A Tale of Friends, Lovers and Cheatin’ Ways

How different are my parents’ two daughters? Consider a recent shopping trip:

By day’s end, my sister’s shopping bags were filled with clothes representing the brighter, bolder colors of a box of Crayola crayons--passion pinks, yelling yellows and one reddish color best described as scorching, blinding sun. My bags, on the other hand, contained garments that any widow would be proud to call her own. The shades of black ranged from midnight black to 1-in-the-a.m. black.

Later, over dinner (my sister ordered the fish; I had the cow), I asked what she thought of “Cheaters” (Dutton, 362 pages, $24.95), Eric Jerome Dickey’s fourth novel. Among the fastest readers I know, she had started and finished the book in three days; it had taken me nearly two weeks.

“I liked it,” she said. “You?”

“Me too.”

Houston, we have agreement.

As the title suggests, this is a book about dawgs. Not dogs, but d-a-w-g-s. Cheatin’, lyin’, no good, no-’count, dirty lowdown mendawgs and womendawgs. These dawgs don’t just cheat on their spouses and lovers. Dickey explores the art of cheating: how we cheat on our friends, our family, ourselves. How we cheat ourselves into and out of relationships, good and bad. How we do this cheating all for the sake of stuff that--in the beginning, middle and end--just ain’t worth it.

“Cheaters” centers around the lives of best friends Stephan, Jake and Darnell, and equally best friends Chante, Karen and Tammy. They live and work (and cheat) in the L.A. area.

Dickey, whose other books include “Milk in My Coffee” and has been called (unfairly) “a male Terry McMillan” (he’s better), does a first-rate job of character development. Yes, my sister and I would have appreciated knowing a little more about Karen’s background. But then, we just would have despised her all the more.

“But who did you hate more?” my sister asked over dinner. “Karen or Dawn?”

Oooohhhh, Dawn, major dawgette and wife of Darnell, lawyer-aspiring author, seemingly vertebraless.

“Did you hate her or what?”

“Yup. I can’t believe Darnell married her.”

“Oh, I know plenty of women like Dawn.”

“You get the man to the altar and you get the house in the ‘burbs and all you care about is that you gotch you a huzz-bin.”

“But that hussydawg Karen was a close second.”

“Oh, please. Don’t get me started on that woman.”

I couldn’t believe we were talking about these folks like we knew them, but of course with Dickey, that’s how it is. You can’t read “Cheaters” without becoming an active participant. You’ll easily find yourself turning a page, shaking your head and tsk-tsking, “Is Jake a snake or what?”

But not everyone is a dawg. The book has its heroes. We loved Chante. We loved Tammy. We came to love Stephan. We also loved some of the plot twists. In several instances, we thought the story was going one way but went a completely different way that was just as good, and in some cases better.

Local readers will be right at home with references to Mervyn’s, Pomona, 24 Hour Fitness, In-N-Out Burger and the 57/210/10 freeway interchange. Dickey does get a tad carried away with freeway references. I didn’t mind because it added to the local color, but I did wonder if outsiders will care that you take the Santa Monica Freeway to the San Diego Freeway to the Harbor Freeway to the Freeway Freeway. It didn’t bother my sister, a New Yorker.

The best local reference, though, comes at the end of the book. Who would have thought that LAX could make two people so happy.

“Was that not great or what?” I asked.

“It was,” my sister agreed.