The Dirty Book Club(21)
“Be right back,” he said, phone pressed against his ear.
“I’ll go with you.”
“Stay,” Gloria insisted, taking her hand. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Is it Kelsey, because I’ve already—?”
“No, this girl I love. She’s like a niece to me. The two of you will be fast friends.”
They found Addie Oliver creeping out of the hallway bathroom like someone who didn’t want to be associated with whatever she’d left behind. She was dressed in a Ferrari-red wrap dress—exuding more confidence than one would expect from a curvy woman in a beach town of size zeros—with a plunging neckline that vouched for her commitment to sunscreen. There wasn’t a single freckle or spot to distract from her voluminous cleavage, only the bronze wing pendant on her necklace, which could hardly compete.
“Addie, darling, I’d like you to meet M.J.; she just moved here from—”
“Hey,” Addie said, as she smoothed her cinnamon-colored hair like a Miss America contestant preparing to take the stage. “Well, nice meeting you. I’m sure I’ll see you around sometime.” She turned so quickly she generated a breeze that, any stronger, would have blown the family photos straight off the wall.
“Adelaide!” Gloria snapped.
Addie stopped with a jolt that jiggled her cleavage and revealed the gaping cups of her black lace bra. Were her straps undone?
“Where are you rushing off to?”
“Where am I rushing off to?” Addie repeated, louder than M.J. thought necessary considering Gloria showed no signs of hearing loss. “I’m not rushing off anywhere, Gloria, I’m staying right here outside the bathroom door and talking to you.”
She must have been on drugs. The nervous restlessness, the blotchy cheeks, the disheveled appearance—the younger set at City wore these warning signs like badges of honor. They’d swallow, snort, or smoke anything in the name of getting ahead. And poor Gloria was too seventysomething to see it.
“You two get to know each other and when I get back I’ll take you into Leo’s closet,” Gloria said, then with a deprecating grin, “You’re not afraid of a few skeletons, are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m kidding. He’s got some to-die-for cashmere sweaters I’d like you both to have. Ralph Lauren, Purple Label, they’re worth a fortune.”
“What about your sons?”
“You mean the four ungrateful boys I raised who never call me? They can have the itchy wool from Macy’s.” Gloria turned the knob on the bathroom door.
“What are you doing?” Addie asked, still too loud.
“Going to the restroom,” she said, and then slipped inside.
Cactus-green eyes darting, Addie began biting her thumbnail.
“Did you grow up in Pearl Beach?” M.J. asked.
Addie nodded, her attention fixed on the door.
“Do you work around here?”
Another nod.
“Where?”
“Women’s health clinic,” she answered. Then, as if seeing M.J. for the first time, said, “You don’t have regular periods, do you?”
Shocked, M.J. brought a hand to her chest, which looked like a tarmac compared to Addie’s. “How did you know that?”
“You’re too skinny and—”
The bathroom door flew open and out walked Gloria, followed by a sexy Australopithecus, a type whose prominent brow bone, long limbs, and hunched shoulders harkened early man. “Look who I found hiding in the shower! It’s my son David.”
With a forced smile, M.J. peered past Gloria’s shoulder and down the hall. Where the fuck was Dan?
“Hey,” David grumbled with a stoner’s lazy drawl. He had Leo’s navy-blue eyes, tanned skin, and the kind of magnetism that gets a man funeral-fucked.
“Do I need to remind you that this is your father’s shiva?”
“No, Mom. I’m quite aware.”
Gloria inhaled, preparing for a lecture, but was interrupted by a guy, roughly M.J.’s age, waving a manila envelope that he promptly gave to Gloria.
“Who’s that?” M.J. muttered to Addie, taking in his pin-striped suit, black-framed glasses, and fedora.
“Easton Keller,” she said, scenting his name with the smell of scotch. “He manages Liddy’s bookshop. And yes, he really does dress like that.”
“It arrived last night,” he told Gloria. “While I was closing up the store.”
Addie and David began sneaking away. Gloria was too busy running her finger across the postmarked Republique Francaise stamps to notice. “Did Liddy see it?”
Easton pointed out the top line of the mailing address, “It’s addressed: ‘To the DBC care of Gloria Golden.’?”
It was hard to imagine Gloria being a member of the Downtown Beach Club, or any organization that would voluntarily place her in the same room as Kelsey. But like so many well-off women her age, she probably took it on as a charity project, and in the name of doing good, learned to tolerate the bad.
Gloria cut the seal with her fingernail, reached inside, and pulled out three Air France tickets that had been tied together with a black ribbon. While most people would have tossed off the ribbon and ripped open the envelopes, Gloria took a moment, the bounty balanced in her palm.