“Or how?” Lucky prompted from my other side. “Personally, I think this whole tradition sucks. Does it really foster brotherhood for us to stand up and recount our sexual experiences in front of one another?”

“Or,” said Big Demon, “in some cases, lack thereof? Is that your real worry here, Lucky?”

She shot a forkful of mashed potatoes at the jock, and, I’m proud to report, rather impressed him with her aim. “What I’m saying is, I wish we could get past all this adolescent junk and on to the real mysteries.”

“What do you mean?” Frodo asked. “Like, ‘Ten Little Diggers’ or other Murder She Wrote stuff?”

“Dude,” said Soze, “Ten Little Indians was Agatha Christie.”

“Dudes,” Lucky mocked, “I mean mysteries. Divine revelation beyond human understanding? The secret rites of an organization only open to initiates?”

Puck shook his head, leaned over, and tugged on Lucky’s endless and ever-present braid. “You’re starting to sound like our girl ’boo here.”

Ah yes, ridicule the resident conspiracy theorist. That’ll get you laid, Puck. Still, I couldn’t help but thrill at his casual “our girl.”

Poe looked up from the corner, where he was partaking of his meal at a decent distance from our club, a physical reminder of his patriarch status. “You’re enjoying the mysteries, Lucky,” he grumbled, slicing his asparagus into perfectly bite-sized chunks. “Next week you’ll enjoy the mystery of chateaubriand.”

I swallowed a bite of Cornish hen and rolled my eyes. Poe had been inviting himself to our mealtimes a little too often for my appetite, and his M.O. was always the same. Come in, grub food, sit apart from the rest of us, and channel Oscar the Grouch. Okay, so there was a standing invite for patriarchs to share in the food they helped provide through their donations. Did that mean he had to crash every one of our dinners? There should be some kind of limit for patriarchs who happened to live in town. Rumor had it Poe had spent his graduate summer cutting grass or something. I’m sure that had to have paid better than a government internship—you’d think the kid could afford some groceries. (Though, considering the cooking of most recent grads I knew, eating Hale’s food might be reason enough to turn townie.)

Graverobber tapped his silver against his water glass and an audible groan sounded around the table. “Before we get to the main event of the evening,” he said with a nod toward me, “I’d like to once again broach the topic of—”

Thorndike cleared her throat. “As Uncle Tony for the evening, I’d like to once again remind the club that this particular topic is tabled tonight.” Under her breath, she added, “Just one whine-free meeting is all I need to die happy.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Juno said. “I’m sure you have a variety of other pet issues to shove down our throats before you even begin to get happy.”

The other Diggirls began to bare their teeth at our newest compatriot. Suffice it to say, Juno (a.k.a. Mara) had not endeared herself to the other girls in her weeks of membership. This time, I didn’t chalk it up to personality differences. She had managed to piss off each of us. I will say this for her: She was an equal opportunity firebrand. She corrected my grammar, questioned the authenticity of Lil’ Demon’s breasts, called Angel bourgeois, told Lucky that Dvorak was a scam, and suggested to Thorndike that Brown v. Board of Education had been a bad decision.

We all just loved her.

“Look, we can table it as much as you like, but that doesn’t make the facts go away,” Graverobber said. “We’re hemorrhaging patriarchal support left and right, and the donations this year have been way down.”

Thorndike twirled her finger in the air. “Woo-hoo. As long as the Tobias Trust is still in the eight figures, I’m not ready to worry about funds.” She pointed at the feast spread before us. “Hale’s not going to have to switch over to lentils and cabbage any time soon.”

“Frankly, I find your grasp of the financial details leave something to be desired,” said Juno. “Much of our prestige is derived from our wealth. If we lose that—”

“Right,” I said. “If we lose some of our big secret wealth we can’t tell anyone about anyway? Please.”

Part of me wanted to think if we gave Juno some time, she’d grow on us. It hadn’t taken the rest of us that long to bond, but then again, we’d become fast friends under extreme circumstances. Were we simply being too cliquish for her? Was her prickly nature due in part to a perception that the rest of the Diggirls were already a closed group, and if she couldn’t join us, she’d try to beat us? If so, aligning herself with the biggest misogynist in the club was a good step along that path.

“Besides,” I continued, “most barbarians already think we’ve got twice the money we do, and about ten times the power. We could be bankrupt and they’d still say we owned half the world.”

“I agree with Bugaboo on that point,” said Soze. “I don’t think our money situation is an issue at present. I myself was surprised to learn its true value at the initiation, but, like Thorndike, I don’t think we’re about to go broke. What concerns me,” he said, “is our perceived influence if we continue to alienate the patriarchs. How are we supposed to groom next year’s taps when word on the street is that the Diggers can’t get their own alums to give them internships? Don’t mistake me, I am fully committed to our Order, but I worry for next year’s tap class.”

“I had a patriarch internship,” I argued.

“Yeah, a terrific little patched-up, last-minute affair,” came the voice of Poe from the corner. He scowled at me. “Everything worked out just grand for you. But how many of the rest of us were screwed?”

I looked around at the show of hands and ducked my head in guilt.

But Angel lifted her chin. “I lost my job because of my father. He could say it was a patriarch trick, but the old man and I would have had it out either way. And there are six women sitting in this room who would have been out a lot more if we’d given in to their demands last spring. Are we paying a price? Yes. But it was worth it. Didn’t we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are many more patriarchs who support this step than condemn it?”

“Yes,” said Poe, “but are they the ones coughing up the big bucks?”

“Or handing out entry-level positions at CAA?” Frodo added.

“I think we’ve been through a trying time,” Soze said, ever the politician. “And we need to work a little bit to get back in good graces with our base. At the risk of being crucified for actually expressing this opinion, there is something to be said for the idea that maybe the patriarchs who voted to let the change go through might not have been people who were all that committed to the society to begin with.”

“Much as I hate to admit it,” said Lil’ Demon, “Soze may be right. A lot of people picked up that Maxim spread I did, but they weren’t the ones buying my CDs or going to my movies. My true fans hated that I was sullying my image. Maybe the patriarchs who didn’t care if there were women in Rose & Grave also didn’t give a shit whether it ruined us or not.” She shrugged. “Not that I think it’s ruining us.”

Graverobber snorted. Of course. “If we have to keep pussyfooting around the topic, we’re never going to get anywhere. Of course it’s ruined. We’ve lost one tap already. If things don’t start turning around in here, I might start thinking he had the right idea.”

For a moment, we all gaped at him, even Poe. “You wouldn’t,” he whispered from his corner. “Your oath.”

“Oh, please, like we haven’t had attrition before?”

“Not for decades.” The law student’s face was stricken, reflecting all our shock. “Maybe even for a century.”

Thorndike cleared her throat. “No one’s making any hasty decisions they’ll live to regret. We know the issue is out there; we’ve been arguing about it since school started. And we will figure out a way to fix it. No quitting, okay?”