The Muffia (26 page)

“He was taking Viagra,” said Nissim the same second I realized myself what the drug must have been.

“I thought of that, but he was so young! Did he need it?”

“That stuff is deadly,” Jelicka said. “My husband—well, ex-husband— went off it because of a heart condition. That's the choice—sex or a heart attack.”

Nissim tilted his head to the side and exhaled slowly. “There you have it, exactly. Udi had a small problem with his heart, but because he wanted to be with Madelyn so badly, and to please her, he took the risk. As it turned out, this was not a good idea.”

“So,
I
killed him.”
This was horrible.

“No, not you. Love killed him.”

Nissim seemed almost wistful for a second or two before ruining the mood. “Believe me, there are far worse ways to die. I should know.”

He was looking at me now. I did believe him, but I didn't want to know.

“Was he a Mossad agent, too?” Jelicka asked.

“Udi? No,” Nissim guffawed. “No. Udi just liked people to think he was Mossad but Udi was what he said he was—a sky marshal for El Al.”

Almost like it had just happened, I felt the fresh hurt of Udi dying on top of me. “Occam’s razor,” I said.

“Him again,” Jelicka sighed. “What’s with the razor? Why don’t they just say Occam’s principle?” She paused. “What is it again?”

“It’s the idea that the simplest, most obvious explanation for something is usually the right one. I knew he’d died of natural causes, but I guess some part of me wanted it to be something more.”

“Well, my version of events
could
have happened,” said Jelicka. “It was possible.”

“Yes, it was possible, but I’m sorry to tell you it is not what occurred,” Nissim said.

“You could have told me more, as things were going on,” I told Nissim. “You didn’t even tell me his real name when you had the chance. You let me continue to believe his name was Udi Hamoudi. What was I supposed to think?”

“Would you have listened?” asked Nissim. “I could have told you Udi was really a double agent conducting affairs with women in several different countries and wanted for murder in at least five of them. This probably would only have added to the excitement. Which is not to say you weren’t genuinely attracted to each other, I think you were. I also think that you were excited by the idea of Udi more than by Udi himself.”

Part of me resented what he said but I had to admit at least a little of it was true. Udi had been mysterious and different from anyone I’d ever met. I hadn’t wanted to know more for fear of destroying the fantasy.

“Do you want to know his real name?”

I thought about the question for a few seconds. “No,” I said. “What would be the point?”

If he was gone, that was it. He’d always be Udi to me.

“So what are you going to do to us?” asked Jelicka.

“Nothing,” Nissim said. “Let’s just say we had a misunderstanding. I’ll overlook the fact you broke into my house. Was it difficult, by the way?”

“Ten minutes,” said Jelicka. “But a pro could have done it much faster.”

“I’ll change the locks.”

Nissim stood and we did the same. Jelicka picked up her bag, the gun and lock-pick kit out of sight inside, and slowly we moved toward the door. Refrigerator Man stepped aside to let us pass. I think he might have winked at me.

“It must have been very good sex—you and Udi,” said Nissim.

“Yes, it was,” I said, looking down at my shoes. How much had Udi told him, I wondered.

“Sounded
very
good to me,” added Jelicka, smiling. She was probably thinking about her own recent romp.

“Try not to feel bad, Madelyn. If he had a choice, I think Udi would have chosen this way.”

Jelicka and I walked to the car, and I was struck once more by how quickly life can change, for good or ill, and that it was best just to roll with whatever comes. Most of all, it was important not to have regrets. As far as Udi was concerned, I didn’t have any. Of course I wished he weren’t dead, but his death wasn’t really my fault. If he hadn’t died with me, it probably would have happened with some other woman, some time in the not-too-distant future.

One thing I could say for sure was that I would have regretted not meeting Udi and not spending those blissful hours with him. If it hadn’t been for the Muffia, my book club made up of slightly flawed women, and our reading
Deliciously Disturbed and Distracted
, he and I might never have gotten together. So no, I had no regrets about anything that had happened.

Even Jelicka’s hyping an ordinary death into a matter of national security had its upside. She and I had gotten to know each other better, she’d found a boyfriend and Nissim and I had cleared the air —proving that even insane things happen for a reason.

I pressed the power button on the Prius and my ears picked up that comforting no- sound sound of a charged battery. “So, how far are you into
We Need to Talk About Kevin,
” I asked.

She grimaced. “Just started it. I’m with Kiki —it’s a downer.”

“Not completely. You’ve been spared having a school shooter for a son. That’s got to be uplifting.”

“Oh my God—I just thought of something,” she said, that look of suspicion coming over her face. “Do you think the author is writing in code about some future incident?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the possibility that there’s a school shooting that’s going to occur, and that the
where, when
and
how
are contained in the pages of
Kevin
.”

I put the car back in park and faced her, ready to nip the next would-be adventure in the bud. “You’ve really got way too much time on your hands. You need a job. Maybe you should go home and sear something.”

“I’m kidding,” she said, giving my shoulder a gentle shove. “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter 34

Paige lives in an area the Los Angeles realtors like to tout as “Beverly Hills Adjacent.” This wanna-be neighbor of BH covers miles of pavement, mini-malls, apartments, condos and small, overpriced homes bearing little relationship to the 90210 zip code made popular by the 1980s television show.

The evening after Jelicka and I made our narrow escape from Nissim’s, the Muffia met at Paige’s charming, if over-priced, three-bedroom house, a little too close to the freeway, to feed our souls and talk about
We Need to Talk About Kevin
, among other things.

“So different from
Disturbed
, but I actually found it a lot more disturbing,” I heard Sarah say.

“You read it?” Jelicka asked, genuinely surprised.

Sarah nodded. “I’m making an effort to be a better person—you know, read the books, not fall into destructive relationships.”

“That's two books you've read now,” I said in support.

“She’s seeing a therapist,” Lauren mouthed so Sarah couldn’t see, then she drew her palm across her forehead in a show of relief before leaning in to give Sarah a hug.

“We needed a change of pace, don’t you think?” Rachel said—Rachel who reads and loves almost everything and never has trouble adjusting to whatever genre gets picked.

“From love-making all the time to worrying about whether or not your kid is a psychopathic mass murderer? Yeah, that’ll do it,” Vicki said, camera panning the Muffs while we consumed Paige’s Middle Eastern feast.

Again with the Middle East!
It just so happened that even though
Kevin
was another book set in New Jersey, the narrator of the story, Eva Khatchadourian, is Armenian—granted, not quite the Middle East—but she’s a great cook. Paige’s fare rose to the occasion, but Lauren still felt compelled to show up with a sauce made from an alcoholic celebrity’s vodka. I begged off because it didn’t really work with the shwarma Paige had prepared.

“To be honest…I missed all the sex in
Deliciously Disturbed
,” said Jelicka. “But Eva sure made me want to see the world with her ‘Wing and a Prayer’ travel guides.”

“Those did sound fun,” everyone agreed and I flashed on Cullen at the Blue Mosque, rolling his mom around the whirling dervishes.

“The way the book was written, it’s hard to believe Eva and her husband ever had sex,” Sarah said. She had a good point.

“Well, they must have—at least twice,” I suggested.

“Oh, that poor little girl when she lost her eye. I wanted to
kill
Kevin,” Lauren almost shrieked.

“I wish you had,” said Kiki. “It would have saved us having to read any more.”

“Shriver sure was successful in getting us riled,” Paige confirmed.

Kiki shrugged. “You mean in getting some of us not to like her book? Yeah, I guess.” I saw Kiki smile at Vicki. Something had transpired there and I could see it had been something good. Maybe I wouldn’t force her to come clean tonight after all but just let it evolve.

“Successful in getting people worked up a little,” I offered. “She was drawing attention to something more…what? … more sociologically significant, even if it is upsetting. You can’t just stick your head in the sand.”

Vicki pointed her at camera at Kiki who pursed her lips.

“They don’t do that, you know?”

“What?”

“Ostriches. They don’t stick their heads in the sand. I don’t know how that got started. And what kind of a name is Lionel for a woman anyway? Is she gay?”

“Does it matter? In the notes at the back of the book, she says she didn’t like her given name so she changed it and she has a husband, not that
that
means anything anymore,” I pointed out.

I remember taking in the group that night, and thinking of all the things that had happened recently. I felt sentimental and sappy and content. I couldn’t help thinking about my mother’s book groups, both of which she’s been in for years. She has one that consists of a bunch of academics that ONLY discuss the books, and another that is full of friends who seem to discuss everything EXCEPT the books.

I have always felt lucky, and never more than on that night, that I was a member of a book club in which we can do both—and more.

“It was definitely a different kind of read,” I went on. “Really clever how the author told the story in letters. But if I had a kid like Kevin, I definitely wouldn’t have waited around hoping my husband would eventually see what I saw—though, of course, by then he was dead.”

“No,” said Paige, her bob once again blown out perfectly. “I agree. He’d be off to military school in a heartbeat. Maternal love or not.”

“You say that, but you’d have a harder time than you think,” Sarah said.

“Fortunately Enrique doesn’t have the temperament,” said Vicki. Then added with some concern, “I don’t think.”

“It would be hard,” Paige went on. “But it’s a question of protecting flesh and blood on an unstoppable path of self-destruction versus protecting a bunch of innocent strangers who get in his way. No,” she said with the tough demeanor of the tennis champion she once was, “I know I could do it—it would be my duty to do it. But the point is, we should all feel pretty damned lucky none of us has a kid like Kevin.”

“That’s all I could think about with this book,” said Lauren. “I mean,
God
. None of us has kids we’re worried about like that. Do we?”

The question hung there awhile before Paige said, “My babies both loved breast feeding.”

“That
was
the start of it all, wasn’t it?” said Vicki, her camera focused on Paige. “Kevin didn’t want to take his mother’s breast.”

Paige shook her head.

“Amanda was colicky and really couldn’t drink breast milk, but then girls are different,” Lauren said in an apparent attempt to convince herself.

“Has there ever been a female high school shooter?” someone asked.

“Wait—you’re suggesting most mass murderers either never got, or rejected, their mother’s breast milk?” asked Jelicka. “I’d buy that.”

“Interesting idea. But if true, it could mean mandatory breastfeeding—women forced to become cows,” Vicki said. “More legislating on how to be a mother.”

“There’s already that pressure,” I said. “I actually mediated a case between a husband and wife who had differing ideas on how long to breastfeed their baby. She said six months, he said two years.”

“What happened?” said Vicki, focusing the lens on me.

“They compromised—a year and a quarter. The term of art is they
split the baby
, though when an actual baby is involved, it’s kind of a gruesome image.”

“
America
,” groaned Vicki. “I mean, in Spain no one goes around asking if you plan on breastfeeding like people do here, ready to seal your fate as an unfit mother if you give the wrong answer.”

We all agreed, to a Muff, on the pressures of being perfect—perfect mothers, perfect hostesses, perfect wives (those of us still married), perfect in every way.  It was a burden I’d been trying to rid myself of with mild success.

“Getting back to
Kevin
—” said Rachel, “I have to say I preferred it to the last book we read. Though I liked
Deliciously Disturbed
it was a little…let me put it this way: too much perfect sex is unnatural in my experience, so it didn’t really turn me on in that sense.”

“Poor thing,” said Jelicka. “Not that surprising a comment coming from a woman whose new series of paintings is entitled ‘Nude Men Without Heads,’” she added.

“‘Nude Men Without
Faces
,’” Rachel corrected.

“Whatever—men with something missing. And I say that in the most loving way possible.”

“Well,” said Paige, “they do have something missing. I mean, don’t they? They would never do anything as cool as our book club.”

“They have poker night,” Jelicka said. “I mean, Roscoe did. Or so he said, but he could have been schtupping the secretary. Ah, hell, what do I care? I’m being delightfully distracted by a thirty-year-old.”

“Seriously, men don’t generally have the kinds of deep commitments and support we have with each other,” Paige went on.

In my experience, what Paige said is true: Men’s friendships aren’t generally as deep. And this group of women friends
is
deep, solid and longstanding. In honor of our commitment to each other, we routinely reaffirm our gratitude for whatever forces of nature and planetary movements brought us together. This was such a night.

“There’s something we get from each other that only other women can provide,” I said. “You all know I’m pretty self-sufficient, but you must know that that’s in large part to knowing that all of you are nearby, ready to lend support if needed. Whether it’s trauma over lovers, husbands, disease, death, children—”

“Breaking into houses owned by ex-Mossad agents,” said Jelicka, injecting much-needed humor into the melodrama.

“Whatever—I know you’re there for me. People come and go, but we will be Muff sisters ’til the end. Here’s to you, and to the absent Quinn. I’m glad you’re all in my life.”

I held up my glass of Veuve Clicquot in toast, and the others brought their glasses to meet mine. “To the Muffia.”

“To the Muffia,” came the collective cheer.