The Mistress and the Mouse

by JJ Giles

  The pounding on the door was loud over the din of television, lawyers, stock analysts and accountants. The door opened and then slammed closed. It opened again only long enough for Jerry to hear, “You motherfucker, get your hands off of me.” It was the most beautiful voice he could imagine at the moment.

  “Cherry,” he yelled out.

  “You motherfucker, get away from me!”

  “My daughter,” Jerry hollered. Loudly, he snapped his fingers at the guy standing closest to the door.

  The door was yanked open and there stood Cherry snarling at a guard doubled over, his hands at his groin. “Thank you,” she said snidely to the underling who opened the door for her. She rushed into the office, dropped her bag to the floor and stormed her father’s desk. She tossed a smile to Brian and Alex. “Time to circle the wagons, boys.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he gasped.

  “I’m gonna be here for awhile, too,” she said surely. She circled the desk and pulled her brother into her arms. Quickly, Jerry stood and fell toward them.

  “God, I’m so grateful to have both of you with me now.” Unable to control himself, he began to sob.

  “And we’re gonna be here.” She planted a kiss on her father’s cheek. Of the company’s spokesman and her uncle she asked, “So where the hell is Gerald? We need to get on this right away. Brian and I both need to go on camera and deny everything.”

  The support he was getting from his children was overwhelming. Comforting. “You don’t need to get involved with this,” he said. “She’s your mother and I don’t expect you to take sides.”

  Cherry huffed as she tossed her head at Alex. “Honey, I don’t know where you’ve been, but Alex is our mother.” Insistently, she pulled Alex in for a group hug. “Alex has given Brian and I more fond affection, never forgotten a birthday, Christmas, flowers every time I break up with some whore...always a phone call,” she said affectionately with a little pinch to Alex’s ass. “As far as I’m concerned, Alex is my mother.” Spilling with pride and love for him, she laid her head on his shoulder and tugged at his waist.

  Tears seeped down Alex’s face to hear it spoken so plainly. “Oh darling, thank you,” he cried. Overwhelmed, he fell into her embrace.

  Tenderly, she kissed Alex’s cheek and then spoke to Jerry. “So as soon as Gerald gets his shit together, I’ll be at the press conference,” she warned. “I don’t know who the hell Cheryl thinks she is, but she’s mistaken.”

  Jerry nodded and backed away. He didn’t have the strength to argue with her. “Okay. But under no circumstances do I want Brian on camera,” he said. “They’re trying to find out now who his mother is and they’ll chew him up and spit him out.”

  Brian relaxed a little. To think he had to meet the press in his condition was impossible.

  Cherry nodded to that little bit of wisdom and screamed, “Bryant, get Gerald up here.”

  Jerry fell back into the chair and closed his eyes to listen to the babbling on the replaced television about the mistress he kept in chains. About the dungeon in the basement of the Mansion, the pictures flashed on the screen of a soiled cot where he supposedly prostituted her. Pictures of the equipment he used to torture her from the magazine were flashed on the television. The bondage racks, the exam tables, crosses and wheels, whips and chains.

  “Is any of this true?” one of the lawyers shouted.

  Jerry curled in defense. In some small way, all of it was true.

  “It doesn’t fucking matter now,” another shouted. “They just issued a search warrant for the Mansion, Jerry. And another for your penthouse. In just a little while they’re gonna know everything they want to know.”

  Quickly, Jerry launched out of the chair. “I don’t pay you guys to stand around here and bark at me. Half of you go to the penthouse, the other half to the Mansion. Find a fucking loophole in that warrant. GO!”

  * * * *

  Kitty broke the eggs into a bowl and stirred a tiny bit of milk in, whipped them generously full of air to make them fluffy and poured them into the pan. She dropped two pieces of rye bread into the toaster and then turned on the TV.

  “...Abernathy Acquisitions has a mess on its hands,” the reporter stated. Curious, Kitty drew closer to the TV. “This just came over the desk, Ann. The local prosecutor just issued a search warrant for the Abernathy Mansion on Hideaway Hill and another for the Penthouse of Abernathy Tower where Jerry Abernathy recently took up residence.”

  Kitty screamed.

  Morgan ran dripping into the room. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you hurt?”

  In horror, Kitty stared at the screen, a single finger pointed at it to see the cover of that tabloid on it. Quickly, Morgan ran to it. The same sense of devastation, the same horror as Kitty felt to see the headline Tragedy in Paradise with the little inset of chains hanging from a ceiling and human arms attached to them, swamped Morgan’s reason.

  “What?” Morgan screamed.

  “And now this,” the reporter gasped. “Yes...yes…” He listened in his ear bud and nodded. “The local prosecutor is about to make a statement concerning the accusation of rape.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Morgan screamed. “Go get me one of those papers!” Angrily, she grabbed her bag and threw it at Kitty. With only a towel around her, Morgan ran out of the apartment to peer out the corridor window onto High Street. “Oh, shit.” High Street was virtually clogged with news vans setting up satellite feeds and news choppers circled overhead. High Street had shut down and the crowd of onlookers chanting something unintelligible sent her into rage.

  Quickly, she ran back to her apartment to dress. Jeans was all she could find. A white T-shirt was all that was clean. She pulled a comb through her wet hair to tie it back rather than to set it in hot curlers and then ran back to the kitchen to watch the TV.

  * * * *

  Jerry slumped in the chair assessing the damage done. Yet another lawyer walked in, a cellphone in hand. “Would you like to know how bad it is?” he asked.

  Debilitated, Jerry only nodded.

  “Did you rape your wife?” he asked.

  Jerry’s eyes rolled up to look at the man. “As a matter of fact, I did. A couple of weeks ago.”

  “No. When the prosecutor gets here and he’s on his way, the watchword of the day is consensual.”

  The shooting pains behind his eyes felt like the pitchforks of miniature imps. He merely slumped a little further unable to seize control of anything.

  * * * *

  In a pant, Kitty ran into the apartment. “I had to give a guy five hundred bucks for it,” she cried.

  “I don’t care. I don’t care,” Morgan hissed. She snatched the paper from her. Incomprehensible the damage done to that face. How could anyone survive a beating that bad? She began to ache to think of it.

  “Morgan, if she put your name in there...?” Kitty convulsed to think of what that would do for Morgan’s career.

  “We’ll find out.” Morgan opened the special edition, the entire thing devoted solely to this event. Sadly, Morgan shook her head to read through the subtitles and glanced at pictures of happier days with Cheryl and her small children at birthday parties and on the beach. Of course, their father was missing leading the reader to believe he was eternally absent.

  A subtitle of Mistress caught her eye. You Bitch...if you dared out me...

  Quickly, Morgan read through looking for her name. Under that subtitle her name was absent, yet the rage inside still boiled. She leafed through, the picture of the stained cot where Cheryl was supposedly prostituted, pictures of a real medieval torture chamber, a real ladder, a real rack and the ever present iron maiden.

  “Whose gonna fall for this shit?” she asked rhetorically.

  “Anybody and everybody who doesn’t know what the real shit is,” Kitty answered.

  “It’s crap!” She grabbed the phone.

  * * * *

  Jerry fell back in the chair, unable to sustain himself. Just
then his secretary came in with a cordless. “Your mistress,” she snarled having been ordered to put Morgan through no matter the situation.

  Tentatively, Jerry reached out for the phone thrown to his desk. He glanced at Brian. “Yeah.”

  “Jerry,” she gasped. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “She’s done what she’s always threatened to do. She promised me she’d do it. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming.”

  “I am so sorry about this. And I gave her all the ammunition she needed.”

  Bitterly, Jerry smiled. “I knew it was gonna go that way. I don’t want you to worry about it. You just do whatever you do, get back to a normal life. I’m probably on my way to prison anyway.” Quietly, he turned and peered up at Brian. “Why don’t you call that guy you’re engaged to. Something tells me he’s hopelessly and passionately in love with you.” Jerry choked as he tried to smile. The tears flushed through his eyes. “He truly loves you.” He refused to say her name knowing someone somewhere was listening on a scanner.

  “Jerry, listen to me. I’m coming to the Tower now.”

  “You don’t need to be involved in this.”

  “Jerry, I am involved. More involved than you might care to know about. I need to be with you right now. You need me.”

  How hopelessly true and he bit into his lip to assuage the pain of that. “Alright. I’ll call security. Come to the State Street garage ramp. They’ll let you in there and put you in my private elevator.”

  “I’ll be there in about a half hour. This shit down here is a mess.”

  “See you then.”

  Yet, his connection to his son remained unbroken. Silently, he begged forgiveness.

  Agonized, Brian stared back knowing Morgan was running, not to a client, not to her friend, but to her Master and lover. It caught in his throat like acid. “What can I do for you?”

  “Don’t leave me. I need your support.”

  “Dad, surely you understand I can’t be here when she gets here.”

  “Will you stay with me in the penthouse, at least. Where I know you’re safe?”

  “We can’t even get in the penthouse right now.”

  “It bogus, Brian. The prosecutor has to look like he’s doing his job.”

  “Dad, you have entire room upstairs devoted to...”

  “Sexual gratification,” Jerry said. “Your mother has never seen that room, son. The pictures they have are not going to match what’s upstairs. And there’s no such thing anywhere in the Mansion.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Please, just stay with me.”

  Quietly, Brian nodded. He bent low to embrace his father again. “Come up as soon as you can. You’ll need to rest a little.”

  But Jerry only clutched to his son, Brian’s face against his. “We’ll work this out. I don’t know how, but somehow, we’ll work this out. I promise you.”

  Brian shook a little. Yet he rose, twitched a little and then disappeared into the penthouse elevator.

  * * * *

  “Fucking bitch,” Morgan hissed as she blended into the riot outside. She couldn’t get through the crowd on High Street much less to the State Street ramp. Shoving, getting shoved, she wound through the crowd and entered the mall only to wind through it’s tangle of onlookers and finally, finally emerge two blocks down on State Street.

  She ran to the gate at the garage guarded by men with guns. In a pant, she told the guard, “I’m Morgan McFaye.”

  “Get out of here,” he snarled. “Get the hell out of here.”

  But Morgan would not be deterred. She inched closer to his unshaven face. “You call upstairs now, buddy. You’re supposed to put me in his private elevator...now.”

  The man studied her a moment. “Sorry, Sweetie, but you’re too old for him. Get lost.” He shoved her away to resume his place barring the entrance to the garage.

  “You little motherfucker.” Quite deftly, her knee met his crotch. The man doubled over as another came running. “Unless you want the same, you call upstairs right now and tell him Morgan McFaye is here.”

  The first man could no longer retain the pain and dwindled to his knees. A cadre of guards came to the rescue, and encircled her. Little did they know that being surrounded by men was a comfortable place for her. The injured man’s face winced. Against Bryant Abernathy’s orders he commanded, “Take her to his elevator.”

  Nervously, she twittered all the way to the forty-ninth floor. It opened on his office and a room full of growling and hissing men, some calling out stock report numbers, the stock obviously falling through the floor. Some were on the phone shouting at court officers, his lawyers obviously. Others took notes and devised strategy.

  Jerry sat at his desk, slumped over as if in death, holding his face in his hand. Quickly she approached and threw her bag to his desk. When he heard that dull thump, he quickly turned only to see her expression filled with such overflowing sympathy.

  He rushed into her arms.

  “Jerry, this isn’t helping,” someone called. “You need to get her out of here.”

  Yet Jerry only held to her a moment before he grasped her hand and led her away through a side door into an expansive bedroom.

  “This is unusual,” she whispered of the windowless room with a bathroom beyond.

  “Do you know what she’s done?”

  Sadly, Morgan nodded. “She’s very effectively ruined you, hasn’t she?”

  “A bullet to the brain would be easier than this.”

  “That’s exactly what she wants, Jerry. She said it quite succinctly a few weeks ago. She’s always wondered what it would take for you to kill yourself. Don’t let her win, man. That is one vicious woman you got your hands on there...all done up in satin and lace.”

  “Don’t you think I’ve always known that!”

  “Tell me you have a dungeon in your basement.”

  “Hell no.” He paced around the room. “I have no idea where those pictures came from. Hell...she mighta put the shit there sometime in the last five months. I haven’t been back.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This is big. You know your life will never be the same now.”

  “That’s pretty obvious.” Quickly, he pulled his belt from his trousers and flailed it against the bed with enough rage inside to do damage.

  She backed away a little to let him have at it. Better to drain it than contain it she always said. She merely watched while he beat the pillows, the audience he always needed, the acceptance he always wanted, the support he never got.

  Just then the door opened and closed softly. Bryant stood there in shock and merely watched as Jerry beat the bed. But Morgan’s expression was stern, an obvious command to allow Jerry to continue.

  But Bryant couldn’t handle seeing Jerry out of control and he cried out, “Jerry!”

  Quickly, Jerry turned and saw Bryant’s panic. He stopped and drew in a deep breath. Bryant was stricken, unable to proceed on his own. Just like every other day of his life, Jerry was supposed to have all the answers. Yet, Jerry admitted, “I don’t know, okay?” There was no graceful way to redeem this one.

  “I’ve called all the executives in for an emergency meeting,” Bryant said.

  In horror, Jerry nodded knowing this was happening at the worst possible time for Bryant. But wasn’t that always what Cheryl was all about? Anything and everything to do as much damage as possible.

  A timid knock sounded on the door.

  “Get the fuck lost!” Jerry shouted.

  The door opened. “Jerry, it’s me.” The door opened further and Alex stepped in. “Jerry.”

  Jerry seemed to settle a bit; his expression moderated. “Alex...this is Morgan...Morgan McFaye,” he growled.

  Alex nodded, having met Morgan a few days ago. “Still a pleasure, my dear,” he offered.

  “I’m only here to offer whatever support he needs at the moment,” she said to explain.

  “Of course you are, precious. But frankly, I think we
need to get him out of here right now. And maybe you and I together can do that.”

  “Alex, I’m not leaving,” Jerry shouted. “I’m going down with the fucking ship.”

  “Jerry,” Alex said softly infused with warmth and sympathy. “I just came from the penthouse. Everything’s fine upstairs now. And I just spoke to Gerald. Jerry, thankfully the stock market is closed for the day now. If we don’t get on this right now, Abernathy is going to tank. That wicked little vixen whom I should have strangled years ago isn’t even the cause of this, you know that. You know it was our father who forced this on both of us.”

  Jerry peered up from his vantage at the edge of the bed. At the mention of their father, Bryant began to nervously pace.

  “But it was me who let them both live,” Jerry gasped.

  “I know. But fear doesn’t make consideration for taste. The woman raped me, Jerry.”

  Quickly, Jerry looked up at Alex and then glanced at Morgan. Rape!? He could barely envision it. He studied Morgan a moment longer to see her sorrow over that statement, something she apparently believed. The very thing Jerry had thought of for so long now. The heel of Jerry’s hand dug into his eyes. “Fuck...”

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  Quickly, Jerry shook his head and peered up at his brother with undeniable grief. “So this is how it ends?”

  Openly, Alex stared. “I’m afraid so, Love. But only your career. Certainly not your life. I, personally, am hoping we have a lot to look forward to.”

  With that, Jerry wept. The emanations were tortured and Morgan only wanted to cuddle him now. She moved closer and he reached out. He grabbed her body into his arms and cried hopelessly to her stomach, needing her as badly as he needed anything or anyone else just now.

  A little frightened, she looked at Alex. But Alex only smiled, obviously saddened by the day’s events. His brother’s humiliation was a tragedy, but his desire to support Jerry was evident.