“No,” Jessica said loudly. “Not today, Jimmy.”
The name was a trigger for Destinee, who shoved a stuffed paper bag at the customer she was helping and hurried over. “Get my gun!” she said on impulse.
“There’s no gun,” Jessica announced to the anxious customers. She shot Destinee a warning look. “Don’t make this worse. All we want to do is get him out of here without a scene.”
“Jessica, my darling girl,” Jimmy swooned. “Ah, but you’re not a girl anymore.” He held out his arms, palms raised. “You’re a young woman now. It’s so charming when women open a business in lieu of starting a family. The determination of the fairer sex is truly something.” He clapped his hands together. “If only it could be harnessed for good. Aaaanyway.”
“You need to leave,” Jessica said firmly, taking pride in not yet having shouted “fuck.”
“Or else I’ll make you,” Destinee said, standing just over Jessica’s shoulder and glaring across the counter at Jimmy.
He sighed as he passed up those waiting in line, inserting himself between the woman at the front and the counter. “While I wholeheartedly support the right of small businesses to refuse to serve customers for any reason whatsoever, I ask that you allow me a moment of your time, old friend.” He addressed Jessica directly.
“How about twenty seconds to leave, and I’m filing a criminal trespass notice this afternoon. That work?”
Jimmy’s posture restricted, and she saw a muscle in his jaw tick. That got to him. Huh. Threats like that had never gotten to him before. He’d always thought he was above the law. What had changed?
He leaned closer, lifting his sunglasses so she could see his eyes. Whatever dark circles she might have under hers were nothing compared to his. “Please, Jessica,” he whispered, “I need your help. I know you hate me, but if there’s any mercy in you, please. Just a minute.”
That wasn’t Church Jimmy speaking. She could tell by the rushed, jagged cadence of his speech. This was Ice Cream Jimmy, the one who she’d seen as a surrogate father figure for two years of her young life. And boy did Ice Cream Jimmy look like he’d been put through the wringer.
It was almost enough to make her feel sorry for the guy and hear him out.
“You got a lotta gall,” Destinee said. “You ain’t got no right to come up in her business asking for favors. Not after that bullshit memoir, you lying sack of crap. If I had my shotgun with me—”
“Which you don’t,” Jessica said, mostly addressing the customers in the line. “So everyone is safe.”
“Okay,” Jimmy said, chopping the air with his hand and leaning as far as he could over the counter. “Just one quick thing. I just want to say one quick thing. And if you don’t want other people to hear, I can just whisper it to you.”
The line had doubled in size as the start of the lunch rush trickled in.
Jimmy was nothing if not a stubborn son of a bitch. “And then you leave?” asked Jessica. “You never step foot inside this bakery again?”
“Yes! Yes, I’ll leave and you can file the criminal trespass if you want, or I can save you the effort by not coming back here ever again.”
Jessica stepped forward. “Fine.”
He motioned her closer with a wave of his hand.
Rolling her eyes, she leaned closer until his mouth was only inches from her ear. “You and me, Jessica, we’re two sides to the same coin. You want to push me away, but you can’t. When you rise, I rise. I’m a part of this business just as you are, and someday you’ll realize it, and when you decide to thank me for all that I’ve sacrificed for you, I’ll be the bigger man and let you have a place by my side.”
Jessica’s eyes went wide and she did the only thing she could: she laughed.
Jimmy was out of his gourd. He’d become completely unhinged. None of his words struck a chord with her. It was completely untethered from reality.
She continued laughing, partly because it remained funny, but also because she enjoyed laughing at Jimmy. After all the mud he’d dragged her through, hot damn, laughing at him felt liberating. It felt even better than yelling at him or fantasizing about his death, both of which felt pretty incredible.
When she straightened up to look him right in the eyes, heightening the enjoyment of laughing in his face, he was laughing too.
Wait, why was he laughing?
It happened in a flash. Literally.
The phone’s camera flashed, temporarily blinding her, and it was only after that shock wore off that she realized Jimmy had grabbed her hand and was shaking it.
Ohhh no…
She’d let him touch her.
When she yanked her hand free, Jimmy grinned and hollered, “Sooie!” before rushing from the bakery with the conspiring paparazzi close behind him.
From beside her came a grunt followed by Destinee saying, “I didn’t want to tell you this before ’cause I knew you’d be mad, but I got a pistol out in my glove box. Want me to bring it in?”
Yes. Yes, she did want that. “No, Mom.”
“It’s only a Ruger thirty-eight,” Destinee whined. “Hardly more than a nip at him. He’d survive, and if he didn’t, you could bring him back and he’d owe you one.”
“I wouldn’t bring him back,” Jessica said through gritted teeth.
Destinee put an arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “I don’t think I tell you enough how proud I am of the woman you’ve become.”
As tempting as it was, Jessica shook her head. “No. I don’t want you going to jail for him. I’d have to hire someone to fill your spot and that’s the last thing I need on my plate.”
Destinee nodded and gently moved Jessica away from the register, likely sensing that her daughter could use a minute.
And as Destinee greeted the customers, acting nicer than usual to compensate for the minor interruption, Jessica headed to the kitchen, wondering how many horrible outcomes could result from one simple picture of Jessica and Jimmy, laughing and shaking hands.
Would it effect her lawsuit against him? She’d better give Wendy a head’s up.
Before she could take action, the oven timer beeped. Kolaches.
Chapter Five
“You ever wish that everything could just stop?” Jessica asked, staring up at one of the twelve nearby televisions showing ESPN. The bar was empty, but then again, it was a Tuesday during the summer, and baseball didn’t draw the crowds it used to.
And that was why Judith had suggested this place, she supposed. Well, that and the fact that the drinks were so cheap she and Judith referred to it as Shithoused, rather than its actual name, which was Smashmouth.
When Jessica looked away from the screens and back at Judith, who sat across from her at the high-top table, her friend said, “Are we talking suicide or apocalypse here? I can’t tell with you.”
“Neither. More like a pause button.”
“I think what you’re talking about is overwhelm, and don’t worry; everyone I know has it. For all intents and purposes, it’s emotional HPV.”
“Are you overwhelmed?” Jessica asked. She hadn’t even stopped to think about how her stress might translate to those she worked with.
Man, I’m a terrible friend.
And an even worse boss.
“Yeah.” Judith shrugged. “But not about work. Just, you know, overwhelmed with how terrible the world turned out to be.”
Day by day, Judith was starting to sound an awful lot like someone else Jessica knew. “How are things going with Brian?”
Judith grinned coyly. “You know, good.”
“It’s just a one-bedroom, right?”
Judith nodded, sipping from her longneck.
“You’re not driving each other up the wall?” Jess asked.
“No. We’re doing other things against the walls.”
Jessica’s mind flashed to Jameson Fractal and the things she’d seen him do with women against walls in his films. No matter how many times Jessica had done the same sort of thi
ngs with Chris, thinking back to Jameson made her feel confused, scared, and uncomfortably turned on. “All right, enough of that,” she said. “I don’t need to know the details.”
“It’s still weird for you?”
“Uh yes. He used to be my teacher.”
Judith chuckled. “I truly don’t know how you handled that. He was your college counselor, too, right?” Jess nodded. “And you never tried to bone him?”
“Jesus Christ, Judith.”
“Not even once?”
“No! Not even once.” Jessica flagged down a waiter as he passed. “Can we get some loaded fries over here?” When he nodded, she turned back to Judith. “I’m gonna need some food on my stomach if we’re going to keep talking about banging Mr. Foster.”
“Speaking of which, he wants to have dinner with you and Chris whenever Chris comes into town next. He said something about the last time the three of you went out, I dunno, something happened.”
“I smote a fire hydrant. But only after some dick pulled a gun on us,” she added hurriedly.
“Nice,” Judith said, nodding approvingly. “When you finally gonna smite someone for real, Jess? You know there’s a whole subreddit on you, and anything having to do with that gets upvoted like a motherfucker.”
Judith had lost her attention, though.
“Jess?”
One of the screens behind the bar, the only one not tuned to a sports station, had been running on a 24-hour news channel. And on it appeared a familiar face. It was like Jessica knew that face would be on there before she ever saw the screen. She could feel it. She could feel him.
“Two sides of the same coin.”
What did that even mean? What a load of gibberish.
She stood from the table and walked over to read the closed caption. “Hey,” she called to the woman tending the square bar at the center of the room. “Can you turn this one up?” In the meantime, Jess read along.
Because of the lag, it was difficult to tell who the captions belonged to, but Jess thought it was the host, a stony-faced black man in a slate-gray jacket who looked incredible concerned and intrigued as his lips moved minimally.
The captions read, “But does it matter that the payments came through White Light Church? The accusations are against Dean, and the payment came from a church that he started. It becomes quite difficult to separate out the man from the establishment. He’s worked very hard for that to be the case, and now he wants to distance himself?”
A redheaded woman on the panel began speaking animatedly. Jessica waited for the captions to catch up “Fitzpatrick: People are asking the wrong question here. It’s not a matter of did Reverend Dean pay the hush money or not. We know it came from him either directly or indirectly, which obviously raises questions for his campaign. No, the real question here is how many female victims have to come forward before we as a country decide to believe them? Two women claim to have been suckered into a mind-control doomsday cult with some suspiciously predatory rhetoric when they were only girls, and we can’t stop talking about the payments to keep them quiet. We’ve seen this pattern time and again. When will we turn our focus to the moral misdeeds rather than asking what campaign finance rules might have been broken?”
A large gray-haired man with beads of sweat glistening across his pale forehead followed up with, “Jacobs: Of course we care about the victims. But with the money they claim to have been paid, they could have easily afforded some therapy or what have you. If they didn’t do that, it’s on them. Or maybe they never received any payments. We just don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first time in history two people conspired to take down a powerful man. Just look at Julius Caesar!
“Fitzpatrick: You did not just compare two victims of mental and religious abuse to Brutus and Cassius.
“Jacobs: Frankly, I don’t see how any of this is relevant to whether he can do the job or not. If you look at the man’s record, it’s clear that Reverend Dean has the experience and wisdom to faithfully execute the duties of the Texas Railroad Commission.”
Judith’s voice cut through. “What’s going on?”
Jessica shook her head slowly. “Not sure. It looks like something’s happening with Jimmy and White Light. Some sort of scandal.”
The sound on the TV came on, but it was hard to hear over the music coming through the ceiling speakers. Jessica moved closer.
The host said, “What do you make of Reverend Dean’s refusal to speak publicly about this? Linda, we’ll start with you.”
A matronly figure sat with her hands folded on the desk she shared with the other two panel speakers. Her expression was tight, her spine rigid. “Campos: I haven’t seen a guiltier man in power in, say, a week. It’s getting a little cliché, to be honest. The sad thing is that we’ll probably never hear the conclusion of this because by the time it makes it to the courts, we’ll have moved on to something far worse. After all, he didn’t violently rape them, right? None of them got pregnant by him. He just manipulated them. Never got past the grooming and gaslighting stage, and after all, young women are gaslighted every single day by major news networks with guests like Mr. Jacobs, so why stop now?” She smiled and was clearly done. The shot cut back to the host, who looked uncomfortable and nodded to the redhead, saying, “Geneva?”
“Fitzpatrick: Linda nailed it. Reverend Dean won’t make a public statement because he’s nothing if not smart. He knows that if he doesn’t say anything, we’ll all move on, and our apathy will crush the strength and courage those women worked so hard to muster. It may even silence whatever other women had thought about speaking out, too. From a PR standpoint, he’s making the right move here. He’s not stupid, and that’s the problem.”
The sweaty gray-haired man scoffed.
“Keith?” said the host, “You feel differently about his refusal to comment?”
“Jacobs: No, Henry, I don’t feel anything about this. I don’t know why feelings are even involved here. This is a news show, right? We should be using our heads, not getting overly emotional about that one time our boss spoke over us at a meeting. These lovely ladies on this panel with me are projecting quite a bit of their own feelings onto a public figure who, for all we know, has done nothing wrong. We must ask ourselves: do we want to live in a society where all it takes for our hard work to be toppled and all the good that we have done to be forgotten is a couple bitter schemers throwing around an unsubstantiated accusation?”
“Campos: It’s not unsubstantiated.”
“Jacobs: It is.” Keith wagged his winger at her. “It is. There has been no evidence provided, no—
“Fitzpatrick: What about the checks?” Geneva’s rigid demeanor tightening even further as her voice rose. “How do checks from White Light Church with a victim’s name on them and the words ‘hush money’ in the memo not count as evidence to you?”
Keith wagged his finger at Geneva now. “Jacobs: You don’t know what they were being asked to hush about, though. Could have been a surprise birthday party, for all we know.”
Before the screen cut back to the host, Jessica caught the shared glance between Geneva and Linda, and knew instantly they would be going out to drinks after this. Without Keith.
Linda addressed the host now, Keith clearly dead to her. “Campos: It’s just simple misogyny. That’s all it is. And it’s played out.”
“Jacobs: Misogyny? How do you explain that photo then? He’s having a grand old time with Jessica McCloud in it. She’s your gal, isn’t she? She even wrote the foreword for his book!
“Fitzpatrick: She’s suing him because she didn’t write it!
“Jacobs: You can’t tell me the supposed daughter of God is going to be such close friends with a misogynist.”
As the host thanked his guests and took it to commercial, Jessica fell out of the trance and looked around to discover she was still in Smashmouth. Good. She needed another drink.
It was a lot to process, and Judith was kind enough to give her space.
&n
bsp; Her last encounter with Jimmy made much more sense, now. The desperation, the strange behavior, the disturbing monologue. There was a lot to unpack there. And yet, there wasn’t, because this was more of the same from him.
Their fries arrived, and Jessica tried not to sound too desperate as she ordered another round.
“What do you make of it?” Judith finally asked.
Despite having just packed her mouth full of potatoes, cheese, bacon, and who cared what that stuff sprinkled on the top was, Jessica replied, “Where do I even start?”
“You sure you haven’t been spending time with Chris? You’re starting to eat like him.”
Jessica allowed herself a moment to chew. “The doomsday cult thing isn’t a complete surprise. God showed me some flashes of Jimmy’s past when I was eleven and got suckered into going to White Light Church”—Judith’s nonchalance was nowhere to be found as her mouth hung in a little o—“Long story. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, now that I think about it, it would surprise me if he hadn’t done something like this. He’s probably done it more than once.”
“So, you believe the allegations?”
“Of course. I’ll believe any allegations against Jimmy Dean.”
Judith picked a less soggy fry from the side of the pile. “You think he molested them or something?”
She hadn’t considered it yet. “If they say he did, then sure. I don’t think they’re saying that, though, right?”
“Who even knows at this point?”
“Well, he never molested me. He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s never been inappropriate. Not like that. Then again, there are a lot of ways to be inappropriate with children that don’t involve the privates.” She thought of Randy McAllister trying to touch her ears in the enclave next to the lion’s den at the zoo and the way her mother had flipped when Jessica mentioned it.
“Yeah, I was about to say.”
Jessica looked up at the TV where a pharmaceutical commercial showed a grinning woman inhaling deeply on a beach, her arms outstretched as she welcomed presumed good health and hefty copays. “Do you think this could be the beginning of the end for him? Like, what if more women come forward?”
In the Details Page 4