Star Time (46 page)

She relented only slightly. "While you two are going over the proposal, I'll draw up a quick letter agreement to acknowledge that you're partners."

Danny smiled.
"Makes a lot of sense."

He read the proposal closely and asked for several major changes. Danny rarely read all the way through a script, but proposals were the heart of the sale and short. And Danny had a showman's flair that made for appealing proposals.

"How long will it take you to redo it?" Danny asked.

"A couple of days at least."

"I'll come back Monday night, about the same time, to pick it up."

"Just sign this before you leave," Lily said, and handed him the short agreement she had drawn up.

He folded it and thrust it into his inside jacket pocket. "I'll have my lawyer look at it."

"All it says is you two are full partners as producers and Biff is also the writer."

"Hey, I don't send coupons in without having my lawyer read them first."

Lily exchanged a glance with Biff before she spoke again. "Just bring the signed contract back with you on Monday night. No contract, no proposal."

"No problem." Danny smiled accommodatingly.

Downstairs in the vestibule, Danny encountered a tall black prostitute who had stopped to check her mailbox. She wore spike heels, and her long legs were clothed in black stockings held up by a white garter belt over lace-trimmed white panties. Danny stopped for a second look.

"Those are fabulous panties," he exclaimed.
"Really gorgeous."

She winked. "For fifty bucks we can go back up to my
place,
and I'll take '
em
off so you can get a better look."

"I'm in a hurry. I'll give you hundred for them right here."

The woman burst out laughing.

"What's so fucking funny?" Danny asserted defensively.

"We've got a lot in common."

She quickly stripped off the panties. A large penis popped into view.

"How about we go back to my apartment," the transvestite asked seductively, "blow a little stuff, try on some dresses, and get it on?"

A guy! A fucking black queen was propositioning him. He was revolted. But he had been having trouble getting coke lately. A guy needed a little something to help him relax after a hard day, but Sally watched him like a hawk. She would not allow the stuff in the house and, with her history, would probably leave him if she knew he was still using it.

"You got some stuff on you?" Danny inquired.

The black formed his lips into a kiss. "That
ain't
all I got, sugar."

"Just the coke.
How much you got?"

The transvestite pouted, but drew a second pair of panties from his handbag and slipped them on, carefully tucking his penis back between his legs into a “
mangina
.” The little white guy was kind of cute, he mused, except for that awful toupee. The gold watch and ring look as if they weigh a ton, so he must be loaded. It would have been great to try on clothes together and make a night's earnings without having to get over to Sunset and hustle.
But what the hell?
Two hundred was a great start on the night. He drew a clear envelope from a hidden pocket in his bolero vest.

"That'll be another hundred."

Danny nodded. He pulled out his cash and peeled off two bills. The black man gaped at the roll of cash.

"You sure I
ain't
got
nothing
else I could sell you? I got gorgeous bras, honey, and a camisole to die for."

Danny stuffed the lace panties and the envelope into his jacket pocket and rushed from the building.

"This is insane," Chris said worriedly to Greg. "I'm scared stiff."

She glanced to her left, where their spouses stood anxiously watching them.

"It will be easy," Greg said soothingly. "Trust me."

He leaned close to her and turned on the ignition. "You know how to drive a stick shift. That's all it is. Just be very gentle with the gas pedal."

They were sitting in the red Lamborghini on the long, winding driveway leading out of the estate. Chris lowered her foot onto the gas pedal and raised the clutch. The wedge-shaped vehicle shot forward. Her eyes widened in synchronization with her smile as the car raced past spider-armed winter trees. She turned the steering wheel slightly at the exit. The car whipped into a ninety-degree turn and rocketed down the country road.

A short time later, seeing that they were approaching a village and a stoplight, she slowed the car to a halt.

"My God, that was incredible!" she exclaimed.

"The exhilaration of acceleration."

"What a feeling!
This car!"

"It was a gift from Diane."

"For your birthday."

"No, just a gift."

"Oh."

Chris stared straight ahead. The light turned green, but she did not start moving.
"I didn't really believe people lived like you two do. When we landed in the helicopter, I thought we were coming down at a prep school or a college because the buildings were so huge. Those people who came running, I thought they were angry we'd landed on their property. I couldn't believe they all worked for you."

"You figured we’d be spending the weekend at a little country hideaway. That’s not Diane’s style."

"Until now, until this"—she gestured at the car enveloping them—"I never really understood what it was you had left me for."

"For God's sake, Chris, just promise me you won't forgive me."

"I sound like I'm about to,
don't
I?"

He nodded.

“Worst of all,” she told him sadly, “I like Diane. I had pictured some bony, useless creature whose days are taken up shopping for the dresses she'll wear at night."

"Some of it is."

"But that's only the smallest part of her. She's interesting and committed. She can be funny and she's—"

"When you left me, I thought you were a bastard who sold himself cheap to a . . . what? I guess to
a woman who couldn't get a man any other way."

"And now you don't think I did."

Very slowly, as if the moving parts of long-unused machinery were cracking apart rust that had fused them, she began to move her head from side to side. "No, not anymore, I don't."

"Listen to me. I sold myself as surely as if I were up for auction. I had a choice.
To grab for all of this.
Or to stick with love.
It was as cold and logical a decision as I've ever made. I did it because I was sure in the end it would make me happier."

"God, I can see why."

"But when I was with you in Los Angeles, everything inside me that isn't cold and logical showed me I had been living a lie. I was happier in that bed with you than I've been for all the nights with Diane combined. You and I are kidding ourselves to think a little self-control can stop all the feelings pouring out of us. When you're near me, those feelings overwhelm me. I’m hungry for you. And I know you are for me."

Chris's head slowly sank onto her chest, her sincerity struggling with her values.

"I don't want to feel this way," she finally said in a small, plaintive voice. She sought Greg's eyes.
" My
husband loves me. And I love him—I really do. He's kind and principled, and he cares about me and worries about me. He gave me back happiness."

"That I took away."

"I owe him so much. I don't
want
all the turmoil that boils up in me when I look at you and makes me forget that. I hate myself for it. Do you understand?"

He nodded. "Diane trusts me. She needs me. And she's given me so much. Everything I hoped for when I married her."

He paused to consider. "This job I finally have . . . if the slightest whisper of an affair reaches her or my father-in-law, I'll lose it—and everything else I gave up a decade of my life for. You could lose your job, too. They'd have to pay you, but they could keep you off the air for the whole ten years of your contract. That would be like death for us."

Chris's gaze swung back to the road. "I was foolish to agree to come up here this weekend."

"It was my fault for inviting you."

"We have to end it, right? As hard as it is, it can't go on."

He nodded. "It's over."

After several seconds he reminded her, "We'd better get back. Ken will want a chance to get behind the wheel."

Chris made a U-turn and slowly drove back to where her husband and Diane were patiently awaiting them.

"I want us to leave," Chris told Ken that afternoon after they returned to their room from the tennis court roofed by a bubble for the winter.

Ken and Greg had hit the ball awhile. Greg was a far better player, so a match made no sense. Chris and Diane had chatted on the sidelines, which to Chris seemed hypocritical and made even less sense.

"But I thought we were all having a wonderful time," replied Ken.

Chris was sitting at the dressing table. He leaned over and kissed her cheek reassuringly.

"You're just a little intimidated."

"I am," she agreed, guilt churning other emotions. "I'm out of place here."

"They're probably just as impressed with us. We aren't unimportant people."

She perceived in his voice his pride at having risen to a prominence that could attract the friendship of people who lived like this.

"We can't be rude," he added. "We agreed to spend the weekend. They'd be offended if we suddenly picked up and left."

Chris was silent.

"You know that's true," he pressed her.

Chris nodded with resignation. She would stick it out. This was the penance for her transgression in Los Angeles.

At breakfast Diane invited her guests to attend church with her.

"Chris doesn't go in much for organized religion," Ken apologized for his wife. "But I'd like that very much."

"Ken's the virtuous one in our family, I'm afraid," Chris affirmed. Her journalist father had raised her as a practicing skeptic.

"Well, you can stay here and keep Greg company," Diane replied brightly. "I usually have to swear he'll witness a miracle to convince him to go."

Diane was only a sporadic churchgoer. Greg assumed she was attending today because her guest, New York's junior senator, would impress her friends at the service even without his wife.

"I'll be fine alone," Greg said, shifting to Chris. "You don't have to stay on my account."

She pondered for what seemed a long while before she shook her head. "I'll keep you company."

Greg and Chris stood at the picture window waving good-bye to the
SUV
as it pulled out of the driveway. He stepped back into a corner of the room and drew her to him.

"Any luck so far in convincing yourself that it's over?"

"No.
You?"

"I didn't sleep much last night."

"I thought I was the only one. I wanted you so badly."

"I want you now." He cradled her face in both his hands and kissed her deeply. "The wonderful thing about my wife's minister is how long-winded he can be. Let's go down to the boathouse. We can be alone there."

"Greg, think of the consequences."

"There don't have to be any if we're careful."

"There are always consequences."

"I don't want to lose you again."

"And you don't want to lose what you have. You can't have everything. It never works like that. Let's stop now, before it's too late to turn back."

"I've sacrificed all my life, always giving up one thing to get another. I won't do it anymore."

Chris pulled away, but her hands still gripped Greg’s waist. "And you expect us to hide and live a lie forever?"

"Only till the end of the year, when my contract becomes ironclad at the network. I thought about it all night. Once I put the network into profits, Barnett won't be able to do a thing to me. I'll be in full control and can protect you, too."

"And if it doesn't become profitable?"

"Then we'll still have each other. But that won't happen. I'll turn the network around if I have to do it with my bare hands. We just have to hide what we feel for each other until the end of the year."

She emitted a sharp sigh.
"Funny how we always end up hiding, one way or another.
That eats me up. But you could promise me nothing and my body wouldn't care. It just wants you."

"I love you, Chris. I always will."

Her hands moved compulsively down his flanks. "Love right now seems almost beside the point."