FRANCINE SAINT MARIE

Girl Trouble

FIVE SHORTS

©The Author -2008

All Rights Reserved

A “Fair Trade” Publication

by BD Books & Column Five

for Smashwords.com

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1438202105

----------------------------------

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Francine Saint Marie’s debut novel The Secret Keeping was a LAMBDA Notable Book, a Goldie Award finalist, a semi-finalist for the Independent Publishers Award, and an IPPY Award Bronze medalist. Her trilogy, The Secret Trilogy, was nominated for the 2009 Ferro/Grumley literary prize in fiction. A writer and fine artist, she was born, educated, and currently resides in New York.

--------------------------------

GIRL TROUBLE CONTENTS:

Dear Joan

Another Dear Joan

Joan

Joan and Jill

Love, Annette

-------------------------------

To Joan and Annette.

(Wherever you are.)

-------------------------------

Dear Joan

Two o’clock in the morning found Annette Martineau sulking in her lover’s kitchen, nibbling on grapes and brie as she waited for her cell phone to recharge so she could call a cab to take her to the station. She was hopping the next train out of there, whenever that was, and she was never, NEVER coming back.

That’s more or less what the letter she just left on Joan’s night stand said. She would be long gone by the time Joan read it. Long gone, more or less.

“Well, well, well, Miss Honorable Intentions. I see you didn’t get very far.”

She had been sucked into a whirlwind, Annette finally concluded, and while she hated to cut and run, staying wasn’t going to correct the situation. “I got hungry, Joan.” The grapes were sour, the brie too cold and she was not expecting a confrontation. At least not this soon. “I tried not to wake you.”

Joan stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip, in the other she held the letter. She was not as heavy a sleeper as Annette had calculated.

“Obviously you didn’t just dash this off tonight.” she said.

No. Annette had written it several days ago, on a hunch. The cell phone beeped and she rose without commenting and unplugged it.

“You write me a Dear-John that begins with ‘I love you madly and cannot concentrate on my work’? You’re an ass, I’ll have you know.”

She would walk to the train if she absolutely had to, high heels or not. “Yes, you’ve made that perfectly clear to me.”

“Oh, come on, Annette, come on—I love you.”

“Spare me,” Annette replied, dropping the phone into her purse and hastily buttoning her overcoat. The train station was thirty blocks away and in her head she could hear a whistle blowing. “I don’t have time for this now.”

“You don’t have…this is about the intimacy thing? Look, I’m sorry I said it.”

Annette bristled to hear that word again, and the halfhearted apology delivered three hours too late to do either of them any good. “It’s too late for that.”

This new accusation had been launched at her last night: that she didn’t understand the difference between intimacy and sex. Another of Joan’s little black pearls Annette could add to the long and heavy string of them she already bore. That’s why she was kicking herself in the head this morning. It wasn’t just this last insult, or yet one more should-of-said that didn’t come when it should have. It was the whole ruinous affair.

“Annette, I said I’m—”

“Intimacy and sex!”

Joan went to the front door and braced herself against it. “You’re overreacting.”

“You want to know something? I don’t understand the difference between a cappuccino and a latte, either, but it doesn’t stop me from loving coffee.”

“Oh, Jesus, Annette. And now what? You’re going to do your disappearing act on me again?”

Annette tossed her head and a shock of hair fell across her tired eyes. Having just turned forty, it was at these ungodly hours of the morning that she most felt her age and thought she looked it. Another incentive for hightailing it. “I do not disappear,” she said, through an auburn haze. “I flee.”

Joan leaned back against the door and sighed with frustration. She was feeling forty-two, whether or not she was willing to accept it. She read the letter one last time before ripping it up and throwing the pieces into the air. They settled back down to the floor like feathers from a pillow fight. “There. This is how I’m dealing with it.”

“Well, that’s your choice and I’m not writing you another, so have a nice life.”

“I said I’m sorry, Annette. What more can I add to that?”

“Nothing—and that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, by the way.”

“I said I love you, too. That’s not nice?”

“No, because it’s either a vicious lie or a terrible self-delusion.”

“I see. And when do you ever say you love me, Annette?”

Annette was within reach of the doorknob. The question stopped her dead in her tracks. “What do you mean? I tell you I love you. I tell you all the time.”

“Yeah, in your orgasms.”

“Org—and what’s wrong with—that’s not true!”

Joan was wearing her smirk and nothing else. A bare bulb flickered in the socket above them.

“Call me a cab.”

“No.”

“I need to catch my train.”

“There aren’t any cabs now. I’ll drive you in the morning.”

“It is morning.”

Joan slid her hands up under the coat. “Not morning enough,” she teased.

Her hands were hot; Annette stepped away from the heat.

In this harsh light, the small scar on Joan Majors’ breast was plainly visible. She was no longer shy about showing it. In truth, Annette hardly noticed it anymore, this indelible mark over the heart where a lump had suddenly appeared and altered a woman’s sense of herself forever. Making her only mortal, after all. Obsessed with time. Obsessed with numbers. Infinity.

It was a transfiguring disfigurement, Joan had claimed when they first met. Before her health scare, she said, she had been nothing but a “faithless, bragging womanizer.” Cancer had reformed her, given her a second chance to be better than that, and now, because she could see how short life really is, she was looking for something more from it, looking for that something more with a woman named Annette.

Oh, that was very good to hear, because if there was one thing Annette Martineau really couldn’t stand, it was a faithless, bragging womanizer. Especially a faithless, bragging womanizer itching to get in her bed.

“It’s morning enough for me, Joan. Get your lying ass dressed and drive me to the station. I’m sick of your boasts and your insults and I want to go home now.”

“Boasts—oh, I know what this is about. It was platonic, I’m telling you. It was only a kiss.”

Platonic, her eye. Annette had found something in the bathroom last night that contradicted a kiss, something undoubtedly left there for her to find. And then, when she opted to come back to bed and say nothing about her discovery, there followed the dig about sex. Intimacy. Whatever.

She’d had it. “There’s a pattern here. It’s bogus and I’ve had it.”

“Annette, please.”

“This is goodbye, Joan.”

“What do you care anyway? Every time I try to talk to you about marriage or children you’re clutching for your antihistamines and the tissue box.”

“I’ve been married once before. I’m allergic to marrying the same asshole twice.”

“The same—? Oh, I get it. You’re clever tonight.”

“And you’re not. Are you going to drive me or should I call a cab?”

“I’m not clever? Since when?”

“I need my—oh, hell, where did I put my—I need to borrow your phone.”

“In bed, Annette?”

“What?”

“I’m not clever in bed, you’re suggesting?”

“Joan, I’m—I am certainly not complaining about that.”

“You were about to, so say it.”

“I was not.”

Joan’s eyes were black and unblinking. Annette avoided them. There was a new tattoo on her forearm, she noticed. A butterfly. Or maybe a moth. Whichever it was, she was sure the symbolism had nothing to do with her. Certainly, like that brand new guitar strategically placed at the foot of the bed, it was there to impress somebody else. Or, at best, to cause her to have to speculate. “Get dressed, please.”

“Just say it, Annette.”

Patience vanquishes things which rigor could never manage. Wasn’t it Chaucer who said that? Annette wondered. Her patience was about to become a casualty of this war, she could see. It had very nearly expired. “Well, if I was going to,” she finally answered, “then I’d say that I could use a little more…well, if you were just a little heavier on me. Not that it matters now, though.”

Annette was thin, but Joan was a rail and when she was on top it did often feel like clasping a cloud to one’s chest, and it didn’t help that Joan didn’t want to be held that way, always somehow wriggling free. But Annette would never have mentioned it to her otherwise.

The color drained from Joan’s face and her jaw went hard. “The phone’s in there,” she whispered, pointing toward the bedroom. “Beside the bed.”

“Oh, Joan—you asked for it.”

“The phone’s by the bed, Mrs. Martineau. Why don’t you call that big ex-husband of yours to come and get you? Or is he too busy doing one of your friends?”

Annette took a stool in the kitchen, instead. Through the window she could see it was raining. The street below her was glistening wet. “I’m just too old to be a trophy, Joan, and you’re too old for the sporting life. That’s the real issue. Not my husband’s weight.”

“Ex-husband, I believe.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“That’s what you meant. I’m not your ex-husband, Annette. At least I know that.”

“But you act like him.”

“Yeah…all right,” Joan muttered. She had never been anyone’s ex-husband before so she fumbled in her mind for a suitable response.

Annette cast a furtive look toward the door. Joan seemed small against it. Vulnerable. She didn’t usually think of her as vulnerable.

“Then you’ll be wanting your house key back,” was Joan’s best reply. “So you can go lock yourself up in your fortress again. Do the thing you do the best—hide.”

The house key was a loose end. Joan would wear it like a dog tag whenever she came calling. Annette scrutinized the lines in her palm and wished the subject away. The idea of asking her to give it back was too distasteful. She said nothing instead.

“Am I right?” Joan growled.

Annette shook her head and scoffed under her breath. She should have just gotten herself a dog! Dogs don’t bark and howl as much as lovers or husbands. She poked at the wheel of brie with her finger. It was softer now, more palatable.

“You want your key, I asked?”

When the divorce came through and her husband had finally moved out, Annette had given the dog idea some very serious consideration. She had had a dog before. A pretty darn good one. A dog, she knew from experience, was always loyal. A dog was always a faithful friend.

“It’s in my jewelry case. On the dresser.”

A dog doesn’t criticize you or ask you where you’ve been.

“Your key’s on my dresser, Annette.”

Or pull a power play in the wee small hours of the morning.

“If you want your key, then you’d better go get it.”

A dog, god-bless-it, can fetch.

Joan rapped her knuckles against the door. “Get out of your fetal position and say something, please.”

She should take that key, Annette thought, licking her finger. She stared at the bars on the rain spattered window and absently plucked sour grapes from their sprigs.

She had, ultimately, decided against it. A dog was too serious an undertaking at this point in her life. She had never expected to enjoy living alone in the house, but once she got used to it, she liked her newfound freedom and she realized a pet would change all that. A dog, after all, is like a mate in so many ways. It requires constant companionship, three meals a day, something to gnaw on from time to time, and a lifelong commitment. Not to mention those brisk, romantic walks in any kind of weather.

No, she simply hadn’t felt ready for that yet.

“Speak, Annette. You’re making me anxious.”

So in trots you instead, with your platform heels and a vengeance. House trained and—dare I say it?—quite fetching. “I had a lovely time, Joan. I want you to—”

Joan blew air through her nose.

Annette turned and faced her. “Why do you act this way?”

“Because I hate lines like that. Even a ‘louse’ like me doesn’t use them.”

“That’s not what I mean…always mad or sad…never pleased.”

There was no answer.

“What do you need from me, Joan, besides my key and someone to bark at? Do you dump on your other—”

“What do you need from me?”

Annette studied the malcontent blocking the exit. There were two Joans inside that woman and they were on opposite sides of the battlefield, constantly at war with each other. Good Joan versus Bad Joan. Which one, she asked herself, did she really need?

They came, parting paper shreds like water, and sat across from her.

Maybe she didn’t need either of them. “I never want to see you again.”

“What do you need from this bag of bones?” Joan pursued.

Or maybe, just maybe, she needed them both. “Nothing now.”

“Out with it, Annette. Is there anything else besides sex?”

“Sex—you don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

Joan squished a piece of cheese between her fingers and put it on her tongue. “It ain’t me, babe,” she garbled, “no-oh-oh, it ain’t me, babe.”

“Don’t I know it. I need to trust you and I can’t.”

“Then get up off the ground and show me what you’re made of, Annette. I’m not just some gay divorcee’s little diversion.”

“And I’m not your crutch, a little pick-me-up on the road to resurrection.”

Joan digested. “Do you love anything at all about me, Annette?”

“Why don’t you tell me the difference between intimacy and sex before I go?”

“Why don’t you consult your dictionary?”

Her dictionary!

“Or your therapist.”

Now that wasn’t such a bad idea. “I’m not going to spar with you anymore, Joan.”

“Good. Do you love me at all? I’d like to know the answer to that.”

“You already know the answer to that. Please drive me to the train.”

“Sexually?”

“Joan, I love you…completely. I put that in my letter.”

“What do you love? Be more specific.”

Annette put her head in her hands. She was not good on her feet anymore. Everything was easier in writing. She needed to go home, do a rewrite. “I’m so much better at this kind of thing in writing.”

“Bull.”

“It’s not b—”

“It is.”

It is, and now she could see it was pouring rain outside. Sheets of it whipped past the window. And the wind was rattling the windowpanes. She should have left right away, Annette thought. She would have beat the storm, if only by a few minutes. It was a gale out there now and there was no telling how long the crummy weather would last.

“Sounds pretty nasty, Annette. I’m not going out in that.”

Annette went to the window. There was a small stream flowing along the curb of the sidewalk. Tiny boats of debris were bobbing in it on their brief journey to the storm drain. It looked liked it might be sleeting, as well. She wasn’t sure. Was it that cold? Cold enough to sleet? She glanced over her shoulder at Joan sitting naked on her barstool and a shudder went through her. Pretty, naked, belligerent Joan, graying at the temples, counting the grapes as she ate them.

“Aren’t you cold like that?” she asked, returning to the table.

“Hot I’d say, judging from the look on your face—why didn’t you bring me flowers?”

She’d forgotten to bring her flowers this time. “I’m sorry, Joan. I truly am.” She had swooped into town empty handed yesterday and the minute she’d seen Joan’s downcast expression she remembered the flowers. But it was too late by then. “Do you want my coat?”

“No.”

Annette sat again. “Joan, I’m really—I really don’t think of you as a bag of bones, I hope you know. You have magnificent bones.”

“Well, that’s a bona fide comfort to me. What’s magnificent about them?”

“I don’t know. They’re just wonderful, that’s all.”

“And wonderful, too. What do you love about my wonderful bones, Annette?”

“Joan…I have to get the hell out of here.”

“Annette is a coward. She’s terrified.”

“Joan is, too. She’s afraid to grow up.”

“Afraid of Dear Joan letters, mostly.”

“Oh, please,” Annette said. “I’ll bet you’ve seen tons of them.”

“I’ll bet you’ve written tons of them.”

“You’re wrong. First time.”

Joan shrugged. “Bet I can guess which bone in my body is Annette’s all time favorite.”

Joan was Joan’s all time favorite, the default setting when everything else failed. “You think you can, huh?” Annette asked, debating whether or not to indulge her.

Ratta-tat-tat, ratta-tat-tat, tapped the sleet against the window.

Ratta-tat-tat, Joan tapped with her fingers, a smile showing at the corner of her lips. Rat-a-tat-tat.

Those were her all time favorites, the two of them knew. Those musical appendages. Those talented hands.

Joan waited expectantly for Annette to admit it.

“Well, for your information, Ms. Majors, that would be your wishbone,” Annette said, sidestepping it altogether. “Because your wishbone’s connected to your id bone.”

“Uh-huh. I see. That’s credible, I suppose. And my id bone’s connected to…?”

“And your id bone’s connected to your funny bone, and your funny bone’s connected to your head bone, and your head bone to your heart bone, and your heart bone to…I love your bones, Joan. I adore them. Or does that sound like bull to you, as well?”

“No,” she replied. “I’m hearing your heart in it. What else?”

Her heart was in it, all right. She was walking on glass, Annette feared. Missing a train. “Is this a truce or a lull?”

“A truce, I think. Go on.”

It was a butterfly on her arm. Not a moth.

“You know, I told you before we…I remember saying to get it all out of your system first. Do you remember my saying that to you?”

“We’ve got a truce here, Annette.”

“I know, but it isn’t physiognomy I’m so concerned with right now. It’s monogamy. Have you ever heard of monogamy, I wonder?”

“Ummm…that’s some sort of exotic disease?”

Definitely exotic, Annette thought, trying not to laugh. “Don’t worry, Joan. If it is, then it’s obviously not contagious.”

Joan batted her eyes. “You, with the black coat and the white flag. You were saying?”

You with no clothes and an attitude. What’s it all mean, those tattoos? “I’m saying I have a bone to pick with you, I guess.”

Joan smiled. “Sweet. And what else do you love about me?”

“Why do you need to hear this stuff?”

“I need to hear it so I don’t end up traumatized.”

Annette took a deep breath. She would never date another Scorpio again. “I love your eyes. Especially when they’re closed. And I love that you don’t snore. You don’t even talk in your sleep, you’ll be glad to know.”

“A relief. You do, though.”

“I do? Oh, my god, what do I say?”

“Joan, Joooan, Jooooooan.”

“Very funny.”

“Your eyes are so blue this morning, Annette, so sultry. I love that look.”

Annette ignored the compliment. “I love your inner adult, Peter Pan.”

“Why thank you, Tinkerbell.”

“Did you screw her, Peter?”

“Oh, Annette,” Joan murmured, rubbing at the goosebumps forming on her arms. “I’m getting cold now. It feels cold in here.”

Annette took off her coat and passed it over the table. “Did you?”

Joan draped it around her shoulders. “Just marry me and make me miserable for the rest of my life. Please say you will.”

Annette said nothing.

“Ahh…you’ve got your knickers in a twist again. Why don’t you give me a break with this? All the time you’re away from me, playing hard-to-get, you want me to believe you’re not off being easy with someone else? Your stupid ex, for instance? Maybe your neighbor?”

“That’s pathetic, Joan.”

“Oh, yeah, Annette.”

“You are what you are and it has nothing to do with me.”

“I are what I are.”

“And all you’re doing here is projecting yourself on me, because I’m not the one who cheats.”

Joan pulled the coat up over her head and groaned.

“Prick up your ears, Joan Majors. Nothing on your skin or under it will ever change who you are and you know it. So stop blaming me.”

“I don’t know what I know, Annette, but I’m not giving you back your key. Your coat, either. So what do you have to say to that?”

Fine, then I’ll marry you. “Fine, then I’ll just have the locks changed.”

“You would do that, change your locks? You want to be rid of me that bad?”

“We’ve made a mistake. It’s nobody’s fault really, we’re just not right for ea—”

“Oh, crap, crap, crap, I’m not hearing this.”

She wasn’t. Annette glanced at the time. Three AM.

“I’ve got a hard-on, Annette. I thought we had a truce here?”

“We did. But, evidently, it’s too hard a peace to keep.”

Joan wrinkled her nose and grinned. “Want to feel my peace?”

The apartment was chilly without a coat; Annette shivered.

“You wanna?”

“No…but thanks for thinking of me.”

Joan stood up. “Okay. Suit yourself then.”

“Where are you going?”

“To bed.”

“Joan—with my coat?”

“It’ll do until its owner gets lonesome again.” She grasped it by the collar and let it droop to the floor. “Or must I wait for her in vain?” she asked, no smirk at all.

Annette looked away. Joan Majors could be so insolent. It stole her breath at times. God, though, she loved that insolence. She loved that cover-girl mouth, too, even when it was sneering or pouting. And those long, smooth legs.

“I said, must I, Annette?”

How big the creature’s hair was this morning. Her hair always got big under certain circumstances. Under certain circumstances, Annette just loved big hair. “Must you what?”

“Wait in vain?”

Wade in rain.

Her toenails were painted cherry red this time. Red was Annette’s favorite color. She loved that she would paint her toenails but not her fingernails. She loved that she would taunt her barefoot and nude, nothing covering her beautiful bones but a bunch of old tattoos. One solitary butterfly. “Joan, I really have to—”

She loved that chase-me look she just flashed in her eyes as she turned up her nose and walked away, dragging a vanquished overcoat behind her.

Ratta-tat-tat, ratta-tat-tat. Sleet tapped unrelenting at the window.

Annette slipped off the stool and followed her into the bedroom.

Another Dear Joan

Her bags were packed. Annette Martineau was fleeing.

And her cell phone was ringing, as it had been all morning. And she just knew without a doubt that this was Joan calling, as she had been for days. And she was never going to speak to Joan again, as the woman should already know. And she was not answering the phone to tell her that, either. In fact, she dug the annoying thing out of her purse and turned it off. She would be sure to ask her ex-husband, the next time that one showed up on her doorstep, how to block somebody’s number. As for today, however, she was leaving the country. Hopefully, by the time she got back, there would be nothing left to discuss with the woman, no reason whatsoever for her to call or come by anymore.

Yes, leaving the country did seem to her a rather cowardly exit from her rocky romance, but she had yet to win a single argument with Joan Majors anyway and, still smarting from last week’s defeat, a one-way ticket to Rome was the only thing Annette could think of to end the discourse between them and finally claim a victory.

Discourse and intercourse—she studied the fine print on her reservation—does not a perfect match make. She had said as much in her letter. It’s just that she hadn’t mailed it yet.

“Someone left a rose on the hood of my car,” Joan had bragged this time, dropping one more piece of straw on her camel’s back.

Annette had attempted to let it pass without remarking, but an hour later:

“I said, Annette, that I found a red rose on my car the other morning…don’t you think that’s kind of scary?”

And then the rose had a specific color, a sexy one, so Annette felt compelled to reply, “a secret admirer, perhaps?”

Joan had greeted that with one of her customary smirks and a loud scoff, sending things whirling off in a bad direction for the rest of the evening. “I doubt it’s quite that simple, Annette.”

Wily, slippery Joan, always outfoxing herself. Annette scoured the room for a robe and tried to keep her mouth shut.

“Where were you Wednesday?” Joan asked. “I was calling all night.”

Where was she Wednesday? “Dinner with friends—I’m going to shower and then I think I might head home.” Where was she, indeed!

“Annette…” Joan parsed her words. “You don’t get me, do you?”

No. Annette took the stairs two at a time. “Valentino was Hungarian,” she cast over her shoulder.

Valentina leaned over the banister and peered down her fine roman nose. “Italian, I keep telling you,” she said, descending the stairs after her. She was seeing an awful lot of Annette’s back lately and it was becoming her least favorite feature. “I’ll join you,” she offered.

Annette paused just before disrobing. “Hungarian,” she said again, as she closed the shower door in Joan’s face. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Joan absconded with the robe and waited impatiently for her in the kitchen. What was worse, she wondered as she sat there alone, a lover who lived faraway or one who was just plain remote?

What was worse, Annette wanted to know, the conquests themselves or always, always, always having to hear about them?

She had steamed in the shower over it, thinking about what she knew she wouldn’t bring herself to say, thinking about what a shame it was to be in love with someone who, for some strange reason, was no different than her last mate, thinking about what it might be saying about her choices.

Shame doesn’t lather very well, Annette noticed then. Or wash down the drain. Why, oh, why did they have to turn out to be so similar? Was it too much to hope for a bizarre coincidence?

She had been married an eternity and after the messy divorce, it had taken every ounce of confidence Annette had to embrace dating again, and she had waited more than two years before doing so. A lunch or a dinner now and then not counting, Joan was Annette’s first serious “thing” and her family and friends were relieved to see her involved once more.

It was the cancer talking, they had assured her when she finally confided in them about Joan’s self-confessed indiscretions. That seemed a plausible enough explanation to her, although she was searching more for a solution to the problem than a good excuse. Surviving cancer, they had successfully argued in Joan’s defense, is an oxymoron to some degree, considering its aftermath and the toll it can take on a person’s psyche. She’s just panicking, they told her, and probably none of what she’s claiming is actually even true.

True or false, Annette could never be sure. She was certain of only two things: it felt true, and she hated it—also in the letter she hadn’t sent.

Her family and friends had coached her to be patient with the situation, that Joan’s crisis of confidence would eventually pass, but Annette’s patience was nearly exhausted and the crisis still persisted, full blown and as out of control as ever. Annette’s team, perceiving this to be the case, had essentially fallen silent on the subject now, resorting to clipping and slipping classified ads for Jack Russell terrier pups under her door whenever they knew she wouldn’t be home.

She did not want a Jack Russell terrier anymore, she wanted Joan, and now her bags were in the parlor and she was going to—oh god—Italy of all places! What could she possibly be thinking?

“Are you really leaving?” Joan had asked her when she had finally emerged from the shower. She was wearing those irresistible puppy-dog eyes and the robe Annette needed.

“Yes, I’m going home, Joan Majors, and I know you’ve heard this before, but this time for real, I am not coming back. It was—it’s been cathartic.”

“Annette, please, it was only a rose.”

“Oh, really? So now it’s only a rose?”

“Yeah…and I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

How dazzling she looked whenever she apologized. “Well, a rose by any other name still stinks to me,” Annette replied. “You’re a wretch, I’m sure you know.”

Joan hung her wretched head and emitted a practiced sigh. “You want the robe?”

Annette eyed her warily. “Yes.”

“Then come and get it.”

Come and get it.

These reservations were nonrefundable, Annette discovered in the fine print. She stuffed them back into the envelope. There were roughly two hours remaining before she had to leave to catch her flight and she felt suddenly depleted by it all, daunted by the idea of jet lag which always hit her so hard. She turned her cell phone back on again.

BEEP! BEEP! (Text message: Joan.) “You have voice mail.” Annette deleted this, like she had done with all the others before it. BEEP! BEEP! (Voice mail: Joan.) “Why aren’t you answering the phone?” Delete.

She was so…childish…trapped in a child’s mindset…in a child’s lifestyle…in a woman’s body. Cancer had been Joan’s wake up call, her grow up call, she said. She had tried to heed it and failed. Failed both of them in the process. Annette filled a mug with old coffee and dumped the rest down the sink. Poor kid.

Perhaps Joan was her wake up call, she was thinking. Maybe her problem was that she had a penchant for good looking rakes. For cads and scalawags and rapscallions and scoundrels.

And liars and cheats and…?

Maybe.

“Come and get it,” Joan had teased, letting the bathrobe fall from her shoulders.

Annette’s resolve had steadily deteriorated after that, only to be revived later on by one of Ms. Majors’ fabulous tantrums, the cause of which Annette could no longer recall, as there were always so many of them.

“I am right,” Joan had, for whatever the reason, adamantly insisted, “and you are wrong, Annette, just admit it.”

“Okay, Joan.” She was in too delicate a position at that moment to be assertive, they both understood, and it was no skin off her nose to acquiesce since she would, after all, never be coming back. “You are right that you are right and you are right that I am wrong to doubt it. Please concentrate on what you’re doing here.”

Joan chose to gloat instead.

It was then and there, Annette suddenly remembered, that she had first thought of Italy.

The coffee was nothing but warm mud. She threw that down the sink, too, and turned off the cell phone.

Her latest farewell letter to Joan Majors—eight circuitous pages of it—was stamped and ready to go yesterday. She’d practically worn a trench to her mailbox this morning, putting it in and lifting up the little red flag to alert the postman, taking it out and pushing the little red flag back down again. Up, down, up, down, up, down went the little red postal flag today, much to the amusement of the busybody neighbor across the road. At this moment, however, the letter was sitting in limbo on Annette’s desk, right beside her airline ticket.

She glared out the window at the mailbox. It was a beautiful day for flying. Clear and sunny.

“You’ve got your head in the clouds,” she had warned Joan as she left that night. “So you can’t see that a storm’s brewing.”

“You’ve got your head in the sand, Annette. So you can’t see nothing.”

Yessiree…not a cloud in the sky.

Such a heavy letter, Annette mused, weighing it in her hand. Heavy with sentiment and regret, with I’m-sorries and I-love-you’s. Wouldn’t it have been nice to not have to write such things, if “I love you” didn’t always have to be followed by a but? How much lighter a love letter that would be, both to write and to read. Why, it would fit on a postcard!

Was this sufficient postage? she asked herself, turning it over and over in her hand. She rifled through the desk drawer for another first class stamp. There. Two first class stamps ought to do the job just fine. Three then, for safe measure. But what time is it? Hadn’t she missed the mailman already? Didn’t he usually come by now?

It was probably too late to mail it from here, she decided. She tucked it into her luggage. She’ll send it via airmail from Rome tomorrow. That’ll be more impressive. That’ll show Joan she’s serious this time. That’ll show her just who’s got their head in the sand. That’ll show her who’s—

Who’s that? she wondered, startled to see a brand new cherry red sedan pull onto the front lawn like the driver owned the place. She went to the other window to get a better view. Now who would she know in a cherry red sedan? Boom, boom, boom, a bass speaker was blasting from inside it. The whole vehicle seemed to be vibrating with music. Boom, boom, boom…who in the world would have the audacity to park on her front lawn?

Boom, boom, boom…who?

The music stopped. She saw the sunroof slide shut and the driver get out.

Annette shook her head in disbelief. Joan Majors had bought herself a new car. Probably to match some new pair of shoes. She watched as she swaggered up the path, humming to herself and playing air guitar, looking almost edible in a tight, pink wife-beater, cut just above the navel, painted-on jeans that clung low around her hips. She reached the porch and clicked her heels twice, smiling generously, aware that she was being watched. “Honey, I’m home,” she called playfully.

Open-toed sandals. Strapless. Lipstick to go with the car, toenails to go with the shirt. And she had the house key dangling from a shiny gold chain around her neck. Annette stood quietly on the other side of the door.

“Ah-ne-ette. Oh, Ah-ne-ette.”

The neighbor was getting his money’s worth today.

“Annette…?”

“I’m here, Joan.”

“Ah,” Joan murmured, pulling the necklace over her head and fixing her hair. “What a coincidence, my love. Me, too.”

Annette heard a key entering a lock. She put her hand on the knob. And opened the door.

Joan

Girl trouble. All she ever had, it seemed, was girl trouble.

Joan Majors was flying down the interstate this morning in a brand new sedan, deafening herself on rhythm and blues and counting the mile markers as she zipped by them. It was a beautiful day for a drive, not a cloud in the sky, but she didn’t take any notice of that.

“Annette,” she barked into her headset, hoping that maybe this time the woman would actually answer the…but the call went straight through to voice mail again. “Oh, crap, crap, crap!”

“I’m sick of your crap,” had been Annette’s final words last weekend, spoken definitively through the slit in the window of a departing taxicab. Joan had been left standing on the curb in her bathrobe and bunny slippers, pleading her losing case to the darkened buildings across the street, to the cracks in the sidewalk, to the winos eavesdropping in the alleyway. She hadn’t seen or heard from Annette since then. Not even a letter.

“Crapola,” she muttered, cranking up the volume on the radio another notch and giving the car more gas. “Crapola.”

She had bought it on an impulse, this fast machine.

“Red cars get all the tickets,” her sister had warned her in the showroom.

Joan dismissed this bit of trivia. Red was, after all, Annette Martineau’s favorite color. A brand-new red car was bound to make the woman sit up, she had boasted, make her drool and pant over her again.

Annette Martineau. Jill Majors had already figured as much. “Are you in love with this one or what? Because if you’re not, you should stop messing with her head.”

“Of course I’m in love with her. What do you mean messing?”

Jill rolled her eyes. Her sister knew very well what she meant. “You know what I mean, Joanie.”

“No, I do not, so why don’t you just tell me?”

“Ugh—then who were you with the other night at Gino’s? You’re in love with her, too, I suppose? And what’s her favorite color, Joanie? Maybe the guy’ll cut you a deal here—two for the price of one.”

Joan had scowled in response to this and thought it better to say nothing. Jill was the only woman left on the planet she didn’t outright lie to.

Boy-oh-boy, it would have been swell to add Annette’s name to that list, but this wasn’t going to happen any time soon, Joan could tell. Annette was just too damn elusive, too hard to get under her thumb. In the end, she was like all the rest of them, just asking for it. Why do all my girlfriends get so emotionally remote on me?

“I say let her go and save yourself some money in the process,” Jill advised.

“Why should I do that? She knows I date. Besides, I can’t. Don’t want to.”

“She knows you date? How could she know that, Joanie? You’re telling her?”

“I—” the salesman was pacing in anticipation. She flashed him a phony smile. “I do,” Joan said, under her breath “I tell her.”

“Well, that’s just cruel then and you’re a real shit. No wonder she won’t talk to you.”

Joan had no defense to this either. “Think she’ll dig these wheels or not?” she asked.

“Forget about it, I’m telling you. What do you want from her anyway? Her blood?”

“Oh, baloney, her blood. I’d just like to see her be more…more responsive to me, that’s all. She’s so aloof about every—”

“At your beck and call, you mean?”

At her beck and call—now wouldn’t that be nice, Joan thought, imagining Annette dropping everything at the snap of her fingers.

And? What’s so wrong with that anyway?

Jill shook her head. Her sister’s smile was worth a thousand words. “Oh, Joanie, Joanie, Joanie,” she murmured.

“Oh, Joanie, Joanie what?”

“It ain’t right and you know it.”

Joan kicked at a tire. “And what’s so wrong with it?”

What’s so wrong with it? Jill shrugged. Nothing, perhaps, but if that’s what Joanie was after, then she was obviously going about it all wrong. And the car now. The car! That was such a boy thing. So typically misguided. She was never going to win Annette back with a car, red or otherwise. No material girl, that one. Jill felt sorry for the both of them. Such an obvious mismatch. And her sister was acting like a dog with a bone about it. Pitiful is what it was. The whole damned thing was just plain pitiful. “Well, you better ease up on her then. She’s probably always been the way she is and nothing’s going to change her now. None of your stupid stunts, that’s for sure.”

Stupid—Joan snorted.

The salesman lifted his head and smiled agreeably in their direction, a hundred percent optimistic. “How’s it going, ladies?” he called out to them. “Make any decisions yet?”

“Yeah, I want it,” Joan said.

“No, she hasn’t decided yet—besides, aloof is probably what happened to her marriage in the first place. You should talk to her hubby before you part with any cold, hard cash. There’s an interesting story there, I’ll betcha.”

Mr. Martineau was not interesting. He was a piece of…of history. Joan had no desire to ever talk to him. “Ex-hubby, if you don’t mind. You don’t like this car, Jill—why not?”

“Ex. You know what I’m saying.” The car was over the top, a regular chick-mobile. Jill shook the vision of Joan, Boy Driver, from her head and chuckled. “What’s your thing for that woman anyway? I thought you only dug girls?”

“Good god, I don’t know,” Joan replied, dragging her fingers longingly across the spotless chrome. “I’m in love with her, that’s all. She’s sooooooo sexy, Jill. She pulls my chain.”

“In love with her—yah. More like obsessed and compelled, I’d say.”

“Oh, you think so, huh? And what’s the difference, know-it-all?”

Well, there was a huge and very healthy difference, but the subject was old and, once again, Jill was getting nowhere with it. Mr. Salesman, she could see from the corner of her eye, had stepped out of his neutral zone and was looming nearer and nearer to them, getting antsy to close the deal, and her sister had, after all, only brought her along for a test drive and a second opinion. As if she ever listened to her anyway. “Ma’s right. You’re an absolute freak,” she finally answered, “and I don’t think you have a clue what you’re talking about—buy it and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Well, maybe it was so that she didn’t have a clue, but then what is this, Joan wanted to know, this sense of urgency she had this morning, driving eighty miles an hour into the wilderness because she hadn’t heard from Annette in a whole week? Wasn’t this love, this sickening panic? These awful butterflies? A truck in the opposite lane flashed its headlights at her. Slow down, slow down, it meant. She took her foot off the gas pedal. Of course it was love. What the hell else could it be?

Love was a likely diagnosis for what Joan was experiencing, but it wasn’t supposed to have gotten so skewed like this. At least not ever again.

She had taken a year off from dating to recover from her surgery, to ground herself, she had explained to her friends and relations. In that time she had examined her entire brief existence on the planet, specifically searching for the reason why, when she had awoken on her presumed deathbed that terrible day, there had been no lover beside it waiting and praying for her resurrection. It was quite a reality check for her that there wasn’t a woman in waiting because Joan had presumed, naturally, that there would be plenty.

Forty and facing death—Christ—and facing it alone without a partner! It was never going to be the case again, not if she could help it. And there would never be another woman not speaking to her, either. That’s what she had resolved then, stretched out on her gurney, the anesthesia wearing off, the pain setting in. That’s what death, or her brush with it, or simply the idea of it, did for Joan Majors.

Or so she’d claimed.

And too bad life’s not as simple as that.

Too bad life’s so goddamned complicated, she had just complained to her sister last night, digging up the subject once again of the disappearing Annette.

“Sure, Joanie, but you got to start thinking about what you’re doing to yourself here,” was Jill’s reply. “Like maybe it’s not worth all the aggravation. You know?”

“What am I doing to myself?” Joan asked, defensively.

“I’m talking about your health, Joanie. You have to think of your health now.”

“Annette’s bad for my health?”

Jill frowned. Joanie was playing dumb with her again, forcing her to say more than she wanted to. “I’m wondering whatever happened to that ‘joy and harmony’ thing you were talking about after your…is this joy and harmony, I’d like to know, constantly breaking up and then trying to make up with Annette? Does that make you happy?”

No, but being a whole week without the woman was pure hell. It was a no win situation, Joan conceded.

Yet another no win.

Yet another mile marker went by the window in a blur and she was now more than a hundred miles from home and less than a hundred from the place where she desperately wanted to be. She had no idea how she would be greeted once she got there, if, indeed, she would be greeted at all. She wished Annette would just break down and answer the stupid telephone. It would be helpful to know in advance.

“It isn’t healthy, Joanie,” her sister’s words echoed in her head. “You’ve got to watch out for your health now.”

Yeah, her health—she hit the Seek button on the radio, leaving her selection to chance.

“Doubt is unpleasant,” her god, Voltaire, had once opined, “but certainty is absurd.”

Amen.

The radio was playing an old familiar song…lonely days…and she started to whistle along with it…lonely nights…as both doubt and certainty squabbled in the background…where would I be without my woman?

Doubt and certainty, just like her sister, were always telling Joan things she didn’t like to hear, things she didn’t want to know about.

Lonely days…

“You’re going to make a fool of yourself,” doubt began to nag.

Lonely nights…

“Are we there yet?” chimed his companion.

She scoffed and changed the station.

Certainty was absurd, though. Any survivor would know that. She pushed down hard on the accelerator and the car lurched forward. “Annette,” she called into her cell phone again. (Dialing Annette.) She held her breath and crossed her toes. (Voice mail again. Blah, blah, blah and won’t you please leave a message.) She left a message for her this time, “Why aren’t you answering the phone?”

Why wasn’t she answering the phone?

Doubt and certainty and cancer and Voltaire. Daunting stuff, and probably not too good for her health either, but it was the suspense Joan feared she wouldn’t survive.

-----

“Survive” and “survivor” are pretty potent words, but they suffer from overuse today. Now they’ve been reduced to mere sound bytes. Yet there still remain in our lexicon some equally powerful words and phrases that aren’t spoken often enough. “You’re in remission,” is most assuredly one of them.

“You’re in remission,” Joan’s doctors had informed her, and once she’d heard those three words uttered, she found herself contemplating living again. There was more to life, she suddenly realized, in the midst of all that euphoria, so much more to being alive than merely casting a shadow.

Remission made it possible for her then to leave the catacomb of her apartment and, if only for a few hours at a time in the beginning, to walk gingerly into the light once more. Her friends and family were relieved to see her emerge alive and kicking. Pale and a little puffy-eyed, perhaps, and a trifle more timid than they had known her to be before, but still, there she was, alive and kicking nonetheless. They hadn’t been so sure she would make it.

And then meeting a woman named Annette helped to speed things along considerably.

Joan had first spied Annette Martineau at an art opening close to the apartment. The gallery director happened to be a friend of Joan’s and Joan was providing the music that afternoon, strumming away serenely in the corner. A blue-eyed out-of-towner had wandered in because she thought she had heard music playing and was curious to see if it was live. Joan took one look at her and it was love at first sight, “love” being another one of those powerful words and phrases.

“I’ve never gone out with anyone my own age,” she recalled telling her later that evening.

Ms. Martineau hadn’t seemed the slightest bit surprised by that revelation. Or impressed. She was more inclined to swoon over Joan’s six-string guitar playing and her funky, cool flamenco.

Dexterous Joan, at this moment driving with one hand on the steering wheel, the other tapping away madly on her cell phone. “You have voice mail,” was all she could think to text. Not her cleverest. (Send: Annette.)

I’ve never gone out with anyone my own age. What a terrible pickup line! Joan grinned now with embarrassment at the recollection and took her foot off the gas. Seventy miles per hour in a cherry red sedan. She was really pushing it.

It was true, though. Before Annette, all of the others had been at least ten years younger than Joan. Girls more than women, she had to admit, after her year of truly brutal introspection and soul searching, after sleeping with Annette. What on earth could she have been thinking, she had mused then with chagrin, dating toddlers? What could twenty-somethings with all their glorious perfection possibly have in common with her anyway? How could they even begin to comprehend at such a blissful age the scope of fate’s imperfect plans for them? The possibility of waking up one day with a bruise or a scratch that simply won’t heal?

And where were those perfect young ladies when she had needed them the most anyhow? Nowhere to be found, in the end. Youth, Joan had learned the hard way, could be just as callous as she was, if not more so. Not one of her girls had even bothered to send her a get-well card, not one of them even on speaking terms with her anymore.

Not one.

Girls, girls, girls, and yet here she was again, messing around with them. And now she had Annette’s cold shoulder to contend with because of it. She simply could not accept that this was happening to her once more. That, despite her ordeal, those trials and tribulations, nothing had radically changed for her but her body.

“Annette,” she shouted into the headset again. It dialed Annette’s number and then…? Same old thing: leave a message.

Annette was not like the other ones, her sister had frequently cautioned. “And not for nothing, Joanie, but if some guy treated me the way you treat her, I’d never talk to the dickhead again. There’s plenty of other fish in the ocean.”

Annette was different all right. Joan didn’t need her sister to tell her that. “Yeah,” she had muttered.

“Don’t yeah me, Joanie. You’re being heartless and mean to her and she’s never going to respond to that kind of crap, not the way you want her to. Guaranteed.”

Crap.

Joan was careening toward the possibility that a door would be slammed in her face this morning. She was fully prepared for that outcome. Or that the door wouldn’t open for her at all. That was just as likely.

Another vehicle flashed its lights at her and Joan glanced at the speedometer. Seventy-five miles per hour! She tapped the brakes and threw her hands-free onto the passenger seat. Maybe once she reached her destination she could convince Annette to go for a ride with her, go parking. Annette had a weakness for fast cars and back seats.

And a weakness, of course, for Joan, too.

Joan hoped.

Good a plan as any, she told herself, putting the skids on and once more counting down the miles. Approximately eighty miles left, she calculated. Eighty miles to Annette’s house. Eighty miles? Oh, god! It felt like she’d never make it.

-----

“License and registration, ma’am.”

“What?”

“I need to see your license and registration,” the trooper repeated. He eyed Joan’s tattooed arms suspiciously as she dug frantically through her purse for them. Oh, brother, he was thinking. Now what have we got here?

Oh, brother, a beer belly with a badge, Joan was thinking. “Here they are,” she said, without looking at him. Oh, brother, look at those flashing lights. Was all this really necessary?

She glared at the man in her rearview mirror as he waddled back to his patrol car to run a search on her ID. “Ticket number one,” she text-messaged her sister as she waited for him to come back empty-handed.

“Told you so,” came Jill’s reply, a minute later.

Told you so, Joan didn’t dare utter, when the officer finally reappeared at her window to return her papers.

“New car, huh?” he inquired.

“Yeah,” she said, forcing a pleasant smile for him. “I’m just getting used to it.”

A very pretty girl, even if you couldn’t bring her home to mother. And she had no record, no marks on her license, no outstanding warrants. He shifted his weight to the other foot, sucked in his gut and tugged at his gun belt. “Well, Miss Majors, I clocked you doing seventy-eight just now. The speed limit’s fifty-five around here. You were really flying.”

Miss Majors. “Wow, I guess so,” she replied, in the most vacuous voice she could summon for him. “Am I going to get a ticket, officer?”

Look at those arms, he thought. Now why would such a pretty girl cover herself with all those ugly tattoos? What was this world coming to? “Nope, I’m going to let you off with just a warning for now. But you gotta drive the limit, Miss, or the next guy will write you one for certain.”

Aw, man, sometimes it felt like nothing but a cakewalk for Miss Joan, always getting off with just a warning. “For sure,” she said, flashing her cover-girl smile at him. “Thank you, officer. I will.”

-----

Somewhere Joan had heard that if the speed limit was fifty-five you could drive sixty-two miles per hour without getting a ticket, so her cruise control was set on sixty-two and Joan was now only forty some odd miles from Annette’s house.

The butterflies. Ooh, them butterflies.

A surprise visit, she had finally managed to convince herself, was probably in order anyway, even if she was running the risk of having driven this far for nothing, that when she got there, Annette might not even be home, having taken flight again, maybe even back to Paris.

Or she could have fled to Italy, for that matter. She could have done just that, decided upon Italy. Annette was fond of Italy, Joan knew. Fond of Italians, as well, she thought with a wry grin forming on her lips, fond of their grace and their grappa and their—fond of wigging out and fleeing from Italians, too, don’t forget, she quickly reminded herself.

Actually, there were a lot of things Annette was fond of. Wigging out, disappearing, guarding her privacy. SEX. She was not too terribly fond of surprises, though, as Joan well knew. Not unless you could wear them, or put them in a vase or in your mouth. Having somebody she was clearly avoiding drop in on her completely unannounced would, most likely, be on the top of her list of least favorite things. That and an unexpected confrontation with an ex-lover.

Joan squirmed in her leather seat. Swank upholstery or not, she was in an uncomfortable position.

She should have sent Annette flowers or chocolates right away. A whole week without word from her…that was weird. She should have definitely sent her some flowers. Flowers or even sexy underwear. Expressed them, if need be.

Joan nodded to herself with this belated epiphany, resolving to do it even if it was too late. She’d stop somewhere soon then, gas up and buy Annette a little present. There were all kinds of people that had made it onto Annette’s least favorite list. Idiots and bores and dolts and ex-husbands and...

This stretch of the highway, Joan just realized, was utterly deserted. I’m sick of your crap, Joan. Even the surrounding landscape, despite all the sun shining on it and the vivid green of the cornfields, still looked somehow barren and desolate. I never want to see you again.

Right.

And now there was less than thirty-five miles left to go and only fifteen to her exit.

If was true, that Annette had no desire to see her again, why wouldn’t she have sent her a letter saying so? Silver tongued Annette Martineau, a woman of letters, having penned so many before, would definitely have put her final goodbye in writing. And surely, if she had gotten that far with it, she would have demanded that her house key be returned, as well.

Joan fingered the key dangling from her necklace. Annette was the only lover who had ever given her a house key. She tucked the necklace into her shirt. She would never, never give it back to her.

___

Only twenty miles to her destination and it finally dawned on Joan, the possibility that she might not find Annette home alone today.

She mulled that over in her head awhile.

Yeah, so, perhaps a surprise visit would at last uncover what she’d been suspecting all along: Annette with someone else. Her stupid ex maybe, or even one of the neighbors, that Mr. Nosy across the way.

The thought of Mr. and Mrs. Martineau made Joan feel queasy. That husband and wife till-death-do-we-part stuff had always posed a bit of challenge for her and the truth was she didn’t trust Annette very much because of it. How could you be married to a guy one day and then, bang, when that was over, turn around and fall in love with a girl? With some woman? Who could trust someone like that? That was the part she never confided to her sister, that Annette’s sexuality made her feel uneasy. Annette was a stranger from him-and-her land and that made her just too—too untrustable in Joan’s book. And she was always flirting, it seemed, regardless of the person’s sex. Joan had made a point to avoid bisexual women for this reason. They always behaved like that. Untrustworthy.

Trust and fidelity—shit.

There had been so many quarrels over this particular subject, Joan finally acknowledged this morning. It was exhausting to be bickering all the time. She hoped they wouldn’t have to quarrel today; she was sick of the discourse. That would be the first thing she’d tell her when Annette comes to the door. That would definitely be the first thing to say.

And if Annette doesn’t come to the door?

Well, then, but it was a good idea, Joan remembered the dealer saying, to take your new car out on the highway every once in awhile, take it for a good long drive. So that’s what she’d get out of this excursion if Annette wouldn’t let her in, or if she wasn’t there, or if she was there and, God forbid, she was indeed entertaining a paramour.

Besides, this car was an absolute dream, practically driving itself. And, god, what a day for driving, it just occurred to Joan, the sky a beautiful swath of turquoise this morning, not a single cloud in sight, the sun warm in her lap.

She slid the sunroof open. The breeze felt good on a tired neck.

There had been a riff playing over and over in her head all this week and she could hear it now even as the stereo blasted. It was a tune she had been working on forever that just wouldn’t quit. She had tossed it out to her bass man the other night hoping he might be able to expand upon it, but a few choppy chords later and an awful lot of plunking, she had to beg him to stop. Today, with the cacophony finally subsiding, it was back to its original version again, kicking around her cortex in earnest, desperately wanting to be resolved.

I thought it was the weight of the world on my shoulders, she started humming, but it was me…yeah, yeah, yeah, it was me…yeah, yeah, yeah…only me…she leaned her head back into the headrest and sighed. The highway was seamless, an infinity. Enough with the goddamned mile markers already and the cruise control. She was coming up fast to the exit.

Oh, crap, crap, CRAP, she suddenly said to herself, putting on her blinker and pulling the car over to the side of the highway.

“License and registration, ma’am.”

Joan and Jill

Joan Majors was wearing her gloomiest demeanor today, meeting her sister in the park for lunch.

She’d had a rough time of it this week, trying in vain to redeem herself to a deeply disgruntled lover, but Annette hadn’t fallen for any of it and Joan was finding it difficult to switch strategies now, this late in the game. Just pondering doing so, as she sat on a park bench waiting for Jill, was making her breakout in a sweat.

“Hey there, Joanie. Didn’t go for the new car, I see—skootch over.”

Jill was always late it seemed, and expressing an opinion before she even said hello. “Why do you think that?” Joan replied.

“Your face. Here’s a hot dog, Hot Dog.”

Nope, the new car hadn’t impressed Annette. She had been surly and cool to Joan this time. And difficult to please. “She liked it a lot, Miss Know-it-all,” Joan lied. Annette Martineau simply mystified her. What kind of a chick wouldn’t flip over a brand-new, cherry red, fully equipped, luxury sedan? “Said it’s her all-time favorite color. So there.”

“Sure it is. Hey, how’d it go at the doctor’s yesterday? Why didn’t you call me? You said you were going to call me after you got home from your physi—”

“Oh, crap, Jill, I forgot to. It went fine. Everything’s clean, don’t worry. There’s nothing.”

That’s two years cancer-free. “Good news,” Jill said, nodding with relief. “And it’s been two years since I quit smoking, so what do you think of that?”

“Congrats. You want a cigar?”

“Very funny. So what went down this week, Valentino? Did ya’ make-out?” Jill asked. “Hah, hah, hah!”

Joan put her sunglasses on and a pout. “Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah,” she said, gulping fast-food down like bad medicine. Hot dogs and potato chips and…crap up to her ears all the time.

“Oh, c’mon, Joanie. I’m just teasing you. It went that bad? Tell me what happened then. It couldn’t have gone that bad…did it?”

It didn’t go well. Joan licked mustard from her fingertips and studied a group of cumulus clouds forming in the afternoon sky. It looked just like a dog up there. A barking dog. One of those little rat terriers Annette was shopping for now, or so she was claiming. “Your future replacement,” she had threatened Joan all week. Joan glared up at the dog cloud and growled under her breath. Sunshine and seventy degrees and a sassy sister were going to do absolutely nothing to improve her mood today. She should have canceled.

“Let’s talk about your love life, Jill. Tommy in love with your beat up old hatchback, I suppose? Rust his favorite color, wise ass? Bet you really send him with that plush duct-tape interior you got in there. Knees go weak every time he gets a load of that, I’ll bet. God—where’d you get these? They’re awful.”

“You’re gonna give yourself indigestion, Joanie. Tommy doesn’t love me for my car and you know it.”

Tommy doesn’t love her for her car—“Fine. Annette doesn’t love me for mine, either, so I guess we’re even there. You got any sushi in that bag? This stuff’s about to make me throw up.”

“Sushi! You know, I hate to point this out to you, but I’ve seen six red cars go by already, Joanie, and not one of them had a passenger in there with them. What’s that tell you, you think, about red cars? What’s that say about people who drive red cars, I wonder?”

Jill the insurance adjuster and all her fascinating statistics.

Joan grunted a dissent and patted her stomach. Hot dogs and potato chips and soda were not exactly what her nutritionist had recommended. “It’s not about automobiles, Jill, so forget it.” She dug into her pocket for an Omega-three vitamin and washed it down with cola.

“Not about automobiles! I’m the one who told you that! Told you she wouldn’t fall for no red car, didn’t I? Save your money’s what I think I said.” Jill paused and glanced at her own set of wheels parked haphazardly at the curb. She was very fond of that little hatchback. Way too many good memories in there to even think of parting with it. “That’s just surface rust, my mechanic says. Nothing serious.”

“That’s just superficial,” Annette had responded this week, to just about everything—including Joan’s brand-new car. “You’re superficial, Ms. Majors.”

“And…?” Joan had replied with defiance. She’d arrived at Annette’s just in time to find suitcases lined up at the front door and a one-way ticket to Rome sitting on the desk. All her charm had been spent in trying to delay the woman so she would miss her flight. “I said, and…?”

“And it’s a shame, that’s all,” Annette answered. Miss her flight, she did.

“That’s just surface rust,” Joan mimicked, her eyes on the avenue now. “Surface rust,” she said again, in case she was muttering. And then her inimitable, “yeah,” trailed off into the atmosphere.

Jill hated that “yeah” of hers. It was so glum sounding, so juvenile. “And besides,” she added, ignoring it, “you slip the key into the ignition and it starts right up.” Two-hour free parking downtown today; she was not going to waste two free hours in the park talking to the side of Joanie’s face. “Starts every single time,” she repeated, nudging her moody sister with an elbow. “Just like my Tommy.”

Joan merely shrugged at this. She had left her antacids home on the dresser. She should go home and cuddle up with them. Maybe take a hot bath.

“I said, just like my Tommy, Sunshine. Speak or I’m out of here.”

From behind her sunglasses, Joan was counting cars. Jill was right, she observed. The red ones were empty. “Yeah,” she finally replied, “Tommy’s a hottie. A total hottie. And you are a freakin’ braggart.”

Jill nodded with approval. Tommy was a hottie. There was nothing more to say about that.

Jill Major’s old car was blue. Supposed to be blue anyway. Blue cars, green cars, silver and black. Even the rusted ones had somebody! Joan sighed out loud, took the glasses off and began fussing with her hair. Cars and keys were hot topics for her these days. She put her head in her hands and closed her eyes.

Jill waited patiently for a secret.

Annette had dropped hints to Joan the whole week long: she wanted her house key back. Joan could feel it inside her shirt, dangling from its box chain, tickling her chest. She should consider giving it back, the woman had actually implied. I don’t think so, Joan had struggled to convey to her, but, oh, yes, she should, Annette had subtly, yet stubbornly and steadily pressed. She should give it back and they both knew she should give it back and Annette didn’t want them to fight about it.

That had been the theme of their miserable, virtually sexless, orgasm-less week together and Joan could still hear it clanging in her head. (Another empty red car just went by.) She should give up the key now because it was time for her to give up the key now and it was the right thing for her to do to give up the key now, blah, blah, blah, etceteras. “I’m thinking of doing something different with my hair,” Joan suddenly said to Jill. She would never surrender that key, she had subtly, stubbornly and steadily hinted right back to Annette. No way, no how, never. “What do you think I should do with my hair?”

Jill gave her a scrutinizing look and then smiled to herself. “Well…your hair’s never been your magnet, Joanie, so I don’t really know.”

Sunshine and seventy degrees and lunch in the park with her grumpy sister. Lucky for Jill Majors she’s got a sense of humor. She was eager for Joanie to say something more, something revealing about her fiasco with Annette. Obviously the lovers’ week in the country hadn’t gone too well, which was predictable, but just how bad, she was itching to know.

“It’s always in my eyes,” Joan complained. “And these grays. You see them? Can you see them in there?”

Her roots were showing. She was graying fast at the temples. Jill pretended it was the first time she had noticed. “Oh, yeah…I guess I see a couple in there.”

“I want those grays out.”

So it went bad. Poor, poor Joanie, Jill thought, stroking her sister’s snarled strands. “Well, that seems simple enough to do,” she said. Poor Joanie and her girl troubles. Always so many troubles, she mused, stifling a chuckle inside her throat. It would turn anyone gray. But a clean bill of health, despite it all, was wonderful news, so what was the point in nagging? “Why don’t you come for Sunday dinner?” she asked instead.

Joan lifted her head. There were more clouds gathering on the horizon. Dragons and butterflies were everywhere. She didn’t like Sunday dinners anymore. Everyone knew why she didn’t come home for Sunday dinners, including Jill. “How’s Mom?” she said into her hand.

“Good. She asks about you all the time. Finally got some news to give her.”

“About Annette, you mean?”

“About your health, Joanie!”

“Oh, that.”

“Come for Sunday dinner,” Jill pursued. “She misses you. Have Sunday dinner with us. Forget about Annette.”

Joan scoffed and sat up straight. “Yeah. Dinner’s high on my to do list, Jill. Right after get a frontal lobotomy.”

A lobotomy might not be such a bad idea, Jill thought. A lobotomy and a haircut. “Ma’s sorry, Joanie. I know she is.”

“Sorry about what? That she’s lost her little ‘freak show’ here?”

“She didn’t say—that’s not what she—it was a mistake. You don’t make mistakes?”

Dragons and butterflies and freaks that can’t or won’t go home. Joan couldn’t recall any of her own mistakes at the moment, but then she was somewhat preoccupied. “If she’s so sorry then why hasn’t she apologized to me?”

Why should a mother apologize for anything? Jill wanted to ask her. It didn’t make any sense. Does a child say she’s sorry when she soils her diaper for the hundredth time? Does she beg forgiveness when she’s wet the bed? “Joanie…it just ain’t healthy to hold a grudge like this. Come home for Sunday dinner. If you won’t do it for Ma, then do it for me. Do it for your favorite sister.”

“You’re my only sister, you dope.”

“Whatever.”

Joan shook her head no.

A small white poodle meandered past them, teary-eyed and out of breath, grinning with a bright orange rubber bone in its mouth, its ping pong ball of a tail bobbing behind it like a toy on a stick. It was a wacky looking creature, Joan thought, with all those ribbons and bows, all that saliva. She fought the urge to kick it.

“Do it for me, Joanie. Please?”

“No.”

The park was filling up this afternoon, Jill suddenly realized. People and their pets and their children. Everyone having a good time but Joanie, per usual. She’d visit the balloon man before she goes. Get Tommy one of those great big shiny hearts. “It wasn’t you so much anyway,” she fibbed, intent on resolving this dispute once and for all. “It was that girl you brought home with you. What was her name again?”

“Tanya.”

Ah, Tanya. That was her name. The one with black and blue hair and a pierced tongue. Yuck. Mama Majors had finally had it with Joanie’s fashion sense and bad attitude, the tattoos on her arms, her taste in girls. Especially girls with blue hair and pierced tongues. Black fingernails!

“Her name was Tanya,” Joan repeated, defensively. “She was just a little hung-over that day. It was no big deal.”

That she was. No comment.

A red convertible zoomed by blasting its stereo. Joan winced. “She was my girlfriend, Jill. Emphasis here on was.”

“Yes, yes. I remember it now. Tanya.”

Probably Mom remembered her name, too, though she no longer mentioned the incident. Jill figured “girlfriend” was definitely stretching things a bit. She was some girl Joanie hardly knew. That had been obvious to everyone and especially irksome to Mom. Tanya was a girl Joanie had picked up at a bar somewhere. Yet another of her sleazy one-night-stands. “Things over between you and Annette?” Jill asked, dropping it. “Is that what happened?”

Joan didn’t know what to say to that. “Not quite,” was her best answer. She still had Annette’s key; she flashed this proof to her sister, this tiny trophy she always hung around her neck, which could become, she knew, in only the blink of an eye and at a lover’s whim, merely a memento. “Nah, it ain’t over yet,” she said, grimly. “Ain’t over yet.”

That was just a technicality, Jill suspected. She fixed her eyes on that little white poodle weaving in and out of the crowd with his bone and searched in her mind for something less volatile to talk about.

Joanie was so belligerent today with those platform boots and camouflage pants, that big, scruffy head of hair. She looked like a resistance fighter from some third world country, Jill decided, though what she was resisting wasn’t exactly clear. Cancer? Mom? Annette?

“Watch that dog over there, Jill. What a freakin’ idiot. Watch him.”

She was. He was pretty cute with his purple ribbons hanging undone in his face and a string of drool dripping from his chin, that silly tail.

“Percy!” someone called out. “Come, Percy. You get over here right now!”

The dog looked over his shoulder at his owner, dropped his plastic bone and began to head in the opposite direction.

“Percy, I said come!”

“Percy,” Joan muttered with a scoff. “What a stupid name. No wonder he’s running away.”

Percy glanced at her and came to a stop by their bench.

“Percival, you get over here right now!” his owner called again.

“Percival…that’s your name?” Joan asked.

He gave her a toothy grin and wagged his tail.

“That’s even dumber sounding,” Joan told him. “You got a stupid name, Percy,” she whispered. “Wipe your face.”

He pricked up his ears at this and his tail stood still.

“He’s adorable,” Jill said. “You’re adorable, Percival. But I don’t have anything to give you.”

“Percy!”

“He’s a slob, Jill. You’re a slob, Percy, and a beggar. Get out of here.”

“PERCY!”

The dog hesitated for a moment and then darted toward the sidewalk.

“Hey there ladies, did you happen to see a little white—”

“That way,” Joan said, pointing with her thumb. “He went thatta-way.”

“Oh, shit,” the man said. “Percy! PERCY!”

“Uh-oh, isn’t that your new car over there?” Jill asked.

The dog was circling a brand-new, cherry red, fully equipped, luxury sedan, sniffing at the whitewall tires. He looked toward their bench as he picked up his leg.

“PERCY!”

“Uh-oh, Joanie. That’s your car, isn’t it?”

Yeah, it is.

Love, Annette

Dear Joan,

I have tried to write you this letter a hundred times without success, so I guess that blows your whole theory about me. For the record then, this is my very first genuine “Dear John” letter and you’ll have to forgive me if it’s not up to snuff with the other ones you’ve either received or written, or if it fails to live up to your expectations.

I’m going to be candid with you because I don’t know how else to be, especially about something like this, and I want to put everything in a clear and concise way that I can be sure you’ll understand and appreciate.

So here goes nothing:

I don’t want to see you anymore or hear from you ever again.

Shit, another Dear Joan letter. “Annette!” Joan called out, rapping her knuckles hard against Annette’s front door and swearing under her breath. “Annette…are you in there?”

I am very angry and very hurt by your exploits, as you well know, and it makes it worse always having to hear about them from you. This bears repeating: I hate having to hear about your girls all the time. Particularly during sex, which so often seems to be the case.

You are what you are, Joan, a terrible braggart and an awful cheat, and I’m sick of it. By your very own confessions, you’ve been these things your entire adult life, so it’s safe to assume by now that you will be them forever. The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter what you said you wanted to become after your life-altering illness and, quite frankly, I just don’t buy any of it anymore.

I do feel sorry for you, of course, but more sorry for myself because I had a husband who behaved almost exactly like you do and I guess I just expected better from a woman. It’s been a real eye-opening experience for me, though, (thanks) and I suppose that the similarity in my choices of lovers does probably speak volumes about me. I am studying the implications of it in the hopes of turning over a brand new leaf someday.

Joan went back to her car to search for Annette’s house key. Usually she wore the key on a gold chain that she hung proudly around her neck, but they’d argued one too many times now and she was no longer inclined to display such a sentiment.

She retrieved the necklace from her glove compartment and stomped back to the porch with it.

In the meantime, I’ve taken the trouble to change all my locks. That means you can keep the stupid key you wear around your neck like a trophy, or you can just add it to your collection, or even just throw it away if you want. It’s up to you. Whichever. That was a very difficult thing for me to imagine having to do anyway. Breaking down and demanding my key back from you and to have you actually return it would have been quite painful. Now I won’t have—

Three weeks and absolutely no word whatsoever from Annette. Joan found this letter addressed to her and tacked to the woman’s front door, hanging there for all the world to read, if they’d wanted to. She slipped her key into Annette’s lock to test it.

Yup. She wasn’t bluffing. The key wouldn’t turn the lock anymore. Wouldn’t budge the door a blessed inch.

Three weeks ago, while they were in bed, Joan and Annette had quarreled. Their argument this time, as with all the other times before, had been about some girl. Some girl that Joan had boasted about all that evening over dinner. A girl she subsequently revealed she had slept with.

This girl was no big deal to Joan, just some “chick” she’d met at one of her music gigs. The whole thing was just an innocent kiss or two for starters, she’d claimed. Then, after one harmless dinner date, it had become an innocent kiss or two and a little light petting. Before poor Joan knew what was happening to her, it had become lots and lots of harmless dinner dates, with lots and lots of not-so-innocent kissing and lots and lots of heavy-duty petting.

She shouldn’t even have mentioned it.

I’m sure it’s no big deal to you. (You always like to use that expression so I couldn’t resist using it, too.) I want you to know that I don’t feel as upset as I expected I would and, as so many days have gone by since we last saw each other, without hearing anything from you or receiving an apology, then I gathered you weren’t too upset about the situation either.

I felt, therefore, that it was up to me to take the initiative and help us out of our dilemma, if I could. So that is what I intend to—

Joan had stubbornly refused to go running after Annette this time. She felt she was forever running after the woman, forever apologizing to her for something. So now, Annette had up and disappeared on her. There were no lights on in her house that Joan could tell, no car in the driveway, no sign of her at all, but this long, drawn out farewell and nice-to-know-ya.

Joan scoured it for a clue as to where she might have gone, but there didn’t appear to be any forwarding address in it.

You are what you are, Joan, a terrible braggart and an awful cheat, and I’m sick of—

Crap.

She’d probably fled the country by now, like she had so frequently threatened to do.

–an awful cheat, and I’m sick of it.

Maybe this time, though, it wasn’t just an empty threat, Joan mused. Maybe, judging from the length of this letter, it was finally for real.

“Annette…? If you’re in there, can we chat? I’d like to talk to you about this…this…about what happened.”

She cocked her head and listened, but there was no sound at all coming from inside the house.

In fact, there was, overall, a distinctly deserted quality about the place today. Joan felt foolish standing there on the porch conversing with a door knob, perhaps even being spied on as she did it by the nosy neighbor across the road.

She brought the letter to her nose and sniffed it for a hint of the author’s perfume but, if there had been any on it, there was no such scent left anymore. Only the faint odor of cheap paper and the ink of a ball-point pen remained. The paper, itself, seemed a little more yellow than it should, more brittle. She wondered how long it had hung here waiting for her.

Three weeks?

In a way, I’m glad it’s finally all over between us because I simply couldn’t handle anymore romantic disappointments and setbacks, anymore of your bullshit. It seems clear to me now, in retrospect, that what happened with us was all completely predictable and that our relationship, if you can excuse me for being so naïve as to call it that, was clearly doomed from the very beginning. So I’m happy that—

Oh, now she’s glad and she’s happy, is she? Joan frowned. What an idiot.

There was a window in the bathroom on the first floor that had a faulty latch on it, she suddenly remembered. She considered the possibility of prying that window open and sneaking inside to take a look around the place, but then she quickly dismissed the idea as ridiculous. Platform shoes and tight pants and all that.

This was, indeed, a big, fat wasted trip, she realized. She should have just listened to her sister and stayed home today, spared herself this embarrassment. She folded her arms across her chest in frustration and glanced at her wristwatch.

It was late afternoon already. Drizzling, but the air was still hot and humid. Above her, above the rain clouds, Joan could hear the engines of a jet plane whining and, even closer yet, there were birds complaining about her trespassing, perched noisily in the treetop overhead.

She was an intruder here, they squawked. She was the uninvited. The disinvited. Whichever.

She picked up a stone from the porch flower box and threw it at the flock of them and they scattered, taking their raucous objections elsewhere.

Joan was a city girl and it was no secret that she hated the country. She only came here because Annette was here. This is where Annette would hideout most of the time. That is, if she wasn’t on a train or on a plane or in a taxi.

–what happened with us was all completely predictable and that our relationship, if you can excuse me for being so naïve as to call it that, was clearly doomed from the very beginning. So I’m happy that it’s over at last, Joan. That may seem rather humorous to you, but it’s the truth—

Actually it didn’t seem funny at all to Joan Majors and there wasn’t even the trace of a smile on her lips.

“That’s it, Joanie. You’re history,” Jill had warned her yesterday. “A month without so much as a text message from her? You’re definitely history, babe.”

Joan tried to reach her sister on the cell phone now, but, per usual, there was no signal to be found in this neck of the woods.

What was there to tell Jill, anyway? That she was right again? Always right about Joan and Annette?

“You’re definitely history, babe.”

Joan definitely felt like a piece of history.

She had, she supposed, set out this morning to prove her sister all wrong about that, but her sister was infallible, apparently, and she’d been warning her that this was going to happen for eons.

“What do you expect, Joanie? She’s going to put up with that shit forever? Who would? Would, you? You wouldn’t tolerate it for one minute.”

Yeah. Probably not.

“So Annette is the embodiment of all that is good in the world and I’m just all that is evil, you’re implying?”

“Joanie…I’m not saying any such thing. It’s just a mismatch, that’s all. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you from the very beginning.”

That’s true. Her sister was constantly insisting they were a mismatch. What constitutes a mismatch, though? Him-and-her is a mismatch, as far as Joan was concerned. How could two women, even if they didn’t see eye to eye all the time, or ever, be considered a mismatch?

She just didn’t get it.

–I felt, therefore, that it was up to me to take the initiative and help us out of our dilemma, if I cou—

“Annette, I know…I mean, I think you’re in there,” Joan called, looking furtively over her shoulder at the quiet house across the way, certain that the neighbor was spying on her and resisting the urge to give him the finger. “You’ve got to be in there, Annette. Come on out and I’ll take you to dinner some place nice and…and we can talk about this. Anywhere you want to go, Annette.”

Some place nice out here might be stretching it, Joan thought. Where could she find some place nice in the sticks? “I’ll even take you to Burger King, if you like,” she joked, jesting, she knew, in vain.

Silence greeted the invitation.

Burger King—what a whopper of a yuck anyway. But dinner didn’t sound like a bad idea. Joan hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast. Too anxious and jittery to stop somewhere along the way and afraid of what she might find if she delayed for even one more minute.

So I’m happy that it’s over at last, Joan. That may seem rather humorous to you, but it’s the truth and I’m not sorry in the least bit to have said it. This will leave you free, of course, to eat with and sleep with and screw to your heart’s content all the girls you can possibly get your greedy little hands on, and to do so without the slightest pang of guilt about my feelings, if guilt’s a sensation you’re actually capable of experiencing.

As for myself, I think I’m going to take it easy now, take some time off from both women and men, in order to—

Guilt, women and men.

Dang.

“ANNETTE…?” Joan yelled again. She had traveled a long way and she was not ready to abandon the ship here just yet. “Listen, honey, I brought you a few little presents. Some yummy surprises…come on out and get them.”

This was not a lie or a fib. Joan had come expecting to find some resistance and she had armed herself with an array of enticements she’d hoped to alleviate the hostilities with. Candy, wine, flowers, bedroom toys…you name it. All stashed away in that cherry red sedan that was parked haphazardly over there in the driveway.

This morning, at dawn, Joan had loaded into the trunk of that car, gifts she had purchased last night for at least a year’s worth of forgotten special occasions, not to mention Annette’s birthday two months ago.

These, her many sins of omission and commission, Joan had finally confessed to her sister yesterday, but it was the matter of the forgotten birthday that Jill found most appalling.

“You what?” she had exclaimed in horror. “Her birthday, too? How could you forget Annette’s birthday?” Jill demanded. “A woman’s birthday, Joanie? That was really, really dumb.”

Yes, it was.

“And so thoughtless, too, while I’m at it.”

Yes it was.

“And so…so fucking unromantic!”

“Yes—all right, already,” Joan said.

“I mean, God, if Tommy ever forgot my birthday,” Jill continued to berate, “that would be grounds for murder. I’d lie in wait for him, if he ever forgot my birthday.”

Well, Joan thought with relief, there was no danger that Annette Martineau would ever lie in wait for her. She’d just flee.

“Happy birthday to you,” Joan began serenading now. “Happy birthday to you…happy belated birthday, to dear Annette…happy birthday to you…?”

Gee, no cake with candles, but there was a box of chocolates in the trunk, she just remembered. A box of chocolates in this heat was a potential disaster, she thought, visualizing it going soft in the trunk and ruining the upholstery.

She went back to the car to fetch it and then threw herself into the hammock that was stretched across the porch.

This will leave you free, of course, to eat with and sleep with and screw to your heart’s content all the girls you can possibly get your greedy little hands on, and to do so without the slightest pang of guilt about my feelings, if guilt’s a sensation you’re actually capable of experienc—

CLICK.

She heard the bolt in the lock drop.

The front door swung open.

“Joan Majors.”

“Oh, wow, Annette, I thought you were—”

“Are those supposed to be for me?”

Joan smiled and licked chocolate off her fingertips. “Yes,” she said, looking remorseful.

Annette put her hands on her hips. “Why are—why are you still here? Can’t you read?”

Joan flashed a sly grin and tucked the letter into the front of her shirt. “Not when I have a hard-on, Annette.”

Annette turned and then paused in the doorway. “Get in here,” she said.

THE END

----------------------------------

FRANCINE SAINT MARIE

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

THE SECRET TRILOGY:

The Secret Keeping

Fortune is a Woman

& The Stolen Kiss

WRITE NOW!

How To Write That Novel—Today

--------------------------------

THANK YOU for adding this e-book

to your digital library! If you have feedback

about it, please send it to the publisher:

fifthcolumnpress@gmail.com

Also Available for Download:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001HBIBNY

(Synopsis on the following page)

THE SECRET TRILOGY

by Francine Saint Marie

In Paperback & Kindle Editions

ASIN 1441414037 and B001HBIBNY

SYNOPSIS:

High-profile psychiatrist, Dr. Helaine Kristenson—a.k.a. the “Love Doc”—is not just talented and beautiful, she’s the leading authority in the field of psychosexual relations and the bestselling author of the self-help bible, “Keeping Mr. Right.” Professionally, the esteemed doctor deals with secrets of the heart everyday. Privately, she even has a few of her own to keep her busy…

Straight-laced chief investment strategist, Lydia Beaumont, is not just talented and beautiful, she’s a consummate professional and headed to the top of the corporate ladder at financial giant, Soloman-Schmitt. Professionally, she has no secrets to speak of. Privately, she’s just unearthed one that’s going to rock her world a bit…

Bedazzling neophyte, Venus Angelo, is not just talented and beautiful, she’s a self-made millionaire ten times over again and on the fast track with her high-powered career in corporate finance. Professionally, she’s a dedicated and driven perfectionist. Privately, she’s full-blown enigmatic and somewhat reckless. And she’s got way too many skeletons in the closet…

Savvy and seasoned investment banker, Delilah Lewiston, is not just talented and beautiful, she runs one of the largest and most solid banks in the world. Professionally, she “speaks softly and carries a big stick” and doesn’t trade or take stock in any secrets. Privately, however, she’s safeguarding a couple of gems…

Controversial super-model, Sharon Chambers, is not just talented and beautiful, she’s the highest paid poser on the planet. Not to mention the most spoiled and temperamental. Professionally, her life of debauchery and conquest is an open book, about which, she really doesn’t give a damn. Privately, though, even she’s keeping some secrets. But that isn’t going to last…

Sex, love, money, lawyers, reporters, action, adventure, intrigue and blackmail—what’s your secret worth?

-------------------------