Book Lover. Karen Mack

for a couple of hours. Mel, an LAPD cop, was a meaty guy with a stubbled face and a cracked, hoarse, smoker’s laugh. Every now and then he’d give me a semi-reliable tip, which once turned into a pretty big story on the front page of the Metro section.

      That night, I was not in the best of moods when my cell phone rang and it was Jack. He sounded uncharacteristically upbeat.

      “Hey, I have to show this condo tonight. The woman can’t get there until seven and then she wants to see what the view looks like at night.”

      I responded in mock sympathy, “Gee, that’s too bad. I guess you’re stuck late, then, huh?”

      “Till ten at least.”

      “Oh, okay. Don’t wake me when you come in, because I’m dead tired.” I must have looked relieved, because Darlene gave me a quizzical look.

      “You know what,” I said, “he’s full of shit. This is the third time this week. But the worst part is, I don’t care.”

      Darlene was sympathetic but firm. “Get rid of him. You made a mistake. Bite the bullet. Move on.”

      “But we just got married and I’m embarrassed. Plus, our living room is littered with all these gifts, and I need to at least write the thank-you notes before I leave him.” It’s strange when anachronisms like Emily Post pop up in your life.

      “God, are you nuts. Who cares about the gifts? Return them. No, wait! Give them to me. Just kidding.” Darlene never worried about what other people thought. I, on the other hand, felt guilty. No, it was worse than that. I felt like an awful person for not loving him.

      When I got home that night there was an angry message on the answering machine from Jack’s ex-girlfriend, berating him for being late and telling him that she “couldn’t take it anymore.” Assuming “it” was the affair they’d been having and never one for confrontations, I called Darlene and we devised a plan.

      Jack came home late and I pretended I was asleep. The next morning, after he left for work, I called Darlene, who had been waiting for the “all clear” sign from around the corner. She pulled up in a banged-up purple van with black flames emblazoned on the side, which she’d gotten from Rent-A-Wreck, a place down the block that looked like a salvage yard. This was Darlene’s idea of being unobtrusive.

      My place was on the second floor of what was jokingly called garden apartments. I guess the two dying azalea bushes were the garden part. The white stucco building had seen better days but not much better, and the open hallways left no room for privacy. Darlene parked the van right in front and came bounding up the steps with unbridled enthusiasm. For some warped reason, this whole thing really charged her up. “Dora, you can’t believe this killer van. And if I get it back to them by noon, they’ll give me a ’68 Mustang for the rest of the day.”

      “Darlene, we need to focus here.” And then I saw Mrs. Richter peeking through her curtains. My nosy German landlord and his wife lived down the hall, and to them, the whole world was a soap opera, which in my case happened to be the truth. She stuck her head out and said hello, which was a “tell me what’s going on” kind of hello. I swear those people installed motion detectors. I nonchalantly answered, “Oh, hi,” as I ducked back into my apartment. I heard her Tevas flapping down the hall.

      “What’s going on?”

      Since it didn’t seem fair that Mrs. Richter should know about the split before Jack, I decided to lie. “Spring cleaning,” I said. Not bad for the middle of January. I could tell the old bat didn’t believe me, but she didn’t come out again.

      Darlene was waiting inside, surveying the place. I was about to object as she lifted the Jack Daniel’s bottle and poured herself a large tumblerful, but what the hell, I joined her.

      “You shouldn’t leave all this stuff. You’re crazy.”

      “I don’t want it,” I replied. On this I was clear.

      Darlene sat down. “Well, at least take the couch. Do you know how much these things cost?” She was referring to a distressed brown leather monster I’d always hated. For someone as deliciously handsome as Jack was, he really had no taste. All the furnishings were different colors of mud with green or gold flecks. If I were to categorize it, I would call it stupid stud furniture, but perhaps that would be too harsh.

      “Do you honestly believe the two of us can carry this three-hundred-pound couch down the stairs?”

      She was adamant. “Let me just think a minute. What if we drove down to Westwood Boulevard, picked up a couple of those construction guys who hang out on the corner waiting for work, and offer them maybe twenty dollars each? That would work.”

      “You don’t understand, Darlene. I don’t want the couch,” I repeated.

      She shook her head in disbelief. It was a tribute to her grip on reality that she thought I was the one who was nuts. “Dora, no one leaves stuff like this.”

      She and I spent the next twenty minutes arguing about what I should take, while I was getting more and more nervous that Jack would unexpectedly appear. In the end, she convinced me to take at least a few of the more practical wedding gifts from my side of the family, and, indeed, I was grateful to have some pots, pans, plates, and silverware for my next place.

      Acting as if we were committing grand larceny, we carried out bulging black Hefty bags filled with my clothes and box after box of my books, which I had meticulously saved since I was twelve, including textbooks with water-stained covers. I must learn to travel lighter.

      For a long time after that, I felt guilty and liberated at the same time. I wouldn’t have to quiz him for his real estate license and pretend how difficult it was. I wouldn’t have to tune out the damn TV, or ignore the aftertaste of marijuana mixed with tobacco on his breath. Or feel like a sap every time we went to a party and I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him or his friends.

      He insisted that no one would ever love me as much as he did, and at the time, I believed him. His girlfriend gave me the excuse to leave, but I knew he was still in love with me. Afterwards, when the inevitable pain of the breakup hit us, we met for coffee and we both had a good cry. He was sympathetic and resigned in the beginning but then came the zinger. “I helped you become the beautiful, self-confident woman you are and you stomped all over me and left me in the dust.”

       The Roust

      “I divide all readers into two classes:

      Those who read to remember

      and those who read to forget.”

      ∼ William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) ∼

      I jump behind a bush as a silver Porsche 911 Turbo convertible races out of the driveway, driven by one of Palmer’s best friends, Hootie. Must be a new car. Like this slug would ever need to get from 0 to 60 in four seconds. His golf clubs are sticking out of the back of his car like plumes on a rooster and he’s probably headed to Bel Air Country Club for his afternoon rounds. The scion of an old Southern family, he currently spends his days golfing and his nights watching videos of himself golfing. At one time handsome, almost patrician, he is now a lush with a puffy face and a bulbous nose covered with spider veins who tells unfunny jokes with boorish sexual references.

      Oddly enough, Palmer is nothing like his friends. He went to Yale, and for some reason gravitated toward those guys with three last names who graduated from St. Paul’s or Exeter with a C-minus average and spent their entire undergraduate careers getting shit-faced in the same clubs where their fathers and grandfathers once held court. Talk about the original affirmative action.

      Not that Palmer was like that. He grew up in working-class New Jersey, went to Yale on a full scholarship, and was the first in his family to graduate from college. He is smart and ambitious, the kind of person who could hold down three jobs and still end up with a 4.0. His