Girls' Night Out Read Online Free

shriek.
    â€œLet’s turn him over. It’s time to get to work. You got any duct tape, honey?” she asked.
    â€œYeah,” the queen said. “He’s not exactly with the program. It’s time for him to lie back and think about the British Empire.”
    Betty Ford hooted and put a hand to her mouth as Eleanor Roosevelt brandished the massive pink dildo and the movie star and the other first lady and the queen flipped him over. “Open wide,” she said, slapping him on the rump. “This will only hurt for a minute.”
    It didn’t hurt at all. Just seeing that monster dildo did the trick. Hanrahan squealed like a stuck pig and fainted like a fragile flower.

    ***

    I love my book group. Sometimes we talk about Proust. Sometimes we read nonfiction or other classics that we’ve missed. We always enjoy each other’s company. It’s a great way to stay in touch.
    We’ve been through grad school, a couple of nasty breakups, my excruciating divorce from an initially sweet husband who turned out to be controlling and insane and once tried to kill me because his voices told him I was evil. We’ve been through the loss of Ellen’s husband and the birth of Suzan’s baby. We’re as close as a group of women can be. We would need all of that strength and closeness to get through this.
    Jay Hanrahan was dead. Not because of anything we’d done. We hadn’t beaten him or terrified him into cardiac arrest. He hadn’t choked on his own vomit because we stifled his complaints with duct tape. Callie thought he’d died from an unfortunate combination of yohimbe and a date rape drug. In his eagerness to get the maximum benefit from drugging me, he had taken an overdose of yohimbe, apparently an easy thing to do. It had interacted badly with his own date rape drug and sent him into cardiac arrest.
    But we had committed a few crimes ourselves tonight, and now, at 1:00 a.m., I stood with three former first ladies and a Hollywood icon in my pretty guest room staring at the already graying body of the serial rapist sprawled on the bed.
    â€œWe’ve got to clean him up, get him dressed, take him home, and leave him in his own bed,” I said. “I’ll need one of you to help. We just have to pray for a building with no doorman or security cameras. Ellen, you stay here and make sure that every trace of him is gone. Tess, you follow me so you can help me get him inside and drive me home. The rest of you—go home. You were in all evening. We haven’t seen each other since book group. No one talks about this on the phone or by e-mail. Not one word.”

    ***

    We parked his car under his building—luckily Ellen had remembered that much of her evening—and took him up in the elevator, our arms wrapped around him like two women who couldn’t wait to get the guy upstairs for a good time. Just in case there were cameras in the elevator, we talked to him, nuzzled him. Giggled. We didn’t see a soul and the whole place was as still as—well, as still as death.
    My heart’s thump was loud enough to wake the building. I was glad to have Tess there. She was as cool as ice. Coolly tucking the covers up to his chin and smoothing the sheets. Coolly rolling his socks up and putting them in his shoes. Coolly putting his shirt in the pile in the closet to go to the laundry. Coolly brushing any residual hairs off his jacket and slacks and wiping our prints from the doorknobs.
    We both wanted to search his place for pictures of his victims, thinking he might have brought them back now that the trial was over. We didn’t dare take the time.
    A few blocks from his house, Tess suddenly pulled over to the curb, put her hands to her head, and started screaming.

    ***

    I was painting pale peach roses, a peach so pale there was only a breath of color. A small picture for Suzan’s daughter’s bedroom. Her daughter was named Aurora after