I heard steps in the hall, and some loose, non-English muttering between a man and woman, which alarmed me. But then I heard a broom on the hardwood. The staff. They probably lived in a house out back and were like furniture to him.
My bag was on the floor. The second and last time we’d fucked, I went downstairs for it because he ran out of condoms. I’d rooted in the pockets and found a little latex sack a month from its expiration date.
I had to grab that, and my clothes, which were probably still on the porch. That would be tricky. It was broad daylight, and I couldn’t leave the room naked with the cleaning staff around. Or maybe I could. Who knew how people with money lived?
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, but Jonathan’s phone buzzed. When I looked at him, his eyes were open.
“You gonna get that?” I asked.
“No.”
“Your cleaning staff’s been knocking around.”
The phone stopped buzzing. Jonathan stretched as if two hours of sleep had left him refreshed. “I have to go get your clothes. You don’t want to flash Maria, or she’ll start sprinkling holy water all over the place. Makes a mess.”
He kissed me and swung his legs over the side of the bed. I sat up, aching everywhere. I was so sore I could barely sit straight. Jonathan looked down at something and didn’t move.
“What?” I said.
“I don’t want you to think I’m prying or that I was looking in your things.”
“Okay, I won’t think that.”
He picked my bag up off the floor. It was open, and Kevin’s flyer for the Solar Eclipse show stuck out. I showed him the name list. I knew the only name he would see was Jessica’s, so I pointed out Kevin’s.
“Kevin Wainwright,” he said. “The guy with the dick.”
“He came to Frontage last night.”
“And invited you to a show for tonight? Late notice, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “It’s Kevin. He thinks courtesy is for non-creatives.”
“Like me.”
“You’re plenty creative.” I slapped his arm with the brochure. “With your body.”
“You going?” he asked.
“I don’t know. You?”
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I have to. It’s unbecoming if I don’t. The divorce looks anything but amicable, and people are watching.”
“What kind of people?”
“She got custody of most of our friends. I do business with some of them. Others have just been in the same circles too long.”
“Which sister you taking?”
“Deirdre, I think. Are you going to pretend you don’t know me?” His phone buzzed again.
I slid off the bed. “We’ll see if I even go.”
I went into the bathroom, a huge white room with a separate shower and tub. Every corner was clean, as if little gremlins lived under the sink and scrubbed the place while he flattened women on the bed.
I had no idea if I was going to L.A. Mod. It was a black tie thing, and I didn’t have anything to wear. And there was the Kevin issue. Jonathan would be there with Deirdre, who had given me dagger eyes just the night before. If I were being honest with myself, I would admit I was just making excuses. I didn’t want to be in Jonathan and Kevin’s line of sight at the same time. I couldn’t stand any unmanageable drama just as my career was rousing itself.
I heard Jonathan through the door, mumbling. Not a business call. Then it went quiet. I peeked into the bedroom. He was gone, but my dress was laid out on the chair. I put it on and fished my underwear and shoes out from under the bed.
I went downstairs. Though I’d been to Jonathan’s before, I hadn’t paid attention to what he had on the walls.
One couldn’t go through music school without an immersion in all the arts, and Kevin had continued my education with his passion for all things visual. So once I was fully clothed and paying attention, I recognized a Kandinsky in Jonathan’s living room. I saw the Holbein over the mantle and the Mondrian studies in geometry in the corner. I didn’t linger though, because I heard him in the kitchen. I didn’t want him to think I was prying.
I followed his voice to the kitchen, realizing he wasn’t speaking English, Spanish, or Korean. A middle-aged, dark-skinned woman with Asian features and wearing a cleaning smock smiled at me.
“Do you drink coffee?” Jonathan asked when I walked in.
“Not really.” I leaned on the counter. “I like it with milk, and dairy’s not good for my voice. So, let me guess. The lady you’re talking to is Philippino?”
“Good call.”
“I do live in Los Angeles.” I smirked. “You speak, what is it called?”
“It’s called Tagalog, and yes—”
“You live in Los Angeles.”
He smiled. “Ally Mira washed your dress.”
“That was very kind.”
“She is. So, seriously, are you going to this thing tonight?”
“Kevin dragged me to a thousand art shows when we were together, and I’m just not into another one.”
“That was Teresa on the phone,” he said. “She says you met Deirdre last night?”
“Briefly. Very tall. Big curly red hair.”
“She got alcohol poisoning.”
“That’s terrible.”
“That’s Deirdre. Theresa was watching her, and she didn’t know Deirdre had a flask. So Theresa’s counting drinks and Deirdre’s off to the bathroom twelve times. Do the math on that.” He came toward me. “They have her on a B vitamin IV drip, and she’s already cursing the nurses.” He put his thumb on my cheek, and I raised my face to kiss him. “You sure you’re not going?” he said. “I can give you a lift.”
“That would be like us going together.”
“Would that make you uncomfortable?”
“No.” I put my hands on his chest to caress him through his T-shirt. “I think it might make
you
uncomfortable.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist. “Tell me more about me.”
“You take your sisters out, and you meet your women in private. You said you and your wife, sorry, ex-wife, still hang around the same circles. You don’t want her to see you with an actual woman. And don’t make a crack about your sisters being women.”
He looked up for a second, and I got a full view of the muscles and veins in his neck. I was right, or at least close.
“I can go alone,” he said, looking at me. “I’m a big boy. But I don’t want to. So if you’re going, this non-creative wants to go with you, courtesy be damned.”
The offer was compelling. I hadn’t planned on going because I didn’t want to stand in a corner and watch Kevin work the room. I didn’t want to make small talk with his friends, and I didn’t want to get the death-eye from whatever little hipster groupie was chasing him. Jonathan would be a nice buffer.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll let your handsome ass drag me to a black tie thing at L.A. Mod. But you’ll owe me.”
“What exactly will I owe you?”
“You pick.” I stepped away. The call Gabby and I had to make had started worrying the back of my mind. “Whatever it’s worth to you. If it makes me scream and yell your name, even better.” I kissed him quickly. “I have to go.”
I walked toward the doorway, but I didn’t get past it before I heard him say, “What are you wearing?”
I stopped and turned. “Why?”
“Because you’re a beautiful woman, and what you wear is important.”
“If I’m going to embarrass you, I can just stay home.”
He stepped forward and grabbed me around the waist. “Jessica makes art because she has so much money she’s bored and because she has the sharpest eye I’ve ever known. If she’s going to see me with you, she’s not going to see you wearing Target.”
I looked him in the eyes. “Really, Jonathan? You never seemed like the catty type.”
“
I
also want to see you in something better. I’m sorry. Come on. Go to Barney’s and talk to Lorraine. She’ll fix you up and bill me.”
“Now I’m the one who’s really uncomfortable.”
“Please? Just go. And if you spend less than three thousand dollars, I’m spanking you and sending you back to Wilshire Boulevard.”
“I’ll come in
just
under three large then. And not because I have any intention of returning to that side of Wilshire.”
CHAPTER 9
I stood under the shower head with my hands on the wall, letting the water scald my back. My head drooped, and my hair fell in front of me. I couldn’t move without aching, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the insides of my thighs through the steam.
At first I’d thought they were dirty. When I touched them and felt a sharp pain, I knew they weren’t dirty. They were bruised.
I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror. My ass, the area just below it, and between my legs were black and blue. It hurt to move. My pussy was so sore, it had hurt to clean myself. I heard a soft tap at the door, and Gabby asked, “Mon? Is that you?”
“Yeah. You need to pee?”
“Yeah.” She started to open the door. Gabby and I saw each other naked and stood in the same room to pee all the time, but I couldn’t let her see me that way. I looked as if a shark had tried to bite me in half. I grabbed the door handle and pulled it closed. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine, I just….” I had no excuse. “Give me a minute.”
I wiggled into a tee and jeans I pulled from the hamper, cringing from torn muscle and broken blood vessels. I snapped the door open. Judging from her clean clothes and brushed hair, she’d been up a while.
“Where did you go last night?” she asked.
“I saw Jonathan.” I brushed my wet hair while she peed.
“Oh, really. Well? How was it?”
“He knows how to fuck, that’s for sure.”
“Better than Kevin?”
“It’s the difference between a man and a boy.” I slid my toothbrush out of the cup and got to the point. “I figure we should call WDE at about ten-thirty. Those guys don’t get in until ten, and I want to give him a chance to get his jacket off and bang his secretary, but I want to catch him before he goes into a meeting.”
“I’m nervous. Are you nervous?”
“Yeah. Actually, I am.” I lathered up my toothbrush, and Gabby leaned toward the mirror, picking some nonexistent crud from the corner of her eye. “But you know how it is,” I continued. “You get all nervous for a call, and you make it and they’re not available. Then they call you back when you’re going eighty on the 101.”
“Since when can you go eighty on the 101? Give me a break.” She held up a tube of aloe moisturizer I got from the farmer’s market. “Can I try this?”
“Go ahead,” I said, brushing my teeth. After I spit, I said, “I want to be clear we come as a set. You and me. Okay?”
“Why?” She seemed unfazed by my suggestion.
“Suppose he can’t get a keyboardist for some band, and then you’re off touring, and what am I supposed to do?” I pulled my hair into strands so I could braid it.
“We should give ourselves a name.” Gabby pushed me onto the toilet. I winced, but she wasn’t looking. God, sitting was going to be torture today, and maybe tomorrow.
Gabby had braid mojo. Our first year of Colburn, we made ninety percent of our friends because she could braid like a magician. She picked up the strands I’d started. I turned my head so she wouldn’t see me grimace at the pain in my behind.
“I really liked Spoken Not Stirred,” I said. “But Vinny reps them.”
“That wasn’t the last cool name we have in us,” Gabby said.
“I guess it depends on what he wants out of us. Am I recording my own stuff? But how could he want that? He doesn’t even know if I can write a freaking song.” I gestured with my hands and saw the bruising around my wrists. Fuck. I slipped them between my legs, wishing I’d worn long sleeves.
“You can, Mon. Your songs are amazing.”
I let her ministrations tickle my scalp. “What I’m saying is, if it’s my stuff, then that’s one name, but we’d need a whole band. If it’s just you and me, that’s a totally different sound. Which is fine, but even then, are we writing new material? Or are we doing Irving Berlin?”
“He might not even know what he wants.” She concentrated on the strands, looping one around the other, tugging and pulling, straightening and separating the lengths with a black comb.
“He knows,” I said. “Those sharks don’t start swimming around unless they’ve smelled blood. Some label is looking for a specific something he thinks we can do. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come out. Trust me.”
She pulled my hair off my neck. “Whoa, Monica.”
“What?”
“Hickey City back here.”
I stood and looked in the mirror. Gabby held up a handheld mirror so I could see the trail of bruises at the back of my neck.
“Fuck,” I said. “Can you braid it to cover it?” I sat on the toilet again and Gabby undid her work. My ass, my wrists, and now my back. If it hadn’t felt so good, it would have been assault.
“Sure, but what’s the diff?” Gabby asked. “It’s a phone call.”
“I’m going to the Eclipse opening at L.A. Mod tonight.”
“Fancy. Did Jonathan invite you?” Gabby moved my hair around in a way that soothed me, and I wanted to purr like a kitten.
“No, Kevin did. But Jonathan is taking me.”
“Kevin?”
“This is such a long story.”
“Are you wearing your little black mini with the bow on the shoulder?”
God, no. Even in my mind, that thing looked cheap and worn. Jonathan had been right, despite my hurt feelings. I had a closet full of black and nothing nice to wear to a black tie function.
“How about this? It’s almost nine. You go take your meds. Come back in here and braid while I tell you everything about last night without the dirty parts. Then, at ten-thirty, we make a call on the speakerphone in the kitchen.”
“Deal.”
CHAPTER 10
Barney’s New York was on the best part of Wilshire, close to Rodeo Drive and near all the big agencies. WDE was half a block away, in its own slick black phallus of a building.
Jonathan had given my name to an apparently very difficult-to-get personal shopper. She called me, and we made an appointment.
A valet drove my shitty Honda behind a Bugatti and a Jaguar and treated me like a princess when, as Lorraine instructed, I asked for the elevator that went to the fifth floor. I was handed off to a guy in a burgundy jacket who led me right down the hall, then right again, and pressed the button for me as if I was too good to lift my arm.