Excerpt of The Payback Club by Rexanne Becnel

It all started up again because of the society page.

I was sitting in my breakfast room, minding my own business, reading the newspaper and eating my bowl of Total with a half-cup of skim milk and a slice of cantaloupe. My trainer would be so proud. Then I opened the Living section, and whom do I see laughing up at me? Ed, my ex-husband, and Barracuda Woman, his much younger new wife. It's a photo of them at the YMCA's annual fund- raiser ball.

I stared at them, trying to ignore the sudden pounding of my heart. I shouldn't be surprised. She'd already stolen my husband; why wouldn't she steal my charity too? And yet despite my noble attempt at logic, I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck lift. No, my hackles lifted. "Hackles" sounds more visceral, more primitive. I spy my enemy and my hackles lift.

In the wild, animals have two choices when faced with an enemy: fight or flight. But we humans work so hard to be civilized. Someone carves the heart out of your chest, and all you do is smile and put on the false front of civility so the rest of the world can't see that your life's blood is dripping away, drop by bitter drop.

Even now, at home all by myself, all I did was turn to page four of the Living section and take another bite of cereal. First Ed had ruined our family with that woman; now they were horning in on my favorite charity. But there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing. So I finished my cereal, got up to dress, and, since my heart was already pumping faster than normal, I went to the gym.

That's the day I met Liz.

I was hunched over the handlebars of the stationary bike, depressed and brooding over that damned society page photo, when I heard, "I want to wreck his life."

Had I said that out loud?

Embarrassed, I peered cautiously around the workout room. It was one thing to daydream about wrecking Ed's life, about ruining him socially, financially and maybe physically too. But now I was talking to myself?

Then I heard it again. "I want to wreck his life like he's wrecked mine." It came from a pretty strawberry-blond woman on the ab machine two rows over. Thank God I'm not crazy. My thoughts, but her words.

Trying to concentrate, I gripped the molded plastic hand- grips and pedaled. But it was weird how she felt just like I did, as if I were projecting my frustration onto her, except that I'm not the woo-woo E.S.P. horoscope type.

Then again, there are a lot of jerks in the world. She probably had her own version of Ed, and just like me, she wanted to even the score. It wasn't complicated.

Most of the time I got along fine. I was building a new life without Ed, and it wasn't all bad. But some days the realization of all I'd lost was harder to bear. Like today. On those days, all I wanted was to strangle Ed, to leave him gasping for breath and trying to survive in a world suddenly gone crazy.

I pedaled even faster. And to sweeten the deal, I wanted to yank that blond barracuda he'd married bald-headed.

"Whoa, Joan," Nita, the fitness trainer, called out to me.

"Slow down. You won't last five minutes at that pace."

"Interval training," I muttered. "Isn't that what you're always preaching? Sprints get my heart rate up." So do thoughts of revenge.

"Well, yeah. But you just got on that bike. What happened to two minutes of warm ups, then one-minute intervals of increasing speed?" She strolled over from where she'd been helping the other woman with her form. "You went from cold to sprint in forty-five seconds flat."

I frowned at her, but I was too winded to argue. Anyway, she was right. You only have to look at her perfectly taut, spandex-clad body to know that when it comes to fitness, Nita Alvarez is always right. The whirring of the going-nowhere wheels eased as I began to slow down.

"And you're gripping too tight." Nita tapped my left knuckle. "Had a bad day?"

I huffed out a frustrated breath. "No more than usual." I took another harsh breath, then exhaled. "I guess I overheard what she said." I gestured with my head to her new client, a plump version of Pamela Anderson, who was scowling with every stomach crunch.

At Nita's questioning look I explained. "About wrecking some guy's life. I was thinking the very same thing."

"Oh." Nita's perfectly waxed brows went up in understanding. "She's in the beginning stages of a divorce."

"So I figured."

"Liz," Nita said, turning to the woman who was focused with pink-faced concentration on her abs. "Liz Savoie, this is Joan Hoffman. She's been coming here for about a year now."

Liz paused, breathing hard from her exertions. "Hi," she said in a sweet, little girl's voice. "I'm new at the Oasis. You look great."

I shrugged, pleased despite my nonchalant response. "Thanks, but Nita gets all the credit. She's a regular drill sergeant."

Liz wiped her damp brow with the back of her wrist. "I'm beginning to see that."

"But only within reason," Nita said. "There's a method to my madness." She sent me a cheeky grin. "Joan was overdoing it just now. She heard you say you want to wreck his life and it reminded her of her ex, and all of a sudden she was pedaling a hundred miles an hour."

From across the room the owner of the Oasis Spa and Body Works signaled to Nita. "Looks like I have to go," she said. "Keep to your program, okay, Joan? As for you," she added to Liz, "I'll be back to start you on the next machine in five minutes."

With a nod to Liz, I settled into a steady pace on the bike.

Liz went back to her ab work. The erratic thunk of the weight machines and soft grunts from several other members were the only interruption to the soothing New Age music piped in to the serene aqua and cream training room.

I did four miles on the bike. Then I planned to swim my usual twenty laps. After that I wasn't sure how I was going to spend the rest of the day. I mean, I had work to do. A new brochure to design for the Louisiana Optical Society, as well as their quarterly newsletter. But it was solitary work, just me in my home office with H.C. — Hunk of Crap — my computer. To tell the truth, I'd rather exercise. At least at Oasis there were other people around.

The fact is, I'm in the best shape of my life these days, and it's mainly due to loneliness. My old life, the one with kids to ferry around town, a husband to keep happy, and all sorts of social and community activities demanding my time no longer exists. Despite my thriving new home business, there are still days when I feel like my life is filled with nothing.

First Pearl went off to college. Two years later Ronnie did the same. Bittersweet, but to be expected. Then a week after that, completely out of the blue, Ed filed for divorce.

Despite Nita's orders, I began to pedal faster.

Divorce! No one in my family had ever been divorced. Even my crazy sister Margie, the South Florida apartment manager, had managed to remain tethered to the same man.

But not me. I'd reached high when I married Edward St. Romaine the Third, and together we'd flown higher still. He was a partner in a top law firm, and I was active in the Junior League, the Preservation Resource Center, and literacy programs at S.T.A.I.R. and the YMCA. Pretty good for a girl from Mid City whose dad made his living driving streetcars.

But at least my blue-collar parents had stayed married. "How long have you been divorced?"

I blinked at the unexpected question, then twisted my head toward the voice. Liz, the strawberry blonde, was rubbing her sore stomach muscles while she waited for Nita to start her on the next machine.

"Sorry," she muttered when I didn't answer right away. Her flushed cheeks grew even pinker. "I'm being nosy, aren't I? I just thought…well, what Nita said."

I shook my head. "It's all right. I've been officially divorced for almost a year."

"And you still want to wreck his life?" Blowing out a frustrated breath, she sat on the bench in front of my bike. She wore a loose gray T-shirt over her spandex outfit, the sure sign of a newbie trying to hide that extra ten or twenty pounds.

"Do you think that kind of anger ever goes away? I mean, my divorce isn't close to being final, but I was hoping that once it was I'd stop being so royally pissed off at Dennis."

"Oh, honey, you have no idea," I said, unable to hide my cynicism. I patted my face with the towel I kept draped on the handlebars. "It seems like your anger and hurt go away. You get through a week, even two, without letting what he did be the center of your world anymore. And then he does something else —"

I stopped mid-sentence. I don't like airing my personal life to strangers. I don't even like talking about Ed with women I've known twenty years. My marriage is the biggest failure of my life. I couldn't keep my own husband interested in me, and he split the first moment he could. Why would I want to admit that to anybody?

But today I was more pissed off at Ed than I'd been in a long time. First the picture in the paper. Then not ten minutes later, Pearl had called from school, complaining that her father hadn't returned her calls in two days. She was worried that he might be sick. As if. Her father wasn't sick; he was just selfish. Too busy screwing Barb the Barracuda to call his own daughter. Of course, I would never say that to Pearl.

I shouldn't even be saying these things to Liz.

I stood up to head for the pool and the anonymity of cleaving through the cold, unforgiving water. My mistake was when I looked at Liz. Moisture glinted beneath her pale lashes, tears held back by rapid blinking. And her Kewpie-doll lips trembled ever so slightly.

This was one of those days when I didn't think I could keep my own spirits up. How could I possibly help anyone else? But I remembered too clearly feeling exactly the way she did now.

"Don't waste any tears on your ex." I draped my towel around the back of my neck. "I don't know why your marriage fell apart, Liz. But I do know that crying only proves he's won."

From across the room Nita started our way. Good. Maybe I could ease out of this conversation. But when she saw us talking, she gave me a thumbs-up and veered in another direction. I let out a sigh. So much for a quick escape. "But I can't seem to stop crying." Liz stared down at her knotted hands. Then, as if to prove the point, she burst into noisy sobs.

Fifteen minutes and as many tissues later, I had somehow agreed to have lunch with Liz. But as I swam my laps, I fumed. At myself for succumbing to Liz's neediness; at Nita for setting me up; and at Ed — always at Ed — for putting me in this god-awful situation in the first place.

Most of the time I reminded myself that my divorce could have been worse. It could have been one of those slash-and- burn, take-no-prisoners kind of divorces that made The War of the Roses look like a skirmish. At least Ed and I could be civil with each other, and going back to work had helped my self-esteem enormously.