“It was a little burn,” I defended. “A warning. If she’d had a can of mace, she would’ve used that. The cigarette was at hand, so to speak.”
“You intimated this happened at her workplace.”
“The radio station. Yeah.”
“Do you think her way of dealing with sexual harassment was better than going to her employers?”
I gave Dr. Dick a sharp look. “How do you want me to answer that?”
“Try giving it your true feelings.”
Funny man. Though he tried to hide it, I could hear the sarcasm beneath the quiet statement. Leaning forward, I said, “Here’s the thing: though I’m kind of appalled, since, hey, there’s enough violence out there already, I almost admire her. She’s cool and collected and fearless. I mean, truthfully, the guy who grabbed her ass? What is he? A masochist? If you meet CeeCee just one time, you have a pretty good idea what she’s about. And if you want to push her, you’re going to feel it. Like, you don’t piss off a three-hundred-pound bouncer at a fancy club. You just don’t do it. The guy’s a moron.”
“Have you met him?”
“Yes, actually. He moonlighted at this restaurant where we all hang out. In fact, CeeCee thinks he took the job just to get in her face. I think she’s right. But then he got his job back at the station, so he’s gone now.”
“What do you think she thinks of him?”
“Why ask me?”
“You seem to be struggling with this.”
“No.”
“They both work at the radio station?” I nodded. “How do you think that’s working out?”
“Terrible. She can’t stand him.” Something must have showed on my face because Dr. Dick’s brows lifted in expectation. I said heatedly, “Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to read CeeCee. Maybe he wanted a reaction. Maybe he wanted her to notice him. Any way around it, he’s seriously screwed-up.”
“So, no blame goes to CeeCee?”
“Do you want me to say it was wrong? Okay, it was wrong. She verbally warned him and he ignored her. If he thought it was an okay mating ritual, he was wrong.” My conscience twinged. What had CeeCee thought about it? “I don’t know why we’re talking about this. It’s CeeCee’s problem, not mine.”
“I just wanted your opinion.” He smiled.
“What?” I demanded.
“You gave it to me.”
He was clearly happy with me. No dissembling this time. Right to the bottom line. “I know, I’m disgustingly normal, right?”
The smile widened. “Have fun in Sedona,” he said, without even looking at the clock. The guy has a sixth sense about when a session is up. My eyes took in a last, lingering glance of him. Damn. The man was delicious, and I’m not even the kind who usually thinks in those kind of adjectives.
“Maybe you can suggest to your friend that secondhand smoke should be the extent of a cigarette’s harm to others.”
“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled with the free advice,” I said dryly.
It turned out CeeCee meant it when she said she wanted to accompany me to Sedona. I mentioned we could probably use another PA on the job, and she dropped everything to jump on board. Though the Holy Terror bitched mightily about the time it would take me to drive, I stuck to the plan and CeeCee and I took off early on a foggy Santa Monica morning after loading up the van with a mountain of camera equipment. The trunks of cameras, lenses, etc. weighed about forty pounds apiece and the van was stuffed to the gills with them. By the time we were heading toward the 10 east my arms ached from weariness—and we had eight and a half hours of driving ahead of us.
We made it to West Covina before CeeCee felt compelled to light up. I knew she was struggling not to smoke in the car because she knows it about asphyxiates me. I tried not to cough too much because I was glad for her company. Still, my eyes felt gritty, my arms dull, and I knew I was going to have to hit the ground running as soon as we got to Sedona.
We were traveling along in relative silence, desultorily bringing up thoughts as they occurred to us. I managed to tell her about my mother’s impending visit and my feelings about Sean and how I’d taken the van in order to keep him off the job, and she returned with comments about the traffic, the music on the radio, and the weather.
My cell phone sang merrily and I answered to Daphne. She was barely coherent.
“He dumped me!” she cried when she finally got her voice beyond sobbing gasps. “Leo! He got the part and then he dumped me!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.
“Leo?” CeeCee asked quietly, and I nodded as Daphne raged on about what a loser he was and how she was just a stupid, stupid, stupid idiot to have possibly
believed
that he could actually
care
about her. I offered words of solace—the clucking of a mother hen—and she suddenly had to get off as another call was coming in on her phone.
I hung up and said, “Huge Waste of Time.”
CeeCee half laughed. “You called that one.”
“So, what’s going on with you and work?”
CeeCee looked out the window, thinking over a response. After a long moment, she admitted, “I’ve fallen for a guy.”
This was so not what I’d expected that I did a classic double-take and nearly missed my turn off for our In-N-Out burger, one of the last in California, though there are a few in Arizona, I think. There was only a slight squeal of tires and a whole helluva lot of honking behind me at my last-minute turn to the off ramp.
“Not Cheese-Dick?”
“Give me a break.” She pulled out another cigarette and turned it end over end, tapping it against the pack on each rotation. “My boss.”
“Your
boss?
Gerald something?”
She regarded me curiously. “Did I tell you his name?”
“Yep.” I didn’t want to add that Jackson had already told me that his client, the station manager, CeeCee’s boss, was interested in her. I’d mistakenly believed she’d been interested in Cheese-Dick, but it had been Gerald all along. I should have been relieved, I guess, but it sounded like an even bigger, messier can of worms.
I waited for more information and as we headed into the In-N-Out, CeeCee said, “Okay, here it is ...” and proceeded to give me the complete story as I ordered and sat down to eat my protein burger.
CeeCee’s boss, Gerald Coopmoor, was in the throes of an ugly divorce with his soon-to-be ex, Pat. To hear Gerald tell it, Pat was a bitch
extraordinaire,
but CeeCee had met the woman and found her to be witty and decent. CeeCee had chalked Gerald up as a complete corporate loser bending over for the conglomerate bigwigs whenever they demanded. She silently cheered Pat’s decision for the divorce.
But then, one night, when the usual DJ called in sick, Gerald asked CeeCee if she could take over. Naturally, she jumped at the chance. And Gerald stayed and helped and played general dogsbody to CeeCee, and during the broadcast CeeCee managed to get bleeped less than a half a dozen times so it was a big win all the way around. Gerald was so proud of her that he took her out for a few drinks later. He made no moves on her and listened intently when she told him the full story about Cheese-Dick. Gerald had been against hiring him back, but had been overridden by one of the station’s investors—who just happened to be Cheese-Dick’s uncle. Nepotism at its worst. Upon hearing CeeCee’s side of the story, Gerald immediately planned to fire Cheese-Dick, but CeeCee waved that away.
“The truth is,” CeeCee said to me as we threw our burger wrappers in the trash and headed back to the van, “I didn’t actually mean to burn him with the cigarette.”
I stopped short. “I thought you purposely got him.”
“I turned around fast when he grabbed and was screaming in his face and I got him with the cigarette. It all happened at once. He thought I did it on purpose and I let him think it. Now, if I say I didn’t mean to, it’ll sound like an excuse.”
“Yeah, but, this way he thinks you assaulted him.”
“Let him think it. It keeps him in line. I’ve got bigger problems.”
“Oh?”
We climbed in the van and CeeCee continued. Over the last couple of weeks her time on the air had quadrupled, then quadrupled again. The evening-shift DJ was pissed as hell, as he was being put in elsewhere. But the numbers were up on CeeCee’s stint. Everyone was happy—except maybe the previous evening-shift DJ and Cheese-Dick, who seemed to be smoldering over CeeCee’s sudden good fortune.
“Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked. “You should really tell someone what really happened.”
“I’d rather have him screw up on the job so Gerald can fire him without all the ‘he said, she said’ stuff.” She lit another cigarette, inhaled, then released a slow, blue stream of smoke. “Gerald and I have started making a habit of staying late. The station goes to tape after midnight and there are a lot of hours till six A.M. when Koonst, the morning DJ, comes on. We’ve been having sex.”
“You and Gerald.”
“Well, it wasn’t Koonst. He’s into the coffee boy. Your Mr. Mane.”
“Oh.”
“Gerald’s still not completely divorced.”
“But he will be soon, right?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Uh-oh. You don’t believe him.”
CeeCee smoked silently for a little while. “I want to believe everything he says. Every word. I like to watch him talk. I like the way his teeth look. He has these stubby brown eyelashes but they’re thick. I look at them and want to chew on them.”
I couldn’t recall ever wanting to chew anyone’s eyelashes. “Really.”
“We’ve been doing it on the floor, the chairs. Desks.” She shrugged. “It’s like animalistic. I’ve howled.”
“Howled?”
“Like I’m screaming from inside. It’s so damn good.” She stubbed out the cigarette on the pack in vicious little jabs. “Scares the shit outta me. And I don’t want Pat to find out. She’s seeing another guy, so it shouldn’t matter. But it kinda does.”
“I’m more concerned that this is all happening at the station,” I said. “You love that job. And seeing the boss ... let’s face it. The death knell.”
“I came on this trip to get some perspective, y’know? Told Gerald I needed a few days. I need more than that. I need to date some guys on this trip. Maybe sleep with ’em. It pissed me off that Daphne’s had more men than I have. I’m too conservative.”
I managed to keep a straight face. Just. And it wasn’t like she didn’t have a point when it came to sex. I surreptitiously studied her profile as I drove. CeeCee was extraordinarily attractive. Her pink tips were fading and her hair brushed her shoulders, not white-hot-blonde now, but more of an ashy color. With her pert nose, blue eyes with long-lashes (which I had no desire to chew on), and a stubborn chin, she could turn heads. Of course, the army fatigues, chains, and boots might turn off some, but sometimes they, too, worked as an aphrodisiac.
“Sleep away,” I said. “Just stay away from the director and crew. It’s an incestuous little group. I slept with an actor once. ONCE. Only because I really liked him. But it nearly ruined everything.”
“Lang?”
I made the sign of the cross though I’m really not religious. “My first and last actor. He had his moments, though.”
“Well, how about a Sedona local,” CeeCee suggested. “There must be some bars around. I could probably pick up a one-nighter.”
“You really want this? I mean, even with the lash-chewing and all?”
“That’s exactly why,” she stated emphatically. “I hate being in love. I want to be in lust.”
“Sounds like you got that one covered.”
“You know what I mean.”
Her logic was, as ever, unique to CeeCee. She was taking fear of commitment to nuclear levels. Then I had a sudden thought. For a moment I kept it to myself. Carefully, I said, “Hairy Larry lives in Phoenix.”
“An Ex-File?” CeeCee perked up. “And Phoenix is how far from Sedona?”
“Hour and a half?”
“This is the guy who burned off his chest hair?”
“That would be him.”
“Interesting ...”
We pulled into the Ramada about ten o’ clock. Both of us got out and stretched. Red Rock towered over us to our right, though its beauty was disguised by the dark. I’ve been to Sedona a number of times. It’s an artist’s haven and the scenery is awe-inspiring, even to someone as unaware as myself. However, I am not in love, love, love with the place, which seems to be the prevailing feeling. Tourists arrive, swoon, and plunk down money on yet-to-be-built condos. Retirees flock to the area. Hikers, climbers, and outdoorspeople of all types hyperventilate just by looking. I know there’s basically something wrong with me because I just don’t get it. Give me the ocean and a Ketel One vodka martini. Spear the olive with a parasol for an added froufou factor. Now that’s Eden.
CeeCee said, “The air feels so clear here.”
I stared at her through the gloom. Like she could tell? As much as she smoked? Was she some closet nature girl? I grunted an acquiescence and we stepped into reception and checked in.