The Book Club. Mary Monroe Alice

house. It’s like they’re living in a camp. Nothing ever works, there’s no place to sit, and the junk and materials are all over the place. You’d think he’d bring in some help and just get it done.” Her exasperation knew no end when people couldn’t get their living quarters in order. “I don’t know how they can live like that.”

      “What do you care? He wants to do it himself.”

      “But they’ve been remodeling that old house for over a year. I don’t know how Annie puts up with it.”

      “Annie’s a good sport. And she’s not hung up about stuff like that.”

      The underlying criticism stung and made her resent Annie just that much more.

      “Besides,” R.J. continued, “John’s not just any carpenter, he’s a goddamn artist. And that old house just happens to be a Frank Lloyd Wright.” He shrugged. “I don’t blame him. He doesn’t want anyone else mucking it up. He and Annie are taking their time, getting it done right.”

      “Aren’t you suddenly the artistic one?” she replied acidly, wanting to return a small dig of her own. “If I remember correctly, you’re the one always grumbling about how long it takes John to get anything done.”

      “It does. I hate for things to go slow when it’s costing me money. But I’m smart enough to know John’s the best and leave him alone, at least on his own projects. He can do what he wants in his spare time.” He looked at his wristwatch and frowned. “Come on, I don’t have time to yak about it. Just drop it off, will you? You’ve got nothing better to do.”

      That hurt—in so many ways.

      “Here,” he said, holding out the manila envelope in front of her and giving it a brisk shake. “You can always hang around and talk to Annie.”

      Doris heard the terseness in his voice that signaled an explosion if she didn’t back off. So she accepted the envelope, and the task, with a testy grab. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that talking with Annie was precisely what she wanted to avoid, but he wouldn’t understand or care. As far as R.J. was concerned, he and John were friends so Annie and she must be friends. It made things easier for him.

      She recalled meeting Annie Blake five years earlier when R.J. hired John away from a rival Chicago building firm. John Svenson was their head carpenter, a well-respected craftsman, and R.J. had spotted his potential immediately. Doris had never understood why John took the job as design consultant for Bridges Building Company when his job description was, as far as she could tell, chief lackey. His pay was pitiful and it was only R.J.’s perversity that kept it low. John was loyal and worked like a dog for him. She knew R.J. liked to be in control, to have people beholden to him and thus emotionally chained to his side. So, instead of actual money, he preferred to give perks. And one of those perks was a great deal on a run-down Frank Lloyd Wright that R.J. had purchased for renovation. To a craftsman like John Svenson, the house was a once-in-a-lifetime dream. R.J. knew it and had used it as bait.

      Fortunately, the two men clicked and within months became inseparable. R.J. was the front man, the architect with the plans and the deal. John was the quiet artist, adding style and focus to the designs. It was an award-winning combination. It was inevitable that the wives would meet and it was expected that they’d become equally good friends.

      Well, she’d tried, Doris told herself. Didn’t she invite her to join the Book Club? But Annie Blake was a renegade who didn’t like to follow Doris’s lead and there was a subtle struggle between them during book discussions as to who was the leader. There was no hope they’d ever become friends, Doris decided, dragging herself up to her feet. R.J. offered her his hand and she struggled not to lean too heavily lest he comment on her weight.

      “I don’t know why you two gals don’t get along better,” he said when she was on her feet. “You two are like oil and water.”

      “Baking soda and vinegar is more like it.” She didn’t mention that lately Annie’s attachment to Eve was the last straw. It made Doris feel as if she were in seventh grade again and someone was trying to come between her and her best friend.

      “Where are you going tonight?” she asked R.J. as he went to the desk to retrieve some papers.

      “I’m meeting some clients at the club. I’ll be late.”

      “I’ll wait up.”

      “Don’t bother. If it gets too late, I’ll just stay at the club. I don’t like to drink and drive.”

      “Then don’t drink.”

      He merely snorted while he patted his pockets, locating his keys. He pulled them out and tossed them into the air, then caught them with a boyish flip of his wrist, smiling. Doris narrowed her eyes, noting a flashing on his baby finger; it was a narrow gold-and-black onyx ring with a single diamond in the center that she’d never seen before. It was a handsome ring, discreet, yet her nose crinkled as if she’d suddenly caught a foul scent. She knew R.J. never bought himself jewelry. And her father had always distrusted men who wore pinkie rings.

      He bent at the waist to deliver a chaste, dry kiss on the top of her head and an affectionate pat on her shoulder.

      “Thanks for dropping that off.”

      She held herself erect though her calves were killing her, watching as he strode from the room with a jaunty gait, without so much as a backward glance. R.J. always had such purpose and drive and it was clear he was a man with a mission tonight. Doris slowly replaced the Dr. Seuss book onto the library shelf, patting it into a neat line with the other books. Then she calmly, methodically, held out her left hand and with her right, twiddled the wide band of diamonds on her wedding ring, musing over the fact that in twenty-five years of marriage, she could never once recall R. J. Bridges worrying about drinking and driving.

      Annie hung up the phone in her kitchen and smiled with satisfaction.

      “You look like the cat that ate the canary.”

      She looked up at her husband perched on a ladder across the endless piles of dust, tools and wallboard that littered the floor between them. He wore his white overalls without a shirt underneath, exposing his long, lean, tan torso and sinewy muscles, still those of a man twenty years his junior. John’s blond hair was tied back into a stubby ponytail making his prominent cheekbones all the more pronounced on his narrow face.

      My, my, my, he was a handsome man, she thought, feeling a familiar surge. She caught his eye, and by the way his own gaze sparked and his smile widened, she knew he was picking up her thoughts. Or the gist of them, anyway. John had a highly tuned radar for sex. She saw him glance at the clock and chuckle, then turn his head to raise one brow suggestively. It was five o’clock on the button, her favorite time of the day for lovemaking. They called it The Children’s Hour since they’d started trying to make a baby.

      “That was Doris,” Annie replied, slipping out of her sandals. “She’s going to stop by later on to drop off some papers for you to look at. Apparently, R.J. is off to a dinner meeting somewhere.”

      John began wiping his hands with the towel hanging from the ladder. “That must be about the Delancey building. I thought I was going to be at that dinner. It’s supposed to be very chummy, drinks-and-cigars kind of thing.”

      She pulled the elastic out from her hair. “I guess we’re not chums.”

      He frowned, rolling up a ball of tape. “Sure we are. We’re both friends with the Bridges.”

      “Correction. You work for R.J. and I’m in the Book Club with Doris.” She stopped shaking out her hair and rested her hands on her hips. “We’re neither of us their real friend.”

      John scowled. She knew it hurt him to imply that he wasn’t equal to R. J. Bridges and his upper-crust friends. Not financially, certainly, but John considered himself an equal intellectually. That man-to-man kind of thing. And it hurt her that he was either too dumb or too stubborn to see that R.J. would never allow anyone equal footing in business, much less someone