“Face snuggling?” he suggested brightly.
I groused, “Shut it.”
“So if it’s not Monroe keeping you, why would you even think about wintering up here?” Emmett asked.
“It’s just that it seems to be working out pretty well. It’s cheap. It’s quiet. I don’t have to deal with Mike or anybody else.”
“Oh, honey, I don’t think people care about you anymore,” Emmett said. “Some woman in Texas locked her cheating husband in a dog kennel and posted pictures of it on the internet. By contrast, you’re downright conservative. They haven’t made fun of you on the radio in weeks.”
“On the radio?” I repeated. “When did that start?”
Emmett ignored me. “The citizens of our fair hamlet have had more to chew on than your sorry tale as Beebee is stepping on some toes. The humiliations have been public and spectacular. Beebee has become the talk of the town… again… for completely different reasons. She’s like the slutty secretarial Icarus. She’s flying so high that she can’t see how far she can fall. Beebee has lost all of her sense. Ruby Huddleston overheard her telling everybody down at Sassy Nails that since you didn’t work, she wasn’t going to work. She is now a full-time, stay-at-home hussy.”
“What exactly does that entail?”
He grinned. “Oh, shopping for trashy lingerie, going to the gym, scrap-booking the milestones of her adulterous relationship, getting permanent liner tattooed on her eyelids, networking lunches with other hussies. She’s spending money like water, redecorating the house like something out of a magazine… that magazine being Weekly World News. It’s nothing but hunting prints in the living room and tropical fish in the bathroom. It’s a collection of the world’s worst decorating themes all in one house.”
“I know I shouldn’t be enjoying this, considering that she’s pretty much destroying my former home,” I admitted. “But I am.”
“And from what I hear, Beebee’s not ascending to the social heights she’d anticipated,” he said. “She’s been wait-listed by the Junior League. And they haven’t wait-listed an applicant since 1975. Remember Maude Littleton? She tried to pass off Knox Gelatine recipes as her own in the church bazaar cookbook and it marked her for years. Anyway, Beebee has been semi-blackballed there. Mike can’t add her onto his membership at the country club as long as he’s still legally married to you. Beebee has been grudgingly accepted into the Ladies Auxiliary, but not selected for any of the important committees. She’s been stuck on the solicitation committee for the spring carnival. The lowest of positions in the Auxiliary’s hierarchy,” Emmett added with a bitchy snicker.
“All because of me?” I asked.
Emmett burst out laughing.
“What?!” I cried as he rolled on the couch. “Okay, so I’m overestimating my importance to my friends and neighbors.”
“It’s self-preservation,” he assured me. “The women of Singletree realize that introducing Beebee into their circles and more important, to their husbands, puts them all at risk. Even if Beebee doesn’t make plays for their husbands, seeing Mike and Beebee together might give their husbands the idea that they could trade their wives in for newer models. Beebee is like a social pathogen, contagious, virulent, and surgically enhanced.
“Wynnie blames you for this debacle, of course, to anyone who will listen,” Emmett said. “And that’s becoming fewer and fewer people. She keeps saying you should be ashamed of yourself for ‘running off’ on Mike and abandoning him. I don’t think she’s even embarrassed by the e-mail any more. She’s just pissed at you for losing Mike to someone so much worse than you.”
“Wow. Thank you so much.”
“People are asking about you,” Emmett said, looking contrite. “And not with that condescending, smirky look in their eyes. You could be welcomed back into the fold before you know it.”
“Oh, screw the fold,” I muttered.
“Why are we talking about this boring stuff?” Emmett asked. “I want to hear more about your friendship with Monroe. If you didn’t notice, Lacey, the word ‘friendship’ was in quotation marks.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said.
Emmett patted me on the head. “Well, let’s just go ahead and declare you dead from the waist down, huh, peaches?”
After helping me buff the remains of my muddy adventures from my face, Emmett made himself scarce. I think he wanted to hit the road before further manual labor became necessary. To be honest, I was more than happy to see him leave as I was suddenly bursting with ideas on the aftermath of Greg’s bloody disappearance. And I wanted to make some notes on what would happen when Greg’s girlfriend reported him missing and the cops questioned Laurie.
I was just starting a new chapter when Monroe came back to make sure that Mr. Borchard had left. Then he told me I was welcome to come over for dinner as he was smoking sausage.
“Either that was the world’s most bizarre come-on, or you feel far too comfortable around me,” I said, squinting at him.
He flushed slightly, protesting, “No, seriously, I have kielbasa.”
“I’m sure you - I’m sorry, this is just too easy And weird.”
“I agree,” he said, giving a small shudder. “I don’t know whether to feel aroused or harassed.”
“You’re the one who brought up phallic meat products. If anyone should be creeped out by the boundary-crossing flirtation, it’s me,” I told him.
“When I flirt with you, you’ll know it,” he muttered.
There was an unusually long conversational pause.
“Awkward,” I commented.
He nodded. “I’ve never had a girlfriend before. I don’t know if this is okay. I mean I’ve had a girlfriend, obviously. But I’ve never had a girl who was my friend -… Oh, for God’s sake, I sound like I’m in sixth grade.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Please, help me get out of this conversation gracefully”
“There is no graceful way out of this. This is the conversational Thunderdome.” I shook my head sadly. “Look, I need to finish up a few thoughts. And then I would be happy to come over for dinner. I’ll even bring a cake that doesn’t involve you getting smacked in the face. I will leave the inappropriate sausage innuendos at home.”
“I would appreciate that.” He nodded toward my computer. “So how’s the writing coming along?”
“I am channeling my angst into a chapter in which Laurie’s husband appears as a gory apparition while she’s in the tub,” I said. “Sure, she gets to keep the house, but seeing her broken, bloody husband skulking around the place is going to suck the fun out of it.”
“I must admit, I’m thinking of putting you on a strictly Nicholas Sparks diet. I don’t think I’ve been a good influence on you, violence-wise.”
I smirked. “It’s therapeutic.”
“Just remember my theory on gore: ‘less is more.’ The only field where ‘more is more’ applies is porn.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” I promised.
He peered over my shoulder at the screen. “Are you ever going to let me see it?”
I snapped my laptop shut. “It will take more than kielbasa for that to happen.”
He grimaced. “And now it’s awkward again.”
When Monroe left, I couldn’t help but wonder at the weirdness that was our friendship. Female friendship was a precious thing I had been lacking for quite some time. And besides my relationship with Emmett, I had never had anything resembling camaraderie with a man. If this experience had taught me anything (besides pay more attention to your husband’s e-mail account) it was that I needed more friends, of either gender.
If I was able to choose my own friends, and I was pretty sure
I could now, would I choose someone like Maya? Strong-willed, independent, slightly off center. Or would I choose someone like Sam? Someone smart, successful, and poised? Or could I be friends with both women? If the chips were down, I think I’d want both of them in my corner. Sam seemed like the type that carried bail-ready cash around with her. But how exactly did a grown woman ask someone to be her friend? Was there an exchange of woven bracelets involved?
And Monroe. I had never been more confused by my feelings for one person. There was no doubt that I was attracted to him physically. I kept expecting those mad adolescent crush feelings to fade as we spent more time together, but with every conversation, I just looked forward to seeing him again that much more. It wasn’t love. It was a meaningful friendship with someone who happened to be ridiculously good-looking.
It was really going to suck when I moved on to whatever my next step was and moved away. Or we had sex and he had to move because it was disastrous and it would just be too weird for him to stay at the lake.
I was pondering those cheerful thoughts when my cell phone rang. The caller ID showed it was Maya. I chuckled as I hit OK. This was going to be interesting.