The similarity made the sex even hotter. They’d have a debate about the papacy, Zack’s handsome face growing indignant as Mel argued for female priests and popes, then softening as he reached to undo the buttons on her shirt, lift her DVF wrap dress (now two sizes smaller) over her head, before flipping her over and yanking her underwear down in a single fluid motion.
For the first time in her life, Mel was acting first, thinking second. Leading with her body, allowing her mind to take a break, to simply come along for the ride. Living in a way she’d once believed applied only to the most superficial, self-centered sort of people. To people who lived in California.
Except that nothing about being with Zack felt superficial.
They were becoming their Version Two selves. Together.
He’s mine, Mel thought, as tourists gaped at Zack’s chiseled, shirtless torso beside the pool at the Hotel Shangri-La. All mine. She reveled in the thought of the women at Color Theory, all so much thinner and younger and prettier; and Mel, the winner. How many times had she given Sloane and the soccer girls the speech about good sportsmanship, about not gloating after a win, not celebrating too much? And here Mel was, doing a victory dance every other day at a different hotel. Showing off her spoils. His abs. That ass. Those eyes. Every single part of him was, dare she say it, perfect. And not in an awww, what a guy, Adam kind of way.
Zack was perfect in a someone, catch me before I swoon kind of way.
They had sex at the Mountain Mermaid up in Topanga Canyon. Zack had rented that one—a room called The Lover’s Nest with a view of the canyon, and a four-poster bed on the patio. We can you-know-what under the stars! Zack had texted her, like a virginal teenager (you-know-what) scoring an empty house on prom night. And so, they had. Fucked in the cool night air as coyotes howled in the canyon below. Woke in the morning sun, the bed surrounded by hummingbirds darting at the sugar water feeders hung by each of the four bedposts.
Mel hadn’t completely let her guard down. She made sure to erase their texts immediately after receiving and sending—who knows when Sloane would grab her phone to catch some creatures in the Pokémon Go app. She covered all Zack-related expenses on the Amex prepaid cards she purchased at Walgreens and Ralphs, hands trembling each time she reloaded them.
Adam couldn’t find out. Not just yet. She was going to leave him, yes, but not until she’d revived her letterpress business. With a new West Coast style. She already had her first batch of limited-series hand-pressed Christmas cards in mind. It had been nearly impossible to find any Christmas cards that actually looked like a SoCal Christmas. Who wanted a card with an idyllic New England winter setting, white glittery snow and sleighs? Her new letterpress Christmas cards would be decked with palm trees and surf boards. Zack had loved the idea and wanted to help. How sweet was that?
She had noticed a sense of paranoia creeping in on their fun, her pausing a few times while going down on Zack in his crappy truck, peering out the steamed-up windows, wondering what Adam would do if she were caught. Reminding herself, what did it matter when Adam was having his own affair? To each his own.
The occasional feeling of impending doom snuck in and ruined one of her orgasms. Like what if an earthquake—the Big One for which Sloane had to do “Shakeout Drills” at school—hit while Mel and Zack were mid-bang and she was stranded, away from home? Away from Sloane? Even, Mel worried, away from Adam, who always seemed to know exactly what to do in an emergency. She knew Janet would say that was Mel’s guilt surfacing. No shit, Janet, she imagined rebutting, but she had quit Janet soon after the disaster of a session with Adam. What need was there for talk therapy when there was sex therapy? Mel didn’t need Janet telling her what she and Zack did was wrong when it felt oh so right.
She knew she had joined the ranks of the women she’d once judged. The women—many school moms—she had, upon first arriving in Santa Monica, endured canyon hikes and beach walks and even a few excruciating SoulCycle classes with, the conversation veering toward the women’s grievances with their ex-husbands. Mel silently judging them as she pretended sympathy. Women who seemed to thrive on anger and cardio alone. She had felt simultaneously envious—what she would give to have these sad women’s thigh gaps and poreless skin—and guilty. Yes, these women had escaped selfish and controlling husbands and pocketed healthy divorce settlements thanks to California’s fifty-fifty law, and, yes, some of them now had hot younger boyfriends who seemed to adore their children with uncanny paternal instinct. But Mel had had Adam.
Or so she had believed.
Mel and Zack had sex in the back office at Color Theory. Sex in the CT van for old times’ sake. Sex on the turf fields at SaMo High late one night after the overhead lights had gone dark. A favorite spot was the beach—a blanket draped over their laps, Zack’s fingers tucked into her panties, Mel climaxing in front of who knows how many tourists strolling at sunset.
It was the sex she didn’t have in high school, she told herself. Or in college—she’d met Adam so young. She was making up for lost time. She was having the best midlife crisis a woman could dream of. Zack gave her orgasms, one right after another, like the ripples in a lake, one climax ending only for another to begin. She had to beg him to stop. Enough, please, enough.
Adam, thankfully, was busy with a new film. For which he was being paid nearly five thousand dollars a day. A big-studio adaptation of a sci-fi novel about a pill that transformed reproduction, shortening human gestation from nine months to nine weeks. A true feminist story, he’d told Mel, and she’d struggled not to scratch his eyes out. Him talking about feminism—ha! She fucked Zack with extra gusto that night, gyrating on top until he’d come with a gasping Oh Jesus!
With Zack, Mel did things she’d only ever fantasized about, and pre-Zack, always with a cringe of shame. But with him, she felt no shame. They watched porn on her phone; their favorite categories were Teacher’s Pet and Sex in Uniform. They’d even discovered a super-hot clip set at a gym, a burly guy with a giant dick (That just cannot be real, Mel had whispered, making Zack laugh mid-kiss) going down on a big-boobed woman sitting on “quadzilla,” that weight machine Mel loathed.
Today, she’d driven Zack to the Malibu Beach Inn, a place she’d read was a favorite among celebrities. They tangled the soft-as-silk sheets as the gas fireplace blazed. They devoured the eighteen-dollar Dean & DeLuca truffle-coated pretzels and hand-dipped chocolates. Calories be damned. If Zack wanted her body, which was twenty pounds lighter, but still a bit Jigglypuff—and oh God, he did—why should she deny herself?
Now, she was stretched out on the thick soft carpet of their hotel room on her elbows, in plank position, naked but for a tank top, as she was still too self-conscious about her body to let her belly roam free. It had been her idea—she’d surprised herself again and again with Zack—to re-create a scene from the gym porno, having him count her planking time, then make her beg for more.
He knelt over her. She felt his cock on her lower back, firm and ready.
“Five, four—” he whispered into her ear.
“Arrgh,” she grunted, her body trembling with exertion and desire.
“And—one. Now. Tell me how badly you want me to fuck you.”
Mel dropped to her belly, out of breath, arms shaking. “So bad.”
“Ass in the air.”
Mel lifted into child’s pose. He spoke again, his voice gentle now, earnest.
“Okay to do what we did last time?”
“Um.” She felt herself smile as her face went hot. Last time, she’d let him touch a part of her she’d always considered off limits and had an orgasm so shattering she was certain her very essence had been altered irreversibly.
“Yes.” She exhaled. “Please. Like last time.”
She pressed her nose into the soft carpet and closed her eyes, pushing her backside higher into the air.
Yes. She wanted him to touch her there. One of his hands stirring her in the front, the other stirring her behind. Forget Mel 2.
0. Forget Mel the soccer mom. This new Mel was on fire, she thought, as she gave herself over to him.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
27
Regina
“IN CLOSING, I’D LIKE TO LEAVE YOU WITH A FINAL THOUGHT,” SAID REGINA, stepping away from the whiteboard to face the founding team of BeastMode Wellness (current slogan: Your body, solved!—though Regina planned to change that, if she got the account)—three Millennial hipsters and a fortysomething dad-type wearing a Joe Rogan T-shirt—“I’m well-aware of the vast number of choices you have in the search for a perfect marketing partner. Here in LA, there’s no shortage of slick, polished agencies with mile-long lists of buzzy clients in the wellness sector and beyond. Big Rad Wolfe isn’t one of those agencies. We’re young, we’re scrappy, and we don’t serve kombucha on tap at our office.”
“Thank God,” said the dad-type, whose name was Dustin.
Regina smiled at him. “Our client list isn’t long, because we’re extremely picky about who we decide to work with. Because we have something called the passion requirement. Which means we don’t engage with a company unless its mission truly resonates with our core values. Does this mean pouring our heart and soul into the projects we do accept, and working our asses off for our small number of clients, as if they were our very own lifeblood?” She paused for dramatic effect; four pairs of eyes were latched on her. “Hell, yes, it does. BeastMode is one of the few companies I’ve met that has left me feeling ready to go level ten and beyond to ensure it becomes a smash-hit healthy-living brand. You’ve already set the foundation in place—the app, the on-demand virtual courses, the accountability plans—now you just need the right exposure to blow all the other imitators out of the water.”
“Right on,” said one of the Millennials, a woman in a camo jumpsuit.
“Should you choose to partner with Big Rad Wolfe,” Regina went on, “the success of our campaigns comes with a no-strings guarantee. We hit our goals, or you get your money back.”
Dustin cleared his throat. “Can you go over your pricing structure again?”
Regina took a deep, silent breath. “Certainly. For the sort of omnichannel digital campaign you need, in addition to the supplemental offline channels, we’d require an upfront retainer of—” She met Dustin’s eyes and quoted an outrageously high number.
“Competitively priced,” said Dustin, nodding and tapping a few keystrokes on his laptop. Regina allowed herself to relax. She let her gaze drift out the window of the eighteenth floor, where the offices of BeastMode Wellness, situated in a high-rise on the Wilshire Corridor near UCLA, looked out over the sprawl of West Los Angeles, all the way to the ocean.
If she squinted, Regina could see Santa Monica.
“Killer pitch,” said a guy with a scruffy beard.
“Thank you,” said Regina. “I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have met you guys and learn about BeastMode. Just when I thought disruption was played out in the wellness space, you guys have gone and changed my mind. Nice work.”
Dustin looked up from his laptop. “We’ll be in touch with a final decision tomorrow. But just to stay out in front of the process, would you mind sending over a term sheet later today?”
“You’ll have it within the hour,” said Regina. “And whatever the outcome, this has been a true pleasure.” But she knew she’d gotten the job.
BACK IN HER car, Regina swung onto the southbound I-405 into standstill rush-hour traffic. She voice-texted a message to Gordon, who was in Hollywood with Bryan today, pitching Eighteen Twelve to a production company.
Killed it at BeastMode. Tell you all about it later. GOOD LUCK IN THE ROOM! Xoxo.
Then she selected the Happy Day Sunshine playlist from Spotify, and, as Bob Marley’s voice filled her car, she felt better than she had in months. She’d woken the morning after Minnow Night with her worst hangover since college, her recall of the previous evening hazy but for the crystalline memory of exactly how cold and cruel Zack had been on the phone. As humiliating as her drunk-dialing him was, she was glad she did it, because it had left her with a clear vision of exactly what she needed to do to fix her life:
Cut Zack out of it—truly and completely
Get a real goddamn job
She’d realized, as she’d washed down ibuprofen with black coffee, her head throbbing (Too much fun on girls’ night, huh? Gordon had asked, smiling and rubbing her shoulders), that making Zack her “business partner” had little to do with her inability to get new Big Rad Wolfe clients and everything to do with her desire to be close to him.
Which, she’d finally admitted to herself, was no longer an option. Because, somehow, he’d fallen for Melissa Goldberg. Two of her so-called best friends. Rolling around naked together.
The thought made Regina’s stomach turn.
But she would keep moving. She would never let him know how much he’d hurt her. Instead, she’d simply begun withholding Zack’s 30 percent cut of the Color Theory transfers. She always delivered his payment in person, in cash—it was the only safe option—every two weeks, but now, since he’d gone gaga for Mel-fucking-Goldberg and her double chin, Regina simply began delaying their handoff meetings, via a host of creative texted excuses:
Completely tied up with the kids on break from school, can’t get away
Gordon slammed with flu and I’m on nurse duty
In Santa Barbara for a few days (that one was an outright lie)
Eventually, Zack began to demand his money, always in the carefully coded language Regina had taught him, so their texts could never be used as evidence should the shit hit the fan. Zack’s loyalty to her rules—You’ve been late for class too many times!!!!!, he wrote, followed by angry-face emojis—almost made her proud. Regina had anticipated and prepared for his requests. She addressed them with another careful text:
Hang in there a little longer! Otherwise I’m happy 2 let Adam Goldberg know you’re coaching his wife.
She was almost ashamed at the pleasure it brought her to wield such power over him. But then she remembered his face between Mel’s legs in the gym van, and her shame evaporated.
Regina’s stalling methods worked. Zack kept doing his job. Of course, each deposit refreshed the risk of getting caught, but Jensen had been off skiing in Vail and attending a wedding in Maui, Regina had learned from his Instagram feed—leaving his minions to manage his studios, which were booming more than ever. Color Theory Malibu was set to open in March, and Regina had heard through the grapevine that a Santa Barbara location was next.
No, Jensen would not be missing nine grand a month anytime soon. Certainly not before Regina no longer needed it. Of this she was becoming more confident by the day. In addition to BeastMode, she had four more pitches scheduled in the coming weeks. And who knew—maybe a production company would love Eighteen Twelve as much as Gordon did, and throw some real Hollywood money at it.
Soon, Regina was certain, she would no longer need Zack’s services—or Jensen’s money.
In the meantime, Zack’s 30 percent had given her a little breathing room. For starters, it had allowed her to pay for Christmas, which wasn’t too demanding this year—Kaden and Mia were in an “anti-consumer” phase, thanks to some eco-conscious theater troupe that had visited both their schools. The extra cash also had helped Regina scrape together minimum required payments on her scariest debts—the IRS, the mortgage, tuition for Rustic Canyon Day School.
When are we meeting? Zack kept texting. You can’t do this to me.
She’d kept him blocked for a while, letting him sweat, then responded to a slew of his desperate texts, all demanding his money, with an actual phone call.
Cut the shit, Regina, he’d said, by way of greeting. You owe me. This is serious.
Banging someone else’s wife is serious, Zack, she’d said, cucumber-cool. Tooling with your employer’s accounting software is serious.
Are you threatening me?
Of course not, she’d said brightly. I’m ju
st taking my time. It’s in your best interest to keep things moving.
You’re threatening me. His voice went flat.
Just keep things moving, she’d repeated. Good-bye, Zack. And tell Mel I said hello.
It was amazing, how life worked, Regina thought, humming to “Peaceful Easy Feeling” as she exited the 405 for the westbound I-10 that led into Santa Monica: the obstacles were all in your head. All you had to do was change your thinking, set some honest intentions, and poof—they began to disappear.
Saturday, January 12, 2019
28
Leticia
Dear Zacarias Zack,
Gracias, my hermano (no medio, all-the-way-brother). I know Andres will be well loved by his tío Zack.
Here is a list of Andres’s favorite things.
For school lunch, Andres loves macaroni and cheese or peanut butter sandwiches with crusts cut off. Don’t tell the lunch ladies because they will throw it away since the white mommies made a rule for no peanuts.
His favorite stuffed animal is Miguel the penguin. The lucky penguin gets to take a bath with Andres once a month and this is how he keeps clean.
Use the nail brush on his nails, the blue one, until there is NO dirt.
When he wakes from nightmares he gets warm milk in microwave with pinch of cinnamon in the Pokémon mug. Works every time!
Bathroom light ALWAYS stays on at night.
I will leave a list of all the special teachers at school. Make sure he gets his therapy so he can grow up big and strong and smart like his tío Zack.
Teach our Andres to tie his shoes. Say his prayers. How beautiful he will look in the altar boy robes on Christmas Eve. Teach him better English please but never stop speaking to him in Spanish. Make him proud to be American plus MEXICAN.
Santa Monica Page 27