"I just don't get it," I said, glancing around the room and keeping my voice low. "Why is it in every single one of these novels, the minute the woman has sex, she's dead soon afterward?"

I was at my monthly book group a few days later, sitting on a couch in Paige Sinclair's spacious living room in San Marino. It had all started innocently enough. A bunch of us had taken a literature class through UCLA Extension in Westwood. I'd enrolled just to get out of my rut. And I've always been self-conscious because I'd dropped out of college during my junior year abroad.

I'd gone to Rome for a year, immediately falling in love with the people, the city and the food. I'd discovered my true passion, signed up for culinary school and became a caterer. Food, prepared with care and love, made people happy. More to the point, I had a chance of making a living doing something I really loved. Why did I have to learn about philosophy when a great alfredo sauce added a lot more happiness to the world?

Anyway, I had taken the literature class to shore up my lack of education and also in the hope of meeting a nice guy who might be able to read and carry on a decent conversation. I'd ended up reading and discussing a few really great books and I'd met some terrific women. The class, though, had been about ninety percent female, with a few gay men thrown in for good measure. The one straight guy had looked young enough to be my teenage son. And I wasn't going there. No attraction, besides.

"You're right," said Ariel, staring down at the trade paperback novel in her hands as if it were a live grenade.

"Sex always leads to death. What is it with men that they keep writing this stuff where women keep getting punished for expressing their sexuality?"

I loved Ariel. She was into the most fascinating stuff, and she always took the conversation to a new, and better, level.

"Hey, it's not all men," I replied. "What about that story we read last month, where the woman swam out into the ocean and just drowned after all that happened to her?"

"The Awakening," Ariel said. She always remembered names and places and book titles and who really starred in what movie or won which Oscar. I admired the fact that she could keep it all in her head.

"And what about that play at the Pasadena Playhouse we all went to?" "Hedda Gabler. I see what you mean, Eva." Frances walked into the room. She's been really pro-active in our relationship. She's called me a couple of times and we've gone out to the movies. She's been over to my house; I've been to her place in Silverlake. Over coffee, she'd asked if I'd needed any help with my catering, and I've hired her for a couple of events. I got the feeling Frances was a jill-of-all-trades. Every time I've hired her as a waitress or a bartender, I've been more than pleased with the results. She was fast on her feet, great with people and could take action in a crisis.

She also has a lot of presence and lights up a room when she enters it. You couldn't miss her. She was tall, with spectacular red hair. She'd look right at home in a Titian painting.

We were just finishing up the food break at the end of the meeting and now we had to decide what book to read for next month. Paige had this fetish about the food matching the novel's ambience and atmosphere, so we had Russian going today, blini with sour cream and caviar, borscht, a hearty beef stew and lots of vodka. Okay by me, even though I didn't really care much for caviar. But as a caterer, I know there are people out there who do. I guess I should count myself lucky Paige wasn't serving venison.

Almost a year ago we read a novel called Smilla's Sense of Snow (excellent, by the way), and for one horrible week I was sure Paige was going to come up with a plate of blubber for the break. Or something worse.

"All right, people!" Paige called out, entering the room. She had that rich-family, trust-fund, tall-and-skinny thing going. She was wearing pressed khakis and an emerald- green pullover sweater over a — I swear to God — white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Of course, a string of pearls and they weren't fake. And leather driving moccasins that I was sure cost the earth. Her hair was perfectly bobbed to her chin, with gorgeous highlights. She had either been on vacation at a beach resort or had an extensive session with a colorist in Beverly Hills.

I'm guessing the colorist at about three to six hundred bucks.

"Okay!" Paige said, sitting down in one of the two leather club chairs across from the sofa where Ariel and I were sitting. Ariel has been my friend since my move to Los Angeles over a decade ago. I'd met her the first week I lived here. We'd just clicked. She was funny and tiny and gorgeous in a Natalie Wood kind of way and worked for a publishing company out in Santa Monica, so she added a lot to our understanding of books. She was also writing a screenplay, but she swore me to total secrecy. So I've never mentioned it to anyone.

I like most of the women in the group. Most of us have been together for almost three years, and I knew I would miss them if we didn't get together once a month.

I genuinely liked Paige, even though her take-charge attitude sometimes got on my nerves. There were times I felt she thought she was better than — no, superior to — most women, thanks to her to-the-manner-born attitude. She made a big deal about the fact that she went to a private girls' school back East called Emma Willard, or something like that. "Jane Fonda went there, you know." She'd managed to work that into the first conversation we'd ever had.

And from the outside, I guess Paige really seemed to have the perfect life. An incredibly beautiful home in possibly the wealthiest area of L.A., a good-looking husband, even a golden retriever. No kids yet, but they'd be coming in time and no doubt attending only the best private schools.

But it had been Paige who'd suggested we continue the reading group after the UCLA class had ended. She was a generous person, opening up her home to our group and organizing everything. We all got along well, and we laughed a lot as we got through our various book picks.

The trouble was, I didn't finish reading most of them. It was my dirty little secret.

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina sat on my bedside table all through the month of December and the first week of January. Every time I glanced at that book I got a case of the guilts. We'd thought of not reading a book during the holidays, but Paige had convinced all of us that we didn't want to lose momentum. So Anna Karenina it was.

I knew Paige's choice had a lot to do with the fact that Oprah had once picked it for her book club. And if it was good enough for Oprah, it was good enough for Paige. She watched Oprah's show religiously, subscribed to her magazine and believed that if Oprah said something, it was the gospel truth.

Hence, Anna Karenina. "Anyone have any suggestions?" Paige said as all of us settled on various sofas, chairs and hassocks. The large living room, furnished with antiques and nineteenth-century oil paintings, resembled a reading room straight out of the Huntington Library. Yikes.

Wendy placed her tea down on the coffee table, careful to use a coaster. "How about something a little lighter?"

"Lighter," said Paige, considering. "In what way?"

"I was thinking, maybe — a romance novel." Paige's perfect, pert nose wrinkled in disgust, as if a bad smell suddenly had wafted through the room. I knew what was coming. Oprah didn't like romance novels either, so clearly this was not going to go over well with Paige.

"Oh, no. We can't read one of those books." I couldn't leave Wendy to fight this battle alone.

"What, you mean you don't want to read about a woman who might actually have sex and live to tell the tale?"

Everyone laughed. I could always be counted on for a little comic relief, even if I didn't do all the reading.

"What exactly do you mean, Eva?"

I warmed to my subject. "The last three novels we've read, Madame Bovary, The Awakening, and now Anna Karenina, all the women in these stories were punished because they had sex and enjoyed it. They either had sex outside their marriage or they took a lover, or they realized what was missing in their marriage and decided to go looking . . ." I paused and changed the subject in midsentence. "But that's not the point. I think that what Wendy is saying is that she'd like to read a novel where the main character might actually survive the experience."

"Yeah, that sounds like fun," said Frances.

"I don't know," said Paige slowly, and I had to give her credit for not going with a flat-out no. "I just don't see how these novels contribute anything really meaningful. Shouldn't we stick with the classics?"

"We need a break," Wendy said. "Or at least I do. Does anyone else feel this way?"

I raised my hand and glanced around. Ariel's hand was up in the air, along with my own and Frances's. The other four members of the group, including Paige, were not interested.

It was a tie. "Well," said Paige, picking up her tea and glancing brightly around the living room. "I was thinking about something by Sylvia Plath."

"Isn't she the poet who stuck her head in the oven?" Wendy said, and I groaned.

"Now, Wendy, suicide isn't all she writes about," Paige admonished her gently. She took a deep breath, and I could see that she was making an effort. "What did you have in mind?"

"I read this great novel by Rosamunde Pilcher over the holidays called Winter Solstice. The heroine was in her fifties, or maybe even her early sixties, and —"

"That doesn't sound like a romance novel," Paige commented.

"It's a relationship novel, but I really loved it and I would love to discuss it in this group."

"Does she die?" I asked.

"No," said Wendy.

"Punished in any way?"