Read Online Charley's Web by Joy Fielding - Free Book Online

coffee, you moron.”
    “Hey, hey. Let’s not get nasty.”
    “Where’s your car?”
    “End of the block. In front of that house with the huge American flag. Isn’t that the place you wrote about, where they have all those orgies?”
    “It was a Passion Party,” Charley corrected.
    “Isn’t that the same thing?”
    “Oh, God.” Were they really having this conversation? “I’ve been calling you all day. Don’t you ever check your messages?”
    “Battery’s dead on my cell phone. Keep forgetting to plug the stupid thing in.”
    “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
    “And you have a question.”
    Charley looked helplessly around the room. What was the point in arguing? She’d never been able to win an argument with her brother. And besides, he was here, wasn’t he? Which was what she’d wanted. (Be careful what you wish for, she thought.) And everything seemed to be in its proper place. The furniture was where it always was: two oversize rattan chairs sat facing the small beige sofa in the middle of the natural sisal rug; a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf completely occupied the north wall, so stuffed with hardcover books that some had recently formed their own shelf on the floor; photographs of her children covered the mantel behind the sofa, as well as the table by the front bay window. Nothing seemed to be missing. “How’d you get in here anyway?”
    “Used my key.”
    “Where’d you get a key?”
    “You gave me one.”
    “The hell I did,” Charley protested.
    “You did,” Bram insisted. “That time I baby-sat…”
    “(A) You’ve never baby-sat,” Charley interrupted, “and (B) I never gave you a key.”
    “Okay, so maybe I found a spare one lying around last time I was here for dinner,” he acknowledged with a sheepish grin.
    “You took my spare key? I spent days looking for that.”
    “Should have asked me.”
    “Why would I ask you?”
    “’Cause I had it.” He smiled.
    “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
    His smile widened. “I am, yeah.”
    Charley fought the urge to throw the nearby vase of silk tulips at his head. “Give me back my key.”
    “Aw, come on, sis.”
    “Sis? Since when have you ever called me sis? Don’t give me this ‘sis’ shit.”
    “You know you have a bit of a lisp?” Bram asked provocatively. “I think it comes from yelling. Do you yell at your kids as much as you yell at me?”
    “I never yell at my kids.”
    “No? You were sure yelling when you walked through that door. What was that about anyway?”
    “What?” Charley shook her head, trying to clear it. Her brother had always been a master of keeping her off-balance.
    “As I recall, the word asshole might have passed your lips.”
    “Oh, that. My stupid neighbor.” Charley flopped into one of the rattan chairs and lifted her feet to the coffee table, so that her bare toes were almost touching the tip of her brother’s black boots. “He’s renovating, in case you didn’t notice the mess next door. And his nose got all out of joint when the neighbors objected to some of the changes he wanted to make…”
    “His neighbors being you?”
    “I was one of them. He wanted to build this giant two-storey addition that would have totally blocked out all the sun from my backyard…”
    “I seem to remember reading something in the paper about insensitive residents flouting long-standing bylaws and ruining lovely old neighborhoods.” Bram folded his hands behind his head, pretended to be thinking. “Where could I have read that, I wonder?”
    “Okay, so maybe I mentioned something about it in my column, but the whole street was upset. It wasn’t just me. Besides, what’s done is done. Get over it already. You want something cold to drink?” Charley jumped to her feet, headed for the white-and-brown kitchen at the back of the house.
    “A gin and tonic?” Bram suggested hopefully.
    “Fat chance of that. How about some orange juice?”
    “How ’bout a