You?”

“Corrrrect.”

“And when that’s done? Then what?”

M.J. yanked the sliding glass door that opened into the living room. “I’ll start decorating,” she said, then stepped boldly inside to embrace her wondrous future.



* * *



“WHAT ARE YOU looking at?” M.J. asked, weeks later.

“A faded tan, bloody cuticles, and the same bathrobe you’ve been wearing for the past two weeks,” her opponent would have answered. But it was a cardboard box. So M.J. kicked it.

Twice.

Once for being rude and then a second time for signifying the end. Because after this last box was unpacked, they’d all be gone. M.J. would be an empty nester. And then what? More naps? More googling Liz Evans? More silence?

There would definitely be more silence.

Except for that damn ocean. It never shut up.





CHAPTER


Five


Pearl Beach, California

Friday, May 20

Full Moon

IT WAS FOUR o’clock in New York. The weekly editorial pitch meeting at City was probably wrapping up. Within the hour, Liz would be sending an e-mail with her favorite ideas, and M.J., who was still on the distribution list, could read (and judge) them all.

With an open laptop balancing on her thighs and a glass of bubbly in her hand, she leaned against the propped-up pillows on her bed and watched her in-box, waiting for the starting gun’s ding.

“You’re writing!” Dan said, from the open doorway.

M.J. snapped her laptop shut. “What are you doing home?”

“I thought I’d take you to lunch.”

His skin color seemed more espresso than cappuccino when he wore his black T-shirt, his hazel eyes more green.

“You’re handsome.”

“And you’re still in that bathrobe.”

“Ugh! You sound like that stupid box.”

“What box?”

“The one in the living room.”

“It talks?”

“Only when I’m bored.” M.J. kicked off the sheets. “Forget it.”

“Like hell I will!” Dan cracked his knuckles, then dashed off to confront her corrugated bully; his heroic gesture only to be undermined by the sissy slaps of his flip-flops.

“I had no idea this was here!” he called, too busy ferreting through landfill amounts of San Francisco Giants mugs, socks, plaques, pendants, trading cards, and ticket stubs to notice that M.J. had traded her bathrobe for a sleeveless silk dress. “So much awesomeness.”

She knew Dan rooted for the Giants, but had no idea his devotion ran so deep, or that he said awesomeness. It made M.J. wonder what else she didn’t know. Was he a Disneyland lover? A tax evader? An Adam Sandler fan? What if he drank milk with sushi?

“My parents must have slipped this into the U-Haul when I wasn’t looking. They couldn’t stand the team’s colors.” Then, in a high-pitched attempt to impersonate his mothers, he said, “Orange and black is a putrid combination, Danny. If Halloween happened more than once a year, trust us, Pantone would intervene.” Sitting cross-legged with a scrapbook of yellowed newspaper articles, Dan looked as he must have when he was cutting and pasting these clippings for the first time. “I lived for those games with Uncle Ollie.” He placed a child-sized Giants cap on his head. He looked like Elmer Fudd.

“Uncle Ollie, your Moms’ best friend?”

“Yep.”

“They met freshman year at Stanford, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“Sperm donor Uncle Ollie? First Sara . . . Then Marni . . . Then Sara. . . Then Marni . . . Then Sara? That Uncle Ollie?”

“Yes, that Uncle Ollie,” Dan snipped, clearly frustrated that she was missing the point. But it was he who missed the point. Not only had M.J. recalled the name of the Hartwells’ sperm donor, but to whom his donations were allocated, and in which order. Take that insecurities! “Did your sisters go, too?”