The Dirty Book Club(31)

“Giddy,” she said aloud, then giggled. What a funny little word. Wobbly as a toddler, it woke her mouth like a pack of Pop Rocks. It grew fingers and tickled her brain.

The sensation quickly spread to her cheeks, her gums, her torso, and all the way down the limp V of her legs to the tips of her chipped pedicure, until laughter claimed her entire body. She hadn’t felt this wonderfully untethered in years.

Then her phone rang. Trilling along as if in on the joke and laughing, too. If she picked up, the caller would ask why she was so amused—a question she couldn’t answer. If she didn’t pick up, no one would want to know why she was so amused. And few things in life were more awkward than cracking up alone.

“Hello?” she managed. There was interference on the other end. A seashell’s hollow hiss. “Hello?”

“M.J.?”

The helium feeling stopped; something more grounding was filling her now.

“Are you there?” said the voice. “Can you hear me?”

M.J. sat up so quickly the brownie tray toppled onto the floor. “Dan?”

“Hey!”

“You’re alive?” her voice echoed, the connection was terrible.

“Of course I am,” he enthused. “How are you? How was your birthday? Did you like the cake?”

“The cake? Who gives a shit about cake? I thought you were dead!” Her voice was shaky and unfamiliar; maybe they were both dead. “What happened? Are you hurt? Why didn’t you call?”

“You heard about the earthquake, right?”

“Um, yes, Dan, I heard about the earthquake.”

“I was surfing when it happened. You should have seen the swell, babe, it was epic.”

“Epic?” Was she glad he was okay? Of course! But his euphoria in the face of her despair felt like being trampled by a conga line.

“Waves five to six feet overhead. By the time we paddled in, the quake had stopped, but man, it was chaos.” The connection dropped out. At best she heard every other word. “Broken sewage pipes . . . contaminated water . . . used our filters . . . life savers.” While Dan went on about his work with the search-and-rescue teams, M.J. texted his mothers to let them know he was okay.

“How’s Randy?”

“Incredible. We cleaned wounds together all night. We’ve met so many brave people, M.J. The humanitarian effort over here is mind-blowing.”

“And not one of those humanitarians had a phone?”

“Most of the cell towers collapsed. The ones left standing were maxed out. This is real front-lines shit. Full-on triage. Thank God you stayed home. What if you had been touring around Jakarta when—” An ambulance siren wailed in the background.

M.J. moved the phone away from her ear. Every part of her gnashed with a premenstrual-type of irritability. Hundreds of Jakartanese (if that’s what they were even called) were dead, dying, missing, displaced—and she felt irritable? What right did she have? If anything she should be leaking relief because Dan was safe, or gushing pride because he was saving lives. She should have been giddy! And yet, that word no longer wobbled or popped or tickled inside her body. It felt flat, drained of its titillating delight much like sex after the orgasm or sushi once full.

“M.J.? Are you still there?”

She curled into a comma and gave in to her heavy eyelids. “Yes,” she managed. The sudden exhaustion was bone-deep. She balanced the phone between a pillow and the tip of her nose to relieve her tired hand.

Everything would be better once Dan was back—she’d be better. She’d have four days to sort out her ambivalence with Dr. Cohn, get some sleep, and give him the welcome he deserved. “Home Friday night, right?”

“Actually, about that . . .” Actually about that . . .

M.J. squinted through the infuriating echo.

“The Red Cross asked me to stick around for a while and help out.”

A red cross popped into M.J.’s head. It had Kardashian-sized curves, a nurse’s cap, and a sultry Marilyn Monroe whisper: Hey there, Dr. Dan, I just love how man-shaped you are. What do you say you stick around for a while and help me out? Then she wrapped her brick-thick arms around his war-torn scrubs and blushed herself redder.

The front door opened with a bang. Then footsteps. Not heels, though, Birkenstocks. “Stop eating!” Britt called as she charged the bedroom, bangs parted like tent flaps. “Don’t eat—” She stepped on one of the brownies, slid across the floor, and landed forehead-first on the unopened DBC box.

M.J. wanted to ask if she was okay, but she couldn’t speak—she couldn’t even breathe—she was laughing too hard. A staccato of guttural clicks was the only sound she could make.

“Baby, are you crying?” Dan asked. “I know you were worried and I—”

Britt cupped M.J.’s face between her hands and looked at her with those whiskey-brown eyes of hers. “How many did you eat?”

“Have your lashes always been that thick?”

“M.J.?” Dan called. “Can you hear me?”

“How many did you eat?”

“Dan is alive!” M.J. told her. “And he’s fucking a red cross.”

“How many did you eat?”

M.J. raised two fingers. Then three more.

Britt found the phone in a lump of sheets. “Dan, I’m so glad you’re alive. Listen, M.J. ate five pot brownies and . . . She didn’t know . . . I didn’t know, either . . . What should I . . . Okay . . . Bye.”