More Muffia (The Muffia Book 2) (9 page)
Oh, but the feeling! Thrust . . . thrust . . . shudder . . . drive. In and out, make me feel alive!
I didn’t want to stop him. I didn’t want to stop myself. Truth be told, I’ve never been one for three-hour sex. I have too many things to do. I think ten minutes is just about perfect.
“You feel outrageous,” he said, moaning.
But one minute?
“You’re so hard,” I moaned back. “So...
hard
.”
“Oh, my God. I’m gonna—”
“No, don’t—”
“I’m going to—”
“Not yet—”
“Going to—”
“—No, don’t—”
“I’m going to—Oh!”
“—come yet, please—”
“Here I—”
“No—”
“—come!! I—”
“Please, not—”
“Yes!”
“Not, oh—”
“I’m cooommmming.”
“Ohhh, God, you—”
“I’m coooomming.”
“—kill me—”
“I’m
coming
.”
“Wait!”
“Here I come—”
“Please... ”
Thrust. “Aghhhhhh!”
“Oh!”
“Rrruhh—” Thrust.
“Not yeeehh… ”
Thrust. “Fuhbla…ahhh… eyaiischloooeee—”
“Arghhhh!”
Deeper, longer thrust . . . shudderrrrr.
I hadn’t come.
“Sorry. I couldn’t stop myself. But that was amazing,” he said, amazingly. “You had me so riled up, and I love this piece of furniture.”
After another minute, he swept the hair from my face, leaned down, and caressed my lips with his own. “I love you, you know.”
“
MMMmmm,
” I
mmmmmmd
, noncommittally.
He really was a sweet man, even if he lied like a corporate titan.
Stupid Quinn, he is a corporate titan
. To his credit, though, he genuinely seemed to care that I thought well of him, which, in truth, no longer mattered. I’d made up my mind finally that what he did—or more accurately, did not do—trumped what he said he would do. Obviously, I had found it difficult to pull myself away because he was the only man I knew of who made me feel this good—even without an orgasm. There were other men out there, my rational pre-frontal cortex told me—hence the nascent attempts to find one—but my amygdala was telling me something different. And right now, with “Picturegate” hanging over my head, perhaps I should forgive myself this one-time backslide. Good as Steven was, this really had to stop.
He glanced toward the kitchen, where the bag of goodies he’d brought sat on top of the counter. “Hungry?”
I was starving, but not for anything that food or sex was ever going to satisfy.
The sun was setting on what had been an abnormally warm April evening as Kiki and I waited for the Muffs to return from their pre-book club hike to the Hollywood sign—a site which even the most put-upon Bangladeshy garment worker knows is situated in the hills above the original tinsel town.
We were sitting on the front stoop of Rachel’s rented house on a windy street off Beachwood Canyon, and I’d already started in on the bottle of bourbon I brought, telling Kiki I was just getting into the theme of the night—
white trash.
The real reason, of course, was my life—Picturegate—with me playing the part of a crazed shoe wielder, which put my job on the line, and my relapse into Steven a few hours ago. Thus far, I had yet to tell any of the Muffs about either development, but my plan was to definitely avoid the topic of Steven. Too embarrassing.
I held up my metal, reusable coffee mug in which three fingers of bourbon awaited my consumption. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” Kiki clinked her vegetarian, gluten-free pasta casserole against my mug.
Sweet woman; didn’t want to make me feel I was drinking alone
.
“To white trash.” I sipped the deliciously-strong, peaty liquid and swallowed.
Ahhhh
…
that’s better. Yes, yes, yes and thank you, Maker’s Mark.
“Do you think the term ‘white trash’ is racist?” she asked, disturbing my little respite.
“To who…w
hom
?” I sputtered.
“I mean in a sort of reverse racist kind of way.”
Lowering the mug from my lips, I assessed her expression.
Was she serious?
“Only a beautiful, wealthy, twenty-first-century Black woman could ask that question.”
Kiki was well educated and always dressed like three million bucks. Tonight she had on a pair of her typically expensive-looking, covet-worthy boots, a gorgeous tan leather jacket, and diamonds glittered from her ears and fingers. Correction:
four million bucks
.
She met my gaze. “You’re right; trashiness crosses all racial dividing lines. It’s more a way of life.”
“You have no idea.” I reflected on my own definitively white trash upbringing just down the block from the greater Fresno trailer park. “It’s a little like being born into a religious sect.”
“Well, I have a story that gets into a specific kind of human trashiness, which I eluded to in my email, but I’m going to save it for the roundy.”
“Can you give me a hint?”
“Let’s just say it’s juicy.”
“Well, you’ve certainly piqued my curiosity.” I took another sip of bourbon. But I guess I have to wait.
The roundy-round was that portion of every book club gathering dedicated to updating each other about everything going on in our lives. It was a way to reconnect and see if we could help each other. And it’s what the Muffs who never read the books show up for—both to hear and be heard.
“And you wait,” I said. “I have a hell of a story for you, too.”
The roundy-round was going to kick ass tonight
!
From our vantage point, the fading light glinted like a ray gun off the letters of the Hollywood sign rising above us. It was always shocking to see how large those letters were when you got close. Each could provide enough shade for a hundred coyotes, three of which had just strolled by, nonchalant and bold as could be. And they clearly weren’t starving, subsisting as they did on the small pets of neighboring hillside dwellers. I knew people whose dogs had disappeared through supposedly protected outdoor enclosures. Seeing a pack of them gave me the creeps.
Soon the coyotes had tucked out of sight, and it was a pack of Muffs strolling toward us—Rachel, Sarah, Jelicka, Madelyn, and Lauren—all slightly damp from their exertions but not the least bit creepy. Rachel’s blonde curls were pulled back into a ponytail, and all the women were dressed in at least one piece from Lululemon. We greeted each other with our usual joy and warm feelings.
“I hope you saved us some.” Rachel eyed the open bottle of bourbon. “I was lookin’ forward to a Whiskey Sour.”
Holding up the bottle, it was clear we had more than enough bourbon left to put us all under the table, if that’s what we wanted.
“Where’s Paige?” Madelyn said.
“Should she be here by now?” asked Kiki.
I pulled out my phone to check to see if Paige sent an email, but there was no Internet connection. It was almost shocking these days to find pockets in this high-tech town where one still couldn’t get online. How quickly we forget that not very long ago, few people had mobile phones—let alone handheld computers on which one can also carry on a conversation on the other side of the world. The bourbon was having its desired effect, however, and neither this, nor much else, seemed to matter.
“We’ll check when we get inside,” said Rachel opening the door. “And Vicki’s coming but said she’d be a little late.”
Before long, we were seated around Rachel’s Indonesian table with a veritable white trash feast in front of us—fried chicken, saucy peanut coleslaw, marshmallow potatoes, and biscuits. Kiki’s casserole was the only offering that could be referred to as part of a healthy lifestyle. The sun had gasped its last, and the lights in the houses perched on the canyon hillsides below us were beginning to twinkle. We were happily chowing down, and most of us were in our cups, thanks to the Whiskey Sours whipped up by yours truly, a pitcher of which sat on the table before us.
Vicki finally showed—with her video equipment, of course—dressed in black with her hair spiked up, looking a little too 1980s for comfort. In that get-up, I thought
Dateafarmer
seemed like the last website she should choose to find a mate. Before we’d sat down, she took me aside while setting up a couple of lights and whispered her approval of the rough draft of my online profile, which I had emailed first thing in the morning, before Jamie ruined the day with those pictures.
“Did you pick a site to put it on?”
“
NowLove
. I’m hoping that having the image of an arrow getting shot from a bow will encourage me to just pick somebody.”
“Or shoot somebody,” said Rachel, passing by with an empty bowl for the chicken bones. “I don’t know why it’s a secret, but I won’t tell.”
Vicki looked at me. “I didn’t say anything. Swear.”
“It doesn’t really matter.” And it didn’t; I just didn’t want eight opinions about what site I should go on. “How ’bout you?” I asked. Where’s
your
profile?”
She looked like she was going to say something but was interrupted by Maddie.
“Rachel, it’s Paige; she sent an email.”
Rachel went over to the computer and read aloud.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Tonight
Dearest Muffs, I’m not going to make it. One of my students treed a forehand, and the tennis ball slammed into my eye. I’ll be fine but will just have a massive shiner. On top of that, the creep who hangs out at the club has turned into a full-fledged stalker and when he followed me to my car with ice bags, I got so freaked out, I almost had an accident on the way to the doctor. I know neither of these things is an allowable excuse, but trust me—you don’t want me there. Loved the book, though, even if she made it up.
Love, Paige, your repentant book club Nazi
“Well,” said Rachel. “I guess we don’t have to wait.”
“That had to have hurt,” said Kiki. “Poor Paige.”
“Yeah, poor Paige,” agreed Lauren.
“What is she talking about?” I said. “Jeannette did
not
make it up. She’s not James Frey saying she went to prison when she didn’t. She really
lived
all that insanity.”
“Supposedly,” said Rachel. “But memoir is not
necessarily
truth. It’s truth through the lens of memory.”
“Which means it’s definitely
not
true,” Kiki said. “Memory is faulty.”
Vicki’s camera was pointed at us, moving nimbly from woman to woman as the conversation flowed.
Lauren held up a piece of chicken. “So true—dang this is tasty.” She took a bite. “Why do you think I started a non-profit for Alzheimer’s?”
“At best, memoir is revisionist history at the micro level,” said Rachel. “But it’s the genre of our time. Each memoir is its author’s truth, so you just have to read it as a story.”
“Nice...revisionist history at the micro level. Don’t we sound smart,” said Jelicka.
Sometimes Rachel, the English major, literary aficionado of the group, gave us the impression she merely tolerated the rest of us. What she didn’t appreciate sometimes was that there were far more readers like us in the world who just want a good story well told; and far fewer snob critics who praise drivel as “must read,” when it’s a load of crap. I couldn’t think of a particular title just then, but we’d read a few.
“Jeannette’s is one of many truths.” Typical Madelyn—always playing the mediator whenever conflict arises. “But it’s no truer than anyone else’s. Chances are each member of the Walls family remembers events slightly differently. “If there were a conflict—in the Walls family or any other—I’d have to listen to each person and try to piece together the real truth of the conflict. But even if I did that, whatever I came up with would only be my truth about their truths, you know?”
Gotta love her.
“Jeannette never ate this well, I’ll tell ya that much,” said Lauren, helping herself to another piece of chicken. “Tomorrow it’s back on the diet—four weeks until the Benefit.”
Some of us mumbled a few words about how, yes, we should be concerned about what and how much we were eating and drinking but agreed that tomorrow seemed soon enough to do something about it. Now that my ankle was better, I’d be back working the pole in a day or two.
“I was going to make hot dogs, in honor of Jeannette’s sacrifice,” Rachel said, “but I didn’t think anyone would eat them.”
“That’s right!” Sarah exclaimed. “She caught fire making hot dogs. Wasn’t she only four years old when that happened? How crazy is that?”
“Totally irresponsible parenting,” agreed Madelyn. “Not to mention, the dad had the kids robbing banks, and he practically pimped Jeannette.”
“I don’t know how you mediate that, Maddie,” Jelicka said.
Vicki swung her camera lens from Sarah to Maddie. “Could you guys have that exchange again?”
Maddie and Jelicka repeated their lines, and Maddie threw me a glance that said:
What is she going to do with all this footage?
I shrugged.
“My dad always used to say, ‘crazy parents make sane kids,’ ” Rachel said. “Which must explain why I’m a little nuts—they were only half crazy.”
“I don’t think it works like that, Rachel,” I said.
“I liked how her dad taught her to shoot,” said Jelicka, who herself made regular trips to a shooting range for target practice. “In fact, we should encourage Paige to come out to the range if she has a stalker.”
“Okay, well…Paige is a grown-up, but Jeannette was five years old when her father stuck a gun in her hand!” Madelyn was incredulous.
“And it was probably still scalded from the hot dog incident,” Sarah adds, equally put out. “You don’t let a five-year-old cook!”
Exercising great restraint, I helped myself to more of Lauren’s coleslaw, rather than another chicken thigh, telling myself the dressing wasn’t fattening.
“At least she wasn’t afraid of guns, which can be just as dangerous,” said Vicki, who’d grown up in New England and was, incongruously with her overall vibe, into skeet shooting.
“All I know is, if I ever saw my mother dumpster diving,” Kiki interjected, “especially in my own neighborhood, I don’t think I would have handled it as well as Jeannette.”