The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,94
the surgery to fix her ear and the backyard cookouts and the new car. She was grateful for so many things.
“Ice water, please,” she said to the black man in white gloves behind the bar.
The only one who came to the hospital had been Slick. She showed up at seven in the morning and knocked gently on the open door and came in and sat down next to Patricia. She didn’t say much. She didn’t have any advice or insight, no ideas or opinions. She didn’t need to be convinced it had all been an accident. She just sat there, holding Patricia’s hand in a kind of silent prayer, and around seven forty-five she said, “We all need you to get better,” and left.
She was the only one of them Patricia cared about anymore. She didn’t hold anything too much against Kitty and Maryellen and they saw each other socially, but the only time she came near Grace now was at book club. When she saw Grace she thought about things she’d said that she didn’t want to remember.
She turned, cold glass in one hand, grateful she couldn’t smell the meatballs anymore, and saw Grace and Bennett standing behind her.
“Hello, Grace,” she said. “Bennett.”
Grace didn’t move; Bennett stood motionless. No one leaned forward for a hug. Bennett had an iced tea in his hand instead of a beer. Grace had lost weight.
“It’s quite a turnout,” Grace said, surveying the room.
“Did you enjoy this month’s book?” Patricia asked.
“I’ve certainly learned a lot about the war on drugs,” Grace said.
I hated it, Patricia wanted to say. Everyone talked in the same terse, manly sentences you’d expect from an insurance salesman fantasizing about war. Every sentence dripped with DDOs and DDIs and LPIs and E-2s and F-15s and MH-53Js and C-141s. She didn’t understand half of what she read, there were no women in it except fools and prostitutes, it had nothing to say about their lives, and it felt like a recruitment ad for the army.
“It was very illuminating,” she agreed.
James Harris had turned their book club into this. He’d started getting the husbands to attend, and they’d started reading more and more books by Pat Conroy (“He’s a local author”) and Michael Crichton (“Fascinating concepts”), and The Horse Whisperer and All the Pretty Horses and Bravo Two Zero, and sometimes Patricia despaired over what were they going to read next—The Celestine Prophecy? Chicken Soup for the Soul?—but mostly she marveled at how many people came.
It was better not to dwell on it. Everything changes, and was it really so bad that more people wanted to discuss books?
“We need to find seats,” Grace said. “Excuse us.”
Patricia watched them retreat into the crowd. The track lighting got brighter as the sky outside got darker, and she made her way back to her group. As she got nearer she smelled sandalwood and leather. People parted and she saw Carter talking excitedly to someone, and then she passed the last person blocking her view and saw James Harris, dressed in a blue oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up just so, and his khakis pressed exactly right, his hair tousled by experts, and his skin glowing with health.
“You wouldn’t believe the schedule they have me on this fall,” Carter was telling him. “Six talks before January. You’ll have to keep an eye on the old homestead.”
“You know you love it,” James Harris said, and they both laughed.
Patricia’s steps faltered and she cursed herself for not wanting to see James Harris, who had done so much for all of them, and she forced herself to walk toward him with a big smile. James Harris was Leland’s business advisor these days. He called himself a consultant. He made up for not being able to go outside during the day by working through the night. He pored over the plans for Gracious Cay, he wooed outside investors at catered dinners he hosted at his home, and sometimes when Patricia walked down Middle Street early in the morning she could still smell cigar smoke lingering in the street outside his house. He worked the phones, he encouraged people to get outside their comfort zones, he