Something to Talk About Read online

  Catherine Butler-McGrady, now retired after handing her Call Girls GM position over to Em, nodded her agreement, letting Marybell help her perch awkwardly on the end of a purple velvet chaise.

  She rubbed her small swollen belly with a content smile. “You’re plenty sexy without the smolder, Em. Flynn said so just the other day. He said, ‘The longer that sad sack Clifton’s gone, the prettier Em seems to get.’”

  Em snorted. “He did not.” She was not.

  “Did, too,” both LaDawn and Marybell said, dropping into the chairs on the other side of Dixie’s large, white oak desk.

  “And it’s true,” LaDawn confirmed. “You’re much less stuffy since divorcin’ Mr. Shady, honey.”

  She wrinkled her nose at her friends. “Flynn doesn’t count. He’s my cousin, for gravy’s sake, and I might not be as stuffy, but I’m definitely not any sexier.”

  Marybell and LaDawn oozed sexy, and they certainly weren’t afraid of the opposite sex. If she could just have an ounce of whatever it was they had that made talking to anyone other than old and deaf Coon Rider easier...

  Cat waved a hand and scoffed. “You are, too. You’re sweet-sexy. Makes all the boys want to know what’s goin’ on under all that prim and proper. Peel away your layers and such.”

  Em threw her hands up, frustrated with the lack of interest she stirred in the male population. “You make me sound like an onion. And where were all those boys who like onions at, I ask you? I can tell you this, they sure weren’t out tonight.”

  Cat sighed. “Oh, honey, they just weren’t the right men. Nobody said dippin’ your toes back into the dating pool would be easy.”

  LaDawn bobbed her head. “Peelin’ onions isn’t for the faint of heart, Miss Em. When the right one comes along, he’ll peel you raw.”

  Em’s cheeks went hot. “Why is it so easy for you to say things like that and when I try, I sound like a bad actress in one of those dirty movies?”

  Marybell threw her head back and laughed. “Because, silly, we do this for a living. We’re paid to entice men. We know all the tricks of the trade.”

  She eyed the women who’d become some of her closest friends these past few months. “So teach me.” There. She’d said it. Maybe if she took a few lessons in flirting from the experts, she wouldn’t look like such a darn fool come next girls’ night.

  Dixie’s eyes went wide with surprise. “You mean like teach you to talk dirty to men?”

  Em smiled and nodded. Since she’d left her job as Hank Cotton’s legal secretary after Dixie offered to make her general manager of Call Girls, she’d spent a lot of time listening to LaDawn, Marybell and the other operators talk about all manner of “making the business” as Dixie called it—and she was sometimes horrified.

  But most times, especially lately, she was intrigued by the things men wanted the operators to talk about.

  Each day, while she monitored call stats and reports and kept the office running smoothly, she overheard conversations that made her blush the color of her mother’s red velvet cake. Yet, they also left her insatiably curious.

  Maybe it had to do with what Dixie had called her molting process. She was shedding her old married life skin for a new single one, and hearing all the sex talk all day long left her secretly wanting to explore some of those things.

  It was an about-face almost no one would understand. Maybe not even Dixie. Em was everyone’s good girl, well mannered, almost decorous to a fault—and dull as dirt. No one would believe the thoughts Emmaline Amos was having as of late.

  She found her dull was slowly chipping away to reveal a shinier Em. Though she definitely didn’t feel very shiny after her failures tonight. Not even with the added shine of her semisexy new dress and the jellylike cutlets she’d stuffed in her bra to see if having larger breasts would keep her from repelling men like mosquito spray.

  So Em nodded her head again—more sure than ever her alcohol-dipped brain was sending her a subliminal message that she was on the right track. “You heard me. I want to talk dirty. Bring it on.”

  Her friends frowned at her as though she’d just told them she wanted to have relations out in the middle of the square on the steps of the gazebo.

  Em dunked her fingers into the top of her lower-than-usual cut dress and pulled out one of the offensive gel breasts, slapping it on the desk with disgust at their wide-eyed surprise. “Stop lookin’ like I just confessed to a murder. Why does everyone think I’m such a priss?”

  LaDawn scooped up the gel breast and shook it like a raw chicken breast, making it jiggle. “Because you are?”

  With alcohol came fearlessness. “I am not. I quote the Lord, yes. But that’s only because Jesus analogies are all I have to make comparisons to real life. My mama was a true Southern Baptist, and it just so happens Bible verses are what stuck. So while I might be conservative on the outside, I don’t buy into it all the way you think I do. I like sex. I like it a lot.”

  LaDawn reached out and patted her hand, her tone a little condescending, a little amused. “Good for you, honey. You still shouldn’t be playin’ with the big girls.”

  “Em, talking dirty to some stranger on the phone isn’t like practicing to flirt with a man in real life,” Dixie reminded her. “I’m not sure how you’re connecting the dots here.”

  “She connected them with wine.” LaDawn barked a laugh at her own joke.

  Which only infuriated Em further. She raised a finger and swished it around. “Let me tell you a thing or two, Miss LaDawn, I could do it! I hear you naughty Nancys take calls all day long—I’ve learned some things from you.... I’m not sayin’ I want to talk to the men LaDawn considers herself ‘companionators’ to—that might be rushin’ things, what with the latex and flogging, but maybe something tamer. Who knows, maybe it’ll help me get better at talkin’ up the opposite sex—free me from the chains that bind or something.”

  Or something. Anything to loosen her up and help her forget there were days when she felt like she was nothing but a stale loaf of day-old bread. There were days when Clifton’s words, even after almost a year, still stung. “How was I supposed to know, someone like you, conservative and nigh on prissy, would entertain the idea I liked to wear women’s clothes?”

  Conservative and prissy.

  She wanted to be a new Em. Open to owning her sexuality and leaving the buttoned-up perception of her behind.

  Marybell snickered, swirling her glass of Pinot. “Very dramatic, Em, this freein’ of your sexuality. Next you’ll want to read the Kama Sutra cover to cover and pose nude for Playboy.” Marybell chuckled. “Taking calls isn’t like flirting in real life. We openly have sex using our words—we don’t just suggest it. Don’t confuse the two, pretty lady.”

  “Girl, you are somethin’ else when you an’ libation join hands in holy alcohol, ain’t you?” LaDawn squawked, slapping her hand on her thigh. “Two glasses of Chardonnay and all of a sudden you’re Em the Emasculator.”

  Em felt the office chair she was sitting in wobble. Or was she wobbling? She couldn’t be sure. She giggled on a hiccup, one that jolted her so hard, she fell into Dixie, who stroked her hair with a soothing palm.

  She took a deep breath and waved a finger at LaDawn’s lithe form in a “fooled you, didn’t I?” fashion. “It wasn’t Chardonnay, FYI. I had four drinks at the bar. The ones with the orange swirly stuff and the pretty umbrellas in them. Four.” Take that, conservatism.

  “Four?” LaDawn and Marybell chirped their surprise in unison.

  “Okay, who was on Em duty while I was off two-steppin’, LaDawn?” Marybell asked, casting a glance of aspersion LaDawn’s way.

  LaDawn popped her heavily lined lips, brushing her platinum hair off her shoulder with a scoff. “Oh, no. I told you I was gonna take second shift. That means before 11:00 p.m. you were babysitting.”


  Marybell shook her head, the pointy spikes of her red-and-green Mohawk beginning to sag after a long girls’ night out. “Nope. Dixie was supposed to take eight to ten. I was ten till 12:00 a.m. We let Cat take the night off, seeing as she can’t keep her eyes open for more than twenty minutes at a time.”

  Cat, now sprawled across the chaise, snored to prove their point.

  All eyes went to Dixie, who shot them a sheepish grin, full of dimples and sunshine.

  LaDawn grabbed the bottle of Chardonnay and poured her and Dixie another glass to share while Marybell dug a blanket out to cover Cat, tucking the edges under her chin. “You were textin’ with that confounded dreamboat of yours again, weren’t you? It’s not girls’ night if you’re textin’ with your man, Dixie. Then it’s girls’ night and Caine,” she admonished with a stern tone, but a smile she couldn’t hide crept across her lips.

  Dixie wrinkled her nose. “But he’s so cute when he texts me,” she defended her schoolgirl behavior.

  “If you can’t spend twenty minutes without contact with one Mr. Caine Donovan, you can’t be a girl out on a girls’ night. Then you’re just pathetic and maybe should be textin’ someone about obsession therapy,” LaDawn teased, poking Dixie’s arm with a glittery, purple nail. “So I’m callin’ it now, next time we all give up our cell phones at the beginning of the night so we don’t lose track of Em and her newfound love of spirits. Because look what happens when we do that. Four drinks and she gets to thinkin’ she should be learnin’ the tricks of the trade instead of just running the place.” She leaned forward and ruffled Em’s mussed hair with a chuckle.

  Em stuck her tongue out at LaDawn.

  LaDawn popped her lips at Dixie, ignoring Em. “While you’re off moonin’ over that man, it doesn’t mean Em doesn’t need lookin’ out for. She’s new to the single scene. Especially in a place called Cooters where every horn dog from here to Johnsonville goes to ladies’ night ’cuz the drafts are only a dollar. If someone doesn’t watch her, they’ll eat our innocent Em alive. You dropped the ball, Dixie Davis. Next time, you have to pull your shift and take my shift, too.”

  Em gave her friends a sour face, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I’m plenty of adult sittin’ right here, I’ll have you know. I don’t need a babysitter, and I’m not so innocent. And if I want to have four drinks, I will. Maybe I’ll have five,” she said defiantly.

  She deserved five. It had been a long two months since the finalization of her divorce. Seven total if you counted the time since she’d found out Clifton was an infidel who wanted to wear women’s clothing and live in Atlanta as Trixie LeMieux.

  Most of the pain of that discovery had passed. That Clifton hadn’t even given her the chance to understand that part of him still stung. She’d always prided herself on being open to new things, despite the fact that she was born and raised in a town stuck somewhere in the 1950s.

  Cross-dressing hadn’t ever entered her mind when she’d been thinking about what the word open meant, but who’s to say she wouldn’t have adjusted? Clifton just never gave her the chance to say one way or the other. He’d just left.

  And now, here she was, single at thirty-six with an eight-year-old and a five-year-old to raise with little help from her ex-husband. His embarrassment after an incident in town, where his secret was publicly and cruelly revealed by none other than Louella Palmer, had kept him from coming to see the boys as often as they needed seeing by their daddy.

  Dixie stretched her arms upward with a yawn of her perfectly glossed, pink lips. “Fine. Next girls’ night out, I’ll take two shifts. Now, what do you say we get you home, Em?”

  Em shook her off, reaching for more wine. She could drink as much wine as she liked, her internal rebel coaxed. “Stop appeasin’ me, Dixie. I’m a grown woman, and I don’t want to go home to my lonely, empty house right now. Gareth and Clifton Junior are spendin’ the weekend at Mama’s, so I’m a free bird. Just like Lynyrd Skynyrd says.”

  Dixie gave her a pointed look—one you’d give a willful preschooler. “You know what they say about idle hands and the devil.”

  “As Satan’s closest confidante, I’m sure you’ve heard all the gossip,” Em shot back, squeezing her friend’s arm with a giggle.

  When they’d been forced into the race for the phone-sex contest Landon set forth with Em as mediator, leaving them in each other’s company more often than not, she’d used Dixie’s former cruelties full force as a way to continually poke her with what she now lovingly referred to as a “gentle Em reminder.” Nowadays, since they’d become so close, she did it with love, but she still did it.

  “I thought we were past my mean girl and well into forgiveness. Will you ever run out of nails for my coffin?” Dixie inquired with gooey sweetness.

  “Lucky Judson’s Hardware store has aisles’ and aisles’ worth. How’s never suit you?” Em shot back with a lopsided grin.

  LaDawn burst out laughing, the sound rich and deep. She flicked a purple-painted nail at Em. “Phew! You are all ’bout your sass these days, aren’t you, Miss Emmaline? Every time I turn around you’re assertin’ yourself in one way or another. You’re all breathin’ fire at us at the drop of a hat lately.”

  Marybell nodded, reaching into a bag of Cheetos Dixie had produced from her deep desk drawer. “Oh, yes, ma’am, she is. If you look at her cross-eyed, flames come right out of her cute little mouth,” she said on a giggle, tweaking Em’s lower lip.

  It was true. She’d become a little testy in this quest to show anyone within earshot she was no longer Emmaline Without A Spine. Some would even say she’d gone overboard. Nonetheless, she protested. “Bah! They do not.”

  Dixie popped a Cheeto in her mouth, licking her fingers. “Do so. If I simply say the word no, even if it’s when you’re askin’ me if I’d like another glass of sweet tea, you jump right down my throat. You’re always barking orders at us like we wouldn’t listen to you if you didn’t holler them with that stern teacher voice you’ve adopted. Reminds me of old Mrs. Beauchamp. Remember her from third grade?”

  Marybell nodded her agreement, her eyes, heavy with dark makeup, playful. “Next thing you know, she’ll show up with a ruler and crack our hands to get her point across.”

  Em rolled her eyes at them. Admittedly, as of late, she had a case of the “I will be heard” syndrome. The one where everything she said had to be full throttle or she was convinced she wouldn’t be taken seriously. It would just take some time to find her balance. Toning her stern teacher’s voice down would probably be a good place to start.

  “Uh-huh,” LaDawn confirmed, patting Marybell on the back. “You know what, I take back my protestin’ from earlier. Some days, the way you’ve been orderin’ us all around, maybe we should just let you take all the calls and we’ll all go shop for shoes, seein’ as you seem to know how to do it better.”

  That sudden need to prove herself, the one she’d just reminded herself was on the warpath, the one that was completely unwarranted and absolutely unnecessary, reared its badly mannered head—again. “I bet I could answer your calls—all of ’em.” She rolled her neck in the “wanna go ’round?” way LaDawn did. “I know all the dirty words because I hear Miss LaDawn here say them like she’s recitin’ her prayers before bedtime, all day long.”

  Em’s defensive answer sparked the competitive streak in LaDawn. She sat upright and pointed to the wine bottle. “You just stop talkin’ crazy from over there and have another glass of wine. You would faint dead if you had to pretend to spank some man with my special spatula and scream, ‘You dirty, dirty boy!’ You know it, and so does everyone else sittin’ here.”

  Dixie held up a hand, leaning forward and putting it between the two women with a look of admonishment. “Girls, how quickly we forget I’ve banned all forms of competition. Em, you stop riling the caged beast, and both of you play nicely with each other.”
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  “You only banned them because you can’t resist them, Dixie,” Em taunted, knowing full well she was again poking her friend for her former habit of turning everything from pie eating to merely breathing into a death match.

  Dixie narrowed her eyes in Em’s direction, her husky voice raspy when she said, “You’re baiting me, Em.”

  Em nodded, throwing her a smug smile, though it was full of love. “If I had a worm, I’d dangle it in your face.”

  “I still say you couldn’t do it,” LaDawn coaxed with a sly grin, twisting her hair and tying it up with a rubber band she always kept around her slender wrist. “You couldn’t even answer one phone call and say the P word without callin’ out forgiveness from on high. We’ll all be home and in our beds in no time flat before you get ’round to it. I’d bet next week’s girls’ night drinks on it.”

  Dixie held up a finger, her eyes flashing warning signals at LaDawn. “In Em’s condition, she’ll end up meeting some crazy killer for chicken and waffles at Madge’s. Stop goading her, LaDawn.”

  “Oh, really?” Em challenged, using her hands to push off the desk’s top and stick her face in LaDawn’s. She balanced herself on her waist, teetering. “You’re on, Latex Lady!”

  Dropping back to her chair, she picked up the phone on Dixie’s desk and rang Nella.

  “Nella? It’s Emmaline. Next caller who doesn’t know his foot from the P word, send them to me on Dixie’s line, please.” She hung up the phone with a triumphant drop of the receiver, almost hearing poor Nella’s jaw drop all the way from the other end of the guesthouse.

  “Right here, right now, I’m callin’ it. This is a mistake, Em. You’ve had a little too much to drink, and tomorrow, you’ll regret it,” Marybell said with confidence, fighting a grin. LaDawn cackled, crossing her arms. “So what’s your name for the naughty gonna be, Em? I think Not Gonna Happen’s already been taken.”

  Dixie and Marybell erupted in a fit of laughter, followed shortly thereafter by LaDawn.