Book Lover. Karen Mack
and Darlene were about to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary when he announced he’d fallen for someone else. “I felt as if my body was taking a punch,” she told me. She begged him to stay, told him she’d change. All to no avail. There was a period of emotional wrangling, but he was out of there by Christmas.
Darlene went into a funk, which lasted six months. Classifieds gave her too much empty time to think, so she quit her job at the Times and through a friend of a friend got into the Teamsters, where she is now a driver for the studios. During this period, she met me for a drink a couple of times a week and cried in her beer. The Teamster job is great for her. She went from “Please come back” to “Drop dead.” The pay is terrific and she gets to drive the stars around. But both of us know that, deep down, she’d return it all to have Mel back again.
On her last job, she drove a famous male action star, and Darlene was flattered instead of insulted when he greeted her every morning with “nice tits.” She’s one of the few people who knows My Big Freeway Secret. Sometimes when I’m desperate and she’s not working, she’ll offer to be my driver. She’s given me several freeway lessons, which have all ended disastrously. The last one we just said “Fuck it,” and ended up in some bar off the 405 swilling beer and laughing uproariously.
That’s the thing about Darlene. She thinks the best of everyone. In fact, I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone. She’s still best friends with Mel and I hear that Detective Gonzales is long gone—maybe at some point she and Mel will get back together. At the moment, she likes cute, young guys she meets at Hollywood clubs who are totally inappropriate for her. I’m hoping it’s a passing phase, because inevitably she gets jilted, not to mention the danger factor. Currently, she’s still mooning over her latest disaster.
“He was so gorgeous and awesome Saturday night. He loved my outfit—you know, that yellow miniskirt. But he hasn’t called since he left Sunday morning. I just can’t believe he hasn’t called me.”
“You pick him up in a bar. You bring him home. He hasn’t called? You’re lucky you’re alive.”
“Oh, Dora. You don’t understand. He really liked me.”
I always try to be kind when we get to this point in the conversation, and there is just no good way to say it. She’s almost forty. They’re twenty-five. They like her in the nightclub lights and they come to their senses in the morning. But why bother trying to tell her this. “Darlene, maybe he has a girlfriend and thought better of it the next day. Why can’t you just give someone your own age a chance?”
“You know I don’t like older men, Dora. I don’t find them attractive. They’re so uncool. I’d rather just have moments with someone I’m into than a long, drawn-out relationship with someone who leaves me cold. Anyway, I don’t need a man to support me. I’m just fine the way I am.”
“That’s not the point. It’s nice to have someone to come home to.”
“I could say the same thing to you, Dora.”
“Okay. Forget it.”
We decide to drive back into town, stopping by McKenzie’s first because Darlene wants to get another one of her dumb fantasies that the library doesn’t carry.
I debate whether to tell her anything about Fred. She’d be too enthusiastic, too encouraging, the exact opposite of everyone else in my life. So I say nothing. Really, there is nothing to say anyway.
As soon as we walk into the place, Darlene starts bitching about how expensive all the books are and that anyone knows you can go to Costco and get the same books a lot cheaper. I immediately look around to see if Fred is nearby and if anyone has overheard. Fred is, in fact, across the room helping a flirtatious woman with a book club selection.
Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of this whole phenomenon of book clubs, although the concept is appealing—deep and incisive conversations on the merits of a certain turn of a phrase or an unexpected plot twist. But nobody I know reads the same books I do. They read self-helps and thrillers and bios of movie stars. There’s no end to the crap that’s around. This same crap is made into movies and pretty soon they won’t even read the crap anymore. So joining one of my friends’ book clubs is out.
I have this fantasy book club in my mind where other people feel as passionately as I do about reading. As if it were a really good kiss. The sheer pleasure and intimacy of having a relationship with a novelist and all the characters is transcendent—even sensual. Certain passages keep resonating in my head long after I’ve closed the book, and I often can’t wait to get back to the story, as if it were a secret lover.
When I tell Virginia this, she thinks it’s all too extreme. She reads, she tells me, to find out what happens. And she doesn’t get half as caught up with the language and the stories behind the stories.
But for me, reading is so much more. Books teach you how other people think, and what they’re feeling, and how they change from ordinary beings to extraordinary ones. Often they are so appealing and intelligent, you’d rather spend time reading about them than doing anything else.
And unlike life, if you don’t like what you’re reading, you can slam the book shut and then … peace. That friendly, cajoling voice is cut off until you decide to open the book again. Which is why I may not be the best candidate for book clubs. I like to read on my own terms, in my own time. And the same goes for in-depth discussions. I’m just too opinionated and outspoken. I’d alienate everyone in the room. No one would like me. They’d kick me out.
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