The Muffia (3 page)

“Boo,” I said. They both turned and looked at me blankly. Jelicka seemed to have forgotten it was still fifteen miles to her house in Holmby Hills near the UCLA campus and, driving there, we were bound to encounter more
weather
.

“So, did you read the book?” I asked. Their expressions didn’t change.

“Most of it,” they said in unison, exchanging a glance at each other.

“We might want to shift to a bi-monthly format,” I suggested. “Some of us seem to have trouble finishing. Perhaps people need more time.”

“That won’t help. Especially if it’s a bad book.” She had a point. It was just that what she considers a good book is limited at best. Jelicka is all about characters and plot. It doesn’t matter to her if a book is billed as literary and high-minded—the story has to grab her. Give her a compelling heroine she can relate to and she’s happy.

“I couldn’t even listen to it on CD,” Vicki said. “It seemed like the guy, what’s-his-name, Frank, kept driving around and around feeling sorry for himself because his life wasn't working out. Well, hey, I feel so sorry for you with your nice house and car and people to have sex with. And did he have to keep talking about his balls? Who picked this book anyway?”

Considering that Vicki was the Muff who’d said the book was a literary nailing of the banal in her email, she was getting awfully worked up. Maybe she was sicker than Sarah knew.

“Rachel—” started Jelicka. “I mean I love Rachel, but she reads way too much and, frankly, influences weaker people when it’s their turn to choose a book.”

“None of us is weak, Jel,” Vicki said.

“But that’s not the point,” I found myself saying. “Rachel is very well-read and very smart—”

“Yeah, well,” said Jelicka, "if she'd read this one more carefully, she wouldn't have picked it."

“She also has more time to read than some of us but the point is, the hostess should pick the book,” I continued. “And she should have read it before she picks it.”

“She could have read it years ago,” Vicki added.

“Right. The trouble is, Sarah doesn’t read. I don’t know if she ever did. So what’s
she
supposed to do?”

“She can read the hell out of a recipe.” Jelicka smiled. “Listen, we’re not going to kick her out of the group. Besides, we get together to share our lives. The book is secondary.”

True enough, I thought, not understanding why we couldn’t do both Then the doorbell rang.

“That’s the carpoolers,” called Sarah. “Could somebody get it?”

Jelicka’s head swung back to
Stormwatch
in order to catch an urgent update from Mohawk man, and Vicki flopped down into her chair.

Guess it was going to be me
. Leaving the den, I almost collided with Nate, Sarah’s husband, coming down the stairs. He clutched my arm and spoke in a whisper that included some spit.

“Maddie—I’ve been banished. You have to get me a couple o’ beers.”

The doorbell sounded again.

“I’ve got it,” I called out to Sarah before turning back to Nate. “I think you’ve already had a couple of beers.”

Nate isn’t conventionally handsome, but he’s compelling in a Jack Black/Adam Sandler kind of way—his sex appeal is hard to deny.

“Ah come on, Mad. Look at it this way: I’m not driving.” Then he winked.

“Where’s Nate Jr.?”

“Playing ‘Grand Theft Auto.’”

“What?” I stared at him. Nate Jr. was four.

“It’s a joke, Maddie. He’s watching
Land Before Time
, the dinosaur series that won’t die. I was pushing for
Gortimer
Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street
but he would have none of it. Kids today...”

Nate was always charming but at that point he was clearly drunk. “I’ll see what I can do,” I told him. “Check the stairs in fifteen.”

Then Nate pulled me to him and kissed me on the lips. I want to say I pushed him away immediately but I was stunned and slow to react. It had also been awhile, months actually, since anyone had kissed me. But I recovered and reacted as I should have considering he was my friend’s husband.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at me, gave me his crooked grin then shrugged before dashing upstairs.

Clearly there was something going on.
One thing was for sure: I wouldn’t be getting him any beer.

I pulled the door open to reveal Kiki and Quinn, both slightly damp under the awning, while Rachel, dry as crisp bread with her blonde hair cascading magnificently, strolled up the walk under a golf umbrella, Paige flanking her.

“So, Lauren did in fact blow us off for an alcoholic beverage?” I asked as they made their way inside.

“She promised to get us each a bottle,” Paige confirmed.

“I couldn’t believe Chelsea Handler vodka was a real excuse. I just thought she hadn’t read the book again,” I said, plucking the spanakopita from Rachel's grasp.

“She read the first sixty pages,” offered Kiki “Then she realized she preferred picking up her dogs' poop to slogging through that thing.”

“When has Lauren ever picked up dog poop?" I asked in disbelief.

“I
know
, right?” Kiki said, as if channeling a Nuyorican poetess. She looked hot and cool at the same time—the raindrops rolling miraculously off her hair as she took off her white patent-leather trench coat. Kiki's husband, Saul the hedge-fund manager, made gobs of money, which probably meant she’s had a pretty easy life too. Lately, though, as I said, the chinks were beginning to show.

“The vodka launch was actually earlier, but then she had to go home to get ready for her trip or something,” said Quinn. Per usual, her hair was piled up on top of her head and she was wearing one of her dozen or so miniskirts. Quinn claims that, in her line of work, a pair of decent legs, open or closed, is an asset to be flaunted for maximum effect.

“That’s also not a legitimate excuse,” Paige said, moving out from under the umbrella, her bob perfect as always, while Rachel closed the umbrella and shook it off before stepping onto Sarah’s minimally waxed oak floors.

“Lying on a beach in Jamaica is not an excuse,” Paige went on. “I mean, my
in-laws
are coming for two weeks! I should be home vacuuming but nope—I’m here.
And
I read the book.”

Of course we’d all received Paige’s email tirade the week before but none of us wanted to indulge her on the subject of whether or not we were taking book club seriously enough. That would only get ugly. Instead, as each Muff entered—carrying assorted culinary delights and bottles of wine and exchanging a double kiss in greeting—we made the effort to shake free of our daily lives and the rainy evening outside, and looked forward to basking in each others’ company, conversation and friendship.

With the carpoolers’ arrival, we’d reached our quorum for the evening—eight instead of our usual nine. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the stairs and wondered if Nate was still waiting for his beer? After that bizarre kiss, he'd be waiting all night and he only had himself to blame. What kind of friend gets her friend's husband alcohol after he sticks his tongue down her throat? What kind of husband sticks his tongue down his wife's friend's throat? A girl doesn't need either one.

But as I closed the door and made my way into the kitchen, I wondered if my hard and fast rules about human behavior weren’t just a little too harsh.

Chapter 3

“This looks amazing,” Jelicka said, her bowl brimming with fish, fennel and mussels, as she sat down with the rest of us in Sarah’s dark red dining room.

The food was laid out buffet-style on a sideboard positioned under an
Edwin
Landseer
knock-off purchased at the Pasadena Flea Market, as were most of Sarah’s belongings. White antique drapes lifted slightly from the warm air coming up through the floor grates. Combined with the weather outside, the ambience seemed more Conan Doyle than SoCal. Sarah finally took the butterfly clip from her head and the rest of her hair fell around her oval face in bangs and wisps that made her look about eighteen.

“It’s delicious,” I said, slurping another mussel from its shell. Murmurs of agreement broke the silence of the collective concentrated consumption.

Sarah smiled. “Aoli—butter, cream, garlic. You can’t go wrong.”

“It’s a sauce! Lauren would approve,” Quinn said, dribbling slightly onto her Armani blouse. “Shit.”

Lauren, the absent Muff, thinks everything can be improved with one of her sauces. She makes them for meat, vegetables, pasta, dessert; to marinate, to mix in, to dip in, to pour on. She’s even brought her sauces to other Clitties’ homes unsolicited, which is often a source of contention—especially with Paige.

“I guess I shouldn’t worry about how fattening it is when it tastes this great,” Rachel said, finishing her bowl.

“No
ooo
."

"Can't think about that."

"Why worry?"

We were all in agreement.

“Besides, it’s all about portion control,” Rachel went on. “Not what you eat.”

“So size matters?” Jelicka asked, licking her lips.

We Muffs are all pretty good cooks with the exception perhaps of Vicki who overcooks meats to the point of unrecognizability, and steams her vegetables so far past
al dente
one needs a spoon. We discovered one evening, however, that she can cook a mean paella. It was the one recipe she must have ground into her brain while living in Spain. Whenever it’s Vicki’s turn to host, we ask her to make paella due to the dread of any alternative, even though paella usually has no relationship with the book we’ve just read.

We all sort of have our own signature dishes. Paige is the baker, specializing in pies and buttery Apple Brown Betty, a delicious, if oddly named, dessert.  Kiki never seems to mind all the Brown Betty Paige makes, even though it’s a dish created by slaves during colonial times. Instead Kiki chooses to view Paige’s ongoing efforts trying to improve her Brown Betty as cute, and as acknowledgment that black women were superior cooks even way back when.

Jelicka, on the other hand, loves to
sear
things—fish, steak, vegetables—anything she gets her hands on. It must suit her often-caustic moods. I imagine her standing at the stove and, as she sears, mentally causing pain to someone who’s wronged her. She has a personalized stovetop pan with iron strips and a decorative “JG” forged into the bottom to brand her initials into whatever’s tossed into it. She brands things with such enthusiasm that, from time to time, it makes me wonder about the Gelmans’ bedroom activities.

“This reminds me of the summer I spent in the south of France,” Vicki said, her face aglow in the soupy steam. “I practically
lived
on bouillabaisse.”

“This isn’t bouillabaisse,” Sarah responded.

“Tastes like it.”

Sarah shook her head. “Champagne is only Champagne if it comes from the Champagne region of France. Bouillabaisse is from Marseille and dates to about six hundred B.C. when the ancient Greeks showed up and taught the French how to cook. In
Marseille
, people practically kill each other over who makes the most authentic bouillabaisse. It’s also supposed to be the soup that Venus fed to Vulcan to lull him to sleep so she could cavort with Mars.”

We looked at her blankly. Paige feigned boredom.

“You know, the God,” said Sarah.

Apparently she did read after all, when it suited her
. Collectively we were lulled speechless by her little lecture, though I could tell by her sigh that Paige was less than impressed.

“So you see, this couldn’t possibly be bouillabaisse,” Sarah finished.

“So what is it?” asked Jelicka.

“Fish Soup.”

“Needs a new name,” Jelicka said. “But I’m getting more anyway.” She rose from her chair, followed by Rachel who’d clearly abandoned portion control for the evening and was headed into the kitchen. 

“Whatevs—” Paige said, her cute little bob swinging. “It’s
like
bouillabaisse.”

Sarah shrugged. “A lot of things are like a lot of other things. But things
are
what they
are
.”

Well that was certainly the truth. No matter how much any of us might want things to be different—whether it’s what things are called or the fact that your life isn’t what you want it to be—things are what they are and we should probably try to accept that. To deny what’s really happening is like cutting out a little piece of yourself—like part of a vital organ. Eventually the hole inside you where that missing part used to be can get infected and make you sick. Things could get so bad that the sickness might even take down the whole organism—you! All right, fine, maybe this is an odd tangent to go off on when we’ve just been talking about soup but I find everything is related when you're paying attention.

“When were you in the south of France, Vick?” I asked with longing.

“Oh my God, probably fifteen years ago now—right after Ricardo and I split. It was when I had money.”

“I went to Cannes one year for the film festival,” Quinn said, dabbing at her ruined shirt. “The food was amazing except that I didn’t have time to get to the best restaurants. That was the year I signed Vince Vaughn to a series of ads for Japanese tractors. We had to go out to a field to see how he looked sitting on one.”

“And?” asked Jelicka, returning to her seat. “Was he shirtless?”

Quinn frowned. “In Japan? Please. But he’s nice. Huge forehead.”

Jelicka was slurping. “Huge what?”

“Forehead.” Quinn rolled her eyes.

“I was gonna say... How'd you get to see it? Anyway, I like Vince Vaughn. But I
love
this, whatever it is, Sarah. I
need
this recipe and, while I’m at it, whatever you’re cooking for dessert smells unreal and I think I need that recipe too.” 

This happened every time Sarah was hostess. “Sure," she said. "But you know Paige brought a dessert that looks great, too," she added graciously. Everyone pretty much always said they wanted everyone else's recipes—including those from dinners years ago—and the conversation turned nostalgic for remembered red velvet cakes and fried chicken. 

“Let’s talk about the book,” Paige said finally. “We agreed last time that we were going to start with the book and do the ‘what’s-happening roundy-round’ afterward in the interests of time.”

The change in topic prompted Sarah to go into the kitchen, clearing away some of the empty bowls as she went. I questioned Paige’s motivation for shifting the topic so abruptly, but I’ve noticed that Paige often has trouble when Sarah’s cooking gets attention.

Personally, I thought it would be better to get dessert out of the way before we started talking about this month’s selection because I feared we might be headed for a nasty, contentious bake-off showdown and we’d need the book to take refuge in, such as it was. Paige had brought coconut cake for a change and, as we all could attest, the delicious aroma of Sarah’s pie had almost overwhelmed that of the fish soup.

Sarah slipped in from the kitchen carrying Paige’s cake in one hand and her mixed berry pie with crumble crust in the other, smartly avoiding drawing attention to herself. Sarah
could
be smart when she wanted to be. She put down the desserts with no ceremony whatsoever and said, “Yes, let’s talk about the book, but I think we need to start reading books
by
women
about
women. After all, we
are
a women’s book club.”

“Would you have read this book if it was about a woman by a woman?” I asked, ignoring the desserts.

She gave me a blank stare. “That’s not the point.”

“This book would have pissed me off even more if a
woman
wrote it,” Jelicka said. “A woman would have known better. How can a book called
The Lay of the Land
not have a single scene where somebody gets
laid
? Bait and switch if you ask me. Yes, our protagonist
wanted
to get laid. He
wanted
to find the waitress who he
thought
had looked at him suggestively one day way back whenever it was—maybe she did, maybe she didn’t—but the restaurant where she worked was closed and he never got that booty call did he? He just kept driving around in that gas-guzzler, getting more and more desperate, ruminating about that funeral home and then watching the building implode with the crazy geezer. I mean, you think he’s going to get laid and it turns out to be a book about driving around New Jersey.”

Vicki looked at Jelicka. “You told me you didn’t read it.”

Rachel, having suggested the book, subtly screwed up her face and chomped down on a second, possibly third, piece of garlic bread.

“I did and I didn’t,” Jelicka said. “I skimmed it for sex scenes but there were none. I guess I just picked up a little of the storyline along the way.”

“Well, you got the gist of it. Like you said in your email, Vicki, a literary nailing of the banal.” Kiki pronounced banal so it rhymed with
anal
. She looked at the two desserts. “Those sweeties look yummy but I can’t eat another thing.”

“Didn’t the author win a Pulitzer?” asked Sarah. “How does that happen if it’s not a good book?”

“More to the point,” said Quinn, “how did it become a
New York Times
bestseller?”

“Frank Bascomb is a character whom we are all more like than not, regardless of whether you care to admit it.” Rachel now looked smug, casually chasing down the garlic bread with a gulp of wine. “Ford’s other books in which Frank appears are transformational.”

“There are others?” I asked, sorry to crowd another useless piece of information into my overcrowded brain.

“
Sports Writer, Independence Day
,” Rachel said. “Truly wonderful.”

“Transformational?" The only thing I knew was that I'd been transformed into a person who'd never read another Frank Bascomb book.

“Sorry, Rachel,” Quinn agreed, “I tried getting through
Sports Writer
a couple of years ago and it wasn’t much better.”

“It was well-written,” offered Paige. “I just didn’t care about the guy.”

Rachel had risen to her feet and was over at the sideboard, opening another bottle of wine. “What Ford is writing about in his books—and, yes, there’s an aspect of the banal (pronounced the usual way)—but the character of Frank Bascomb represents the everyman who is simply trying to sanely exist in a world that he believes has gone crazy. It’s a form that goes back to, well... England. Many of Dickens’ characters or Trollope’s—people who function within the society of the day, replete with its many absurdities.”

“Well, that’s a noble goal,” said Vicki, “but isn’t it equally important that people want to read your book so you can to actually communicate that and enrich readers’ lives?”

“My point exactly,” said Jelicka. “It needed sex.”

“I do think that’s important,” said Rachel. “And I think he’s done that.”

I whispered to Jelicka. “
Sportswriter
has some sex in it—not a lot, but...”

“I see what everyone’s saying,” said Paige. “My problem is I didn’t relate to the guy—not as brother, father, uncle, husband. But does everything always have to be about getting laid, Jelicka? You don’t strike any of us as having a problem with that.”

“What does that mean?” Jelicka’s demanded, a bit harshly.

“Just that you’re a beautiful woman and I see you as spending too much time worrying about sex.”

“Oh, you do?” Jelicka flicked her double-processed blonde hair with a gel-manicured hand. “And what makes you think I’m
worried
?”

“Alright, listen,” Rachel interrupted. “My bad; I’m sorry for pushing a book on you all when I seem to be the only one who got something out of it. But the fact that it’s generated strong feelings is a good thing.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t read it now,” said Sarah. “I just couldn’t get past the thing about his balls. I mean, can someone tell me if that was necessary? He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d do something like that to, I don’t know, turn on his girlfriend or intensify his orgasms or—”

“He had cancer, Sarah,” Vicki snapped, returning from the kitchen with a little bottle of Perrier. “So the doctors put titanium beads in his gonads.”