The Dirty Book Club(48)

Britt grinned. “Toe-curling.”

Jules giggled. “Toe-curling?”

“You know.” Britt hugged her knees to her chest. “The way it probably was when you started dating Brandon.”

Jules’s Tweety Bird–blue eyes blink-blinked. M.J. could almost hear a cartoon’s high-pitched piano notes.

“You have had sex before, right?” Britt teased.

“Um, I have a daughter, remember?”

Addie snorted. “So you’ve only done it once?”

“Of course not, silly, but I—” She leaned forward and whispered, “I have a shy vagina. So it’s never been like . . . you know, the way it is with Anastasia and Christian. I mean, is that whole thing even realistic?”

“What whole thing?” Addie laughed.

“The orgasm thing. It’s so easy for her. That doesn’t happen to real people, does it?”

“Definitely not in the bath,” M.J. said.

“Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on the bath orgasms,” Britt agreed. “All that sloshing and jabbing makes me feel like a plunged toilet.”

“Then you’re doing something wrong,” Addie said.

“You can come in the water?” Britt asked.

“How hard can it be?” Addie said. Then, with another toss of her hair, “David used to say I could come from a hiccup.”

“What ever happened with you two?” M.J. asked. He was the only guy Addie ever seemed to reference. The only one who seemed to last longer than a holiday weekend.

“Gloria happened. She thought we were a bad influence on each other and did whatever she could to keep us apart. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t out to change David, and he wasn’t out to change me. We liked each other exactly as we were—genital warts and all. The only reason we’re apart now is because he got a job coaching a high school snowboarding team in Colorado and I don’t do puffy outerwear or long-distance relationships. But if he lived here . . .”

“Well, then, you must be excited about the news,” Britt said.

Addie pinched a lone tomato chunk off the bruschetta plate and dropped it in her mouth. “News?”

“About David. He didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Gloria took her house off the market. David is moving in on Friday.”

Addie checked her phone as if expecting to find a flurry of missed messages and plausible explanations as to why she was just finding this out now. After a moment she looked up, her face lit frostbite-blue from the screen and said, “That little fucker! He’s going to surprise me.” Then, with a one-two slap of her palms, “Are we done here?”

“What’s the rush?” Britt asked.

She aimed her cleavage at Bungee who was signing his tab. “He’s leaving,” Addie said as if it should have been obvious. “He looks a little dirty, don’cha think?” She stood and smoothed her dress. “I think we could both use a bath.”

“What about the closing ritual?” M.J. asked, once again.

“And our next book,” Britt added. “It’s Henry and June, right? I have the letter. It’s from Liddy. Not that I read it. It slipped out of the sleeve when I was unpacking the box and I might have seen a few sentences, something about her getting kicked out of the DBC. But that’s it.” She raised her right hand. “Swear.”

The music suddenly became louder and the hostess flashed Jules a terse nod. She held up her hand—Five minutes. Long enough for them to charm four cigarettes off the bartender and complete the closing ritual before they were told to snub them out.

“Now what?” M.J. practically whined after Addie took off. She didn’t want to trade this warm, giddy feeling for the sound of CNN on the TV or the soft whistle of Dan’s nose as he slept. “Should we hit the restaurant for a nightcap?”

“It’s packed on a Friday night.” Jules pouted. “But I’m pretty sure my villa has a minibar.”





Henry and June





CHAPTER


Sixteen


Pearl Beach, California

Wednesday, July 20

Full Moon

FIRST A SWIFT metallic swoosh, then daylight. Aggressive, aggressive daylight. M.J. splayed her palms into the mattress—whose mattress was another matter entirely—and pushed herself upright; a cascade of miniature liquor bottles rolled toward her thigh and settled with a collective clink. It was too soon for upright. The nausea was so unbelievably disorienting. Through a squint that was framed by a headache, M.J. saw a backlit figure of what appeared to be a sickly, possibly mentally ill woman: fuzzy socks, robe limply tied, and hair in cornrows. Behind her, the parted curtains swayed to a stop.

“Jules?”

A whimper.

“God, you look as bad as I feel.”

“How many Claritin did I take last night?”

M.J. leg-swept the miniature bottles onto the floor. “I don’t think it was the Claritin.”

“Shoot,” Jules said, in a whisper. “I’m not supposed to take antihistamines with a cocktail.”

“You didn’t take it with a cocktail.” M.J. flipped her pillow to the cold side. “You took it with an entire minibar.”