Dirty Girls on Top: A Novel (The Dirty Girls Social Club, 2) - Softcover

Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312349815 ISBN 13: 9780312349813

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2009

Synopsis

The Dirty Girls are back, saucier and sexier than ever....but are they any wiser?

Lauren is at the top of her game as a newspaper columnist―but her romantic life is a total disaster. Usnavys is still ready for action―from anyone except her husband Juan, that is―his role as stay-at-home dad bores her.

Maybe the other Dirty Girls could help Lauren and ‘navy out, but they've got their own messes to deal with: Rebecca hasn't gained a pound since college (well, who would, if they had an ounce of self-control?) but now that she has a picture-perfect marriage, all that's missing is a baby; Sara may be the star of her own decorating show on TV, but her dangerous pull toward her ex-husband isn't so pretty; Amber keeps reinventing herself and doesn't want to hear that it isn't enough to make fans buy her music; and Elizabeth is discovering that a relationship with another woman takes more than bravery and a nesting instinct.

Dirty Girls on Top is about trying to figure it all out―sex, love, careers, friendship, motherhood. And, in the end, if your fingers are crossed and the planets are in alignment, having it come out just the way it should.

About this title

About the Author:

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is an award-winning journalist who is the author of five novels. She was named one of today's twenty-five most influential Hispanics by Time magazine. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One

Usnavys

so, you know I’m not a hoochie, okay? But an unhappy marriage can make a woman do questionable things. Things she’s not proud of, things she only tells her closest friends—and even then with the understanding that, if they blab about it, they’ll get their butts kicked. So it is, m’ija, that I am cheating on my husband at a big adobe resort outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. I have never cheated on him before, and I’m not sure I’ll do it again. Alls I knew was I had to do it just this once.

My college friends, the sucias who’ve been my support network for fifteen years—since we met as freshmen at Boston University—will arrive here in a few days for our annual vacation trip, a tradition we started two years ago. Me, though? I flew here from Boston yesterday to take care of some personal business. A seven-year-itch kind of thing, only a little early. I am not proud of it. I decided I’d seduce the golf pro after I saw his photo in the brochure for the resort. I learned what I could about him, and I concocted my strategy. It worked.

My husband, Juan? He’d looked up at me through his smudgy Clark Kent eyeglasses over the morning paper across the breakfast table before I left yesterday, his curly black hair sticking up all greasy wherever it wasn’t receding. "Why are you going early, mi reina?" he wanted to know. Reina means queen, and to him, I’m still an empress. He doesn’t know about the golf pro, and I don’t think you should tell him, either.

I told Juan I wanted to get to the resort early, to observe some outreach programs having to do with Latinas and AIDS in New Mexico, for my work as an executive with the United Way of Massachusetts Bay. It sounded very official when I said it, and he was duly impressed with his empress. "They’ve been very successful," I assured him, with a wave of my hand. "It’s a model that might be emulated here in New England."

He believed me, el pobre. He thinks marriage changed me. For a while I did change, too, but now I know better. Listen to me. After ten years of juggling no less than two men at a time, a woman does not just up and change, even though God and the world know there’s a piece of paper and shared taxes involved now. I am a "manizer" the same way my daddy was a womanizer. I was to the manor born, as the americanos say, and, even though I’m not proud of it, I seem to have stayed the way he met me.

Juan thinks I’m different because he chooses to see the best in people, even when it isn’t there. His heart hallucinates. I know, you think that’s a plus, right? Being married to a loving optimist like Juan. But nena, that’s just it. Juan believes everyone and he does it indiscriminately. Ain’t no backbone in that. The boy is naïve. Back when he had him a job (ahem), he believed all them drug addicts when they told him they were clean and sober as an Osmond now, he believed them when they said they were going to get jobs and stop doing shit like stealing cars. Then he acted all surprised when they came crawling back into rehab after getting arrested for crime and crack again. I try telling him, people don’t change that much, m’ijo, no matter how bad you want them to. Badly. Yes, I know the difference between good and bad grammar; no, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Whatever, no?

This resort is supposed to look like a Pueblo Indian village, like in those Georgia O’Keeffe paintings, where the pastel flower petals look all coochie unfurling in their glistening glory. I think this place looks like a big bunch of caramels all stacked on top of each other, or like a dusty old stack of wedding cake. Depends on your attitude. At the moment, I’ve chosen candy over cake.

Chocolate, to be exact.

His name is Marcus Williams, and he’s the golf pro—like an older, darker Tiger Woods in his crisp white polo shirt and khaki shorts, with that salt-and-pepper hair and that little sexy mustache. He’s probably forty-five or so, but he’s got him some deltoids like cantaloupes. You don’t think you’re going to find a fine black brother teaching golf up on an Indian reservation near Santa Fe, nena, but life is full of delicious surprises, ¿sí? From what I read about him, I know that Marcus used to be a professional golfer. He retired and came to work here in New Mexico because he likes the desert but dislikes Arizona’s take on black people. I’ve seen his car, and it’s a white Cadillac, so you know he’s got at least a little something-something stashed away from the days when he almost won the U.S. Open and Nike came knocking on his door. I learned all this about him on the Internet, following his comments on message boards and things like that. I plan my attacks like an army general, always have.

I should tell you, Juan don’t play golf. Doesn’t. He doesn’t play golf. Dominos, yes; golf, no. Nintendo, yes; skiing, no. I try telling him, you will never get ahead in business inviting CEOs to play dominos, nene, but he’s like, "I don’t want to play anything with CEOs except Revolution, I want to play with my tío and my sobrino and the people I actually like." Whatever.

All my life I dreamed that I’d marry the kind of man who played him some golf, and liked to ski and went to places like Jackson Hole, okay? I imagined it, and it felt good. So, I’m not saying I’m falling in love with Marcus or any nonsense like that, I’m just saying Marcus plays golf and Juan doesn’t. Marcus has a Cadillac and Juan doesn’t. Marcus wears polo shirts, Juan does not. I’m just saying that sometimes you have things in your head a certain way and life spins you a different way, and you still wonder about that road not taken, only my road not taken is more like a little path for golf carts. I like Marcus, and I wonder, you know, if I’d married me someone like that, would I still be struggling to pay the Bloomingdale’s charge on time. I wonder if I’d still be choosing to go to fancy dinners for work alone because I can’t bear the sight of my husband in his Che Guevara T-shirt and tuxedo jacket sitting next to me. I am a woman of class and substance, and I’d like to imagine what it would be like to be married to a man of class and substance, or at least to spend some time with one. So sue me.

Oh, and the best part? Marcus likes me back. I knew he would, though, and not just because he said my Boston accent was cute. It’s because I look good and I smell good and I’m full of compliments of the type and caliber that make a man feel important. That’s all. Oh, and he likes some big thighs, know what I’m sayin’? You know how black men feel about curvy women of a generous size and proportions. Uh-huh. He gave me a lesson this morning, wrapping his big old arms around me to show me how to swing, holding me so close I could smell the manly spice of his deodorant and the heat of the sun on his clean cotton clothes. He eased his hand over mine and whispered in my ear, "Don’t swing carelessly, Usnavys, don’t lose focus on your game, girl."

I could have taken him right then, okay, nena? I coulda had him this morning, that’s how bad he wanted me. But I had lunch to attend to in the resort café. Some things are better if you have to wait for them—including me. I sat outside, behind my big sunglasses with the golden dior on the sides, with a view of the kiva-shaped pool and th

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0312349815
• ISBN 13: 9780312349813
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336