Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“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.

“Hey, I was just thinking about you. And not in a weird way.”

“Hey Lace,” she said, her voice bright and clear over thrumming guitar riffs in the background. “I want you to go to your door in four… three… two…. one. Now.”

Curious, I got up and found a FedEx truck pulling into the driveway outside my door.

“How do you do that?” I asked as the deliveryman climbed out of the truck with a large purple shipping box.

“GPS tracking systems,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve been monitoring the delivery progress. I wanted to hear your reaction when you opened your present.”

“You are a frighteningly clever girl,” I told her as I signed for the package. “And you really don’t have to send me presents.”

“Well, I can’t lure you to the dark side without bait,” she said. I opened the box to find a gift basket inside, topped with a lurid purple bow.

“The First Wives Club. Enough. Sliding Doors.” I read the covers of the DVDs nestled inside. “And a mix CD entitled Music for Angry Chicks.”

I sifted through the bottom of the basket, which was lined with typed statements from women from all over the country. Texas, Mississippi, Washington, Delaware. “What’s this on the bottom?”

“You might call them case studies,” Maya said. “These are some of the clients who have expressed interest in newsletters from And One Last Thing …. I thought you might like to read some of their stories. You’ve got husbands who left their wives for their receptionists, babysitters, dry cleaners, golfing buddies. One woman’s husband slept with her identical twin. He tried to tell her he didn’t know it was cheating.”

“So you lure me in with girl power movies and then you sucker punch me with women crying out for vengeance?”

“I don’t like to think of it as sucker punching,” Maya said. “I prefer to think of it as setting a mood.”

“You’re the devil,” I told her as I skimmed over some of the statements. Maya’s clients were from all walks of life, all over the country. The one thing they had in common was an unfaithful husband and an overwhelming need to get their dignity back. They could suffer the loss of love, the life they thought they had, the luxuries of a two-income household, if they could just hold their heads up when they went to the Walmart. And they seemed to think they could get that back if I helped them. The problem was helping them meant repeating one of the more reckless things I’ve ever done and directly disobeying my attorney, whose patience I did not want to test.

“Just read over them and get back to me,” Maya told me. “And enjoy the movies. I’ve been where you are right now. You’re hitting that two-month lonely stage when you start to question what you did. Your friends’ sympathy is starting to wane, because they’ve never been through something like this and they think you should be over it by now. So you’re up all night, alone, watching bad television. I thought I might help remedy that. And the CD is mostly Pink, post-divorce.”