The Dirty Book Club(4)

“I, Marjorie Shannon,” she began, “hereby call secret pact number thirty-three into being. On this day—”

“Wait!” Dot quickly flipped to the notes section of her address book. “Pact thirty-three was to not like the Beach Boys. This is thirty-four. Start again.”

“I, Marjorie Shannon, hereby call secret pact number thirty-four into being. On this eighteenth day of May, in the year 1962, we promise to move to France when the kids grow up and the husbands croak. All in favor inhale.”

The girls drew on their cigarettes.

“May this smoke deliver pact thirty-four to the secret spaces inside our souls so it dwells within us forever.” They held their breath for fifteen seconds (the amount of time it takes a pact to find a secret space), then exhaled.

Four sabers of smoke crossed and rose as one.

“Pact thirty-four is sealed,” they said together.

“Time for presents!” Marjorie announced, never failing to bring them something from her travels. She reached inside a TWA airsick bag and handed every girl a chain—each with a different key hanging from its center. “I swiped one from every hotel I stayed at.”

While they gushed and fussed with the clasps, Marjorie slapped a thin green paperback on the table like a winning hand. There were no glossy photographs or formal typography on the cover, just: The Housewife’s Handbook on Selective Promiscuity by Rey Anthony, written in modest, black letters. “Now, this, my friends is what I call a good book.”

“What is it?” Liddy asked.

“A little something I picked up in Paris.”

“Syphilis?”

They purred and then leaned past the Lenox china to get a closer look.

“It’s an autobiography about a young girl named Rey who had loads of questions about sex and no one to ask so she hides out and reads dirty magazines.”

“Then what?” Dot asked.

“She masturb—”

“Marjorie!” Gloria hissed, pointing at the Smoots’ house next door. “Not so loud.”

“Does she ever get caught?” Liddy asked, the tips of her ears reddening.

“No. She becomes a sex maniac. Listen to this . . . ‘I kissed his body, his stomach, his penis, his testicles—’?”

Dot snatched the book and wrapped it in her Prim: A Modern Woman’s Guide to Manners cover. Then she shyly raised her hand. “Question.”

“Yes?”

“Did her husband want to be kissed in those places?”

“Her husband didn’t know about it,” Marjorie said. “She was doing that stuff with her doctor. Rey didn’t believe in monogamy. She thought it was unnatural to stay with one person for the rest of her life, and I agree.”

“She circulates,” Gloria said, quoting Neil Sedaka.

“She’s vulgar.”

“It’s just sex, Lid,” Marjorie said to the lipstick that was still on her cheek.

“Exactly. She should keep it to herself.”

“That’s how I feel when you girls swap recipes. I mean, what’s the point of going public with that?”

“To find new ideas.”

“To know if we’re doing it right.”

“To get better.”

“Same reasons I read about sex.” Marjorie lit a cigarette. “It’s not like you three are going to teach me anything.” Then to Dot, “If you think Robert would rather have you read about table settings than”—Marjorie closed her mouth around a Kosher dill and poked it against the inside of her cheek—“you’re more blitzed than you look. And, Gloria, try what Rey does on page 126 and Leo will never stay at the Biltmore again.” Then to Liddy, “Rey even does it with women.”

“Why do you always look at me when you talk about lesbians?”

“I don’t know.” Marjorie smirked. “Why do you always get so defensive?”

“What else does Rey try?” Gloria asked. Because what if Marjorie was right? What if this book could teach her things, things that would bring Leo home more often?

Marjorie raised an eyebrow. “I could read it to you, and if you like it I know where to get more.”

Liddy reached for her crucifix, accidentally grabbing the room key instead.

“How many more?” Dot asked.

“One for every full moon from now until we board that airplane to France. We can start our own secret club.”

“Robert would not approve.”

“It’s a dirty book club, Dot! No one would approve,” Gloria said, imagining what old Mrs. Smoot would think of a mother who reads about sex while her baby is napping.

“That’s why rule number one should be: tell no one.”

Eyes closed, lips nibbling on a prayer; Liddy seemed to be saying an act of contrition—preemptively repenting for the sins they were about to commit.

“And rule number two is: a husband’s right to privacy cannot and will not be respected,” Marjorie added. “We have to talk the way we did in high school.”

“I thought you were against rules,” Dot snipped, as she wrote them all down in her black notebook.

“Not my own, honey,” Marjorie said, with a playful wink. “Never my own.”

Dot flipped to a fresh page. “So what are we calling pact thirty-five?” Her pen hovered anxiously above the margin.