by Star Jones
Maxine went into her formal bedroom—the fancy one that she used for photo shoots, not the more comfortable one that she slept in—and removed a piece of art from the wall. Blue Shade, an original Romare Bearden, was a piece that she had bought for herself during her first marriage, before she had more money than she knew what to do with. The Bearden collage remained special to her because it started her art collection, which by now had grown to more than two dozen major pieces, and it was something she had bought with her own money when she got her first big network raise more than thirty years earlier, when Bearden was still alive.
Behind the Bearden piece was Maxine’s safe, the home of the diaries. Maxine had been itching to go back a few years, to see exactly what she had written down about Whitney’s husband, Eric, the disgusting details she had tried to block out. She opened the safe and pulled out a stack of the last few years. She thought it was two years ago that she had gotten the tidbit. It came at a birthday party she had attended for Mick Jagger, a wild affair that seemed to go on for at least two days. She got friendly with an obscenely wealthy Saudi prince who was quite taken with Maxine and her fame. He told her he knew some bad things about one of the women on her show. Maxine was interested right away. But then he took it in a direction she hadn’t at all expected, about information he had come across concerning Eric and little girls. Reading it again made Maxine’s skin crawl. Maxine knew there was no way Whitney was aware of this stuff—and Whitney was too busy rolling around the Inn with Riley to be keeping tabs on her pervert husband anyway. Ugh, what a mess! Maxine had to figure out how she could use this information, maybe get rid of Whitney and her pompous WASP ass once and for all.
“Maxine. Dinner’s ready, darling,” William called to her from the kitchen. She hurriedly put the diaries back into the safe before William came looking for her. He hated when she let the food get cold. She went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, which William had artfully decorated with candles and a beautiful centerpiece he got from the dining room table, which Maxine rarely used. He put a plate of roasted chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, and a colorful salad in front of her, simple but delicious.
William sat down to join her at the table. This he had only started doing in the last year. Even after she was no longer married to Chad, William stubbornly ate in the small kitchen in his own living quarters. He said if he was only going to be her lover in private, then he should stay in his place and let her eat in private too.
“You were in there looking at the diaries, weren’t you?” William said. Maxine could hear the scold in his tone and she instantly got annoyed. She had long since grown tired of William’s efforts to “reform” her, to make her into a “better” person. As she had told him a thousand times, she liked herself plenty just the way she was.
“Why do you give them to me as gifts if you don’t want me to use them?” Maxine said.
“I thought you were going to use them to write your memoirs, not for all your vendettas,” he said, shaking his head like a disappointed dad. “Every time you go to the diaries, somebody’s head’s gonna roll.”
Maxine frowned. Okay, maybe there was just a little bit of vendetta involved, enough so that she really couldn’t deny his accusation. William was just about the only person on the planet who could get away with scolding Maxine—but that didn’t mean she liked it.
“It’s all about self-protection, William. I told you what Missy is trying to do to me.”
“Maxine, when are you going to stop caring about what all these ridiculous people think?” he said. “You are one of the most famous journalists in the world, one of the richest, one of the most accomplished. At this point, no one can ever take any of that away from you. So just calm down and enjoy what you have accomplished. Why can’t you do that?”
Maxine shook her head. William would never understand this side of her, the drive that kept her pushing 24/7. She was a sharecropper’s daughter from Texas and she always would be. No matter how much she accomplished in her life, she knew she would never be able to erase that basic fact of her being. It would always be the dependent clause in the first sentence of her obit: “Maxine Robinson, the daughter of a sharecropper from Texas . . .” Even if she found one day that she wanted to stop, or let up on the accelerator, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to. Her drive was such an elemental part of her personality now that she didn’t think she could ever turn it off.
They ate the rest of their dinner in silence, both of them lost deep in their thoughts. Maxine helped William wash the dishes and they retired together to her entertainment room, where she had a mammoth television and several extremely comfortable sofas lined up like pews. William asked her to choose between two movies, a new one starring Denzel Washington in a rare romantic comedy and a political thriller starring Tom Hanks. Though she preferred to snuggle with William and watch Denzel be romantic, Maxine chose the Hanks thriller—after all, he was due to be a guest on the show in a couple of weeks.
AS SHE SAT ACROSS from Martin Peters on Monday morning at the same Starbucks where she had met Tim Stratton, Lizette chuckled to herself that Martin was just as advertised. The guy was as obvious as the clock on the wall. Or the breasts that were staring him in the face. Lizette had labored for about an hour over what she should wear. She had consulted with two different girlfriends. The dilemma was whether she should go for the cleavage-baring temptress and risk offending him with her obviousness, or go for a slinkier dress that was form-fitting but a bit more subtle. Lizette had gone for the obvious and as she watched Martin fidget, his eyes drawn to her breasts like a fly to sugar, Lizette instantly knew she had made the right decision. Subtlety would have been wasted on Martin Peters. But she also felt an inkling of embarrassment. It was one thing to play dress-up and imagine herself as the vampy seductress, as if wearing one of those slutty Halloween costumes, but it was another thing to actually play out the scene and watch the guy salivate over her breasts. A real, live guy with real, live saliva. His reaction was making her a bit squeamish, a bit ashamed that she was becoming, if just for an hour, one of those women she had always despised—the ones who used sex to get ahead.
“Wow, you’re as gorgeous as Tim said you were,” Martin said, trying real hard to keep his gaze from sliding down to her chest. “It’s really nice to meet you.”
Lizette almost wanted to laugh at his struggle to look her in the face. She had to fight against the urge to get cocky, thinking this had the potential to be as easy as taking candy from a baby. If there were even a distant possibility of coochie staring him in the face, how much would Martin be willing to give up? That was the only real question here.
While he wasn’t as achingly good-looking as Tim, Lizette was sure Martin Peters was sufficiently good-looking to score enough success in the desperate New York singles market to keep up his “horn dog” reputation. He had a mop of sandy blond hair and a genial expression, reminding her a bit of the actor Owen Wilson. Lizette had to remind herself not to take Martin too lightly. After all, he apparently was bright enough for a major publishing house to hire him as a lawyer. But the guy looked like silly Owen Wilson, with the same innocent expression and goofy smile—how seriously could she take him?
“So,” Martin said. He was smiling at her, his baby blues sparkling in the morning sunlight. “You said you were interested in talking about a particular book.”
“Yes, I am. As I told you, I’m the publicist for a television show.”
“You didn’t tell me which show,” he said.
“It’s The Lunch Club.”
“Oh, the Maxine Robinson show! Well then, I know which book you’re interested in. That’s all you had to tell me. You want to know about Satan’s Sisters.”
Lizette almost choked on her coffee when she heard the title. Did he really say Satan’s Sisters? That was the name of Missy’s book? Oh God, Maxine’s head was going to spin like in The Exorcist when she heard that. Lizette tried to play off her shock, to pretend she already kn
ew the book’s title.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Lizette said, aiming for breezy nonchalance.
Martin laughed. “Yeah, that book is pretty outrageous. But I know we have high hopes for that title. The preorders have been through the roof. I think we’re supposed to be shipping like two hundred thousand to Barnes and Noble alone. That means it’s sure to debut on the New York Times list in the first week. It’s going to be explosive when it hits.”
With every word he said, Lizette’s heart felt like it inched higher up her throat. Words like “explosive” and “New York Times list” were exactly what she didn’t want to hear. She had to know what was in it; what did Martin consider explosive? Perhaps now was the time to dangle the sex card in front of him a little, let him know what was at stake.
“I’ve always thought it must be an exciting job, to be a lawyer at a publishing house,” she said, smiling warmly at him and sticking out her chest just a wee bit, enough to quickly draw his eyes downward. But again, his immediate reaction chastened her. Slowly, without drawing his attention, she pulled her chest back in. Why was she tripping? She was starting to get annoyed with herself. This was no time to pick a fight in her own head over sexual politics. If you’re going to play the damn vamp, she thought, then go ahead and do it right.
Martin matched her warm smile. He leaned in over the table, close enough that Lizette could smell his breath. He must have downed a whole pack of breath mints before he walked into the Starbucks. He had really nice teeth.
“Last year I worked on the book of that ex-CIA bigwig,” he said, his voice dropping conspiratorially. “There was some crazy shit in the original version. Like Tom Clancy shit that would make you want to pick up and move to another country.”
Lizette actually was interested in the political gossip. And she knew if she could get him talking about the stuff he wanted to impress her with, then moving over to Satan’s Sisters would be a cinch. “Oh yeah?” she said. “What was he like to work with?”
“He was very businesslike,” Martin said. “He wasn’t a monster or anything.” Then he leaned forward again. “But you could easily tell he could turn into Darth Vader if he wanted to. I think all the lawyers were a little scared to piss him off. One time we had to make him get rid of a particular passage about the lead-up to the war. We drew straws to see which of us would call him about it.”
“Who got the short straw?” Lizette said. “Was it you?”
Martin drew his hand across his face, like he was wiping his brow. “No, thank God it wasn’t me,” he said, grinning. “We were joking that if one of us got him pissed, he would order a drone to strike our parents’ house or something, or like have the CIA take out our grandma.”
Lizette laughed. “That’s hilarious,” she said. She reached out and let her hand casually linger on top of his. Martin noticed right away, but she could see him trying not to react. She fluttered her fingers a bit—it wasn’t exactly a stroke, but pretty close to one.
“You’re so interesting,” she said. She had meant to say “Your job is so interesting,” but at the last minute she changed it. God, how stupid was she sounding right now? She hoped it wasn’t too over-the-top silly. She was being about as transparent as cellophane. A guy would have to be an idiot to not see right through this, right?
Martin grinned. “So are you,” he said. The word “idiot” might as well have been printed on his forehead. “Interesting and beautiful,” he continued. “I mean, Tim told me you were hot, but he didn’t say you were this gorgeous.” Martin paused for a second. “So you and Tim used to go out, huh?”
Lizette wondered how much Tim had told the old horn dog about their relationship. It had been a long time; she wasn’t sure how protective Tim was of their old relationship these days—or of her.
“Yeah, it was pretty hot and heavy for a while,” she said. “You know those college days. Spending like all day in bed, devouring each other.” She looked up at Martin with a smile. But Martin wasn’t smiling. It looked like Martin was imagining.
Lizette continued, pushing it a little more, throwing her previous hesitation out the window. “I remember there were a couple of days there where we decided we wouldn’t even go to class because we didn’t want to get out of bed. The only time we even put clothes on was to go get some food in the dining hall. And the only reason we ate was so we could keep up our energy.”
Lizette almost wanted to laugh at the expression on Martin’s face. That’s probably what he looked like when he watched porn. Martin was in full fantasy mode now. Lizette knew it was a bit cruel, but now she was having fun.
“I think I learned so much about sex from my days with Tim,” she continued. “I learned what I liked, what I didn’t like.” She leaned forward with a giggle. “Although there wasn’t much that I didn’t like,” she said. “Tim was such a great lover. God, he turned me on so much.”
Lizette looked away, as if she were lost in memory. But she could still see Martin out of the corner of her eye. He looked like he was about to explode.
“You have any girlfriends like that in college?” she said, looking at him again with a sweet smile. She didn’t think she’d be able to tell any of her girlfriends about this encounter, especially Tricia, who was the dean of women at Brown University. They would all demand that she return her feminist card.
“Huh?” Martin said, realizing she had just asked him a question.
Lizette laughed. “Martin! What are you thinking about right now?” she said, smacking his hand.
Martin’s eyes were heavy now, like Lizette had just reached down and taken his dick out of his pants. She knew at that moment she could probably get him to walk across Broadway buck-naked if she wanted. Once again, she was shocked by how easy this was. No wonder women like Maxine and Shelly were so skilled at manipulating men—so many of these guys were about as perceptive as Rex the German shepherd that her family used to own when she was a little girl. Actually, that might be an insult to Rex.
“Damn!” he said, shaking his head. “I would give my left arm right now to turn back the clock ten years and put myself on the Yale campus so I could replace Tim.”
Lizette giggled. “Well, Martin, too bad no one has invented a time machine! It might be fun to go back to those Yale days.”
She wasn’t exactly telling him she would willingly spend days with him in bed, but she wasn’t denying it either. Martin was wide open, ready for Lizette to pounce. She rested her hand on top of his again. She saw him fidget in his seat. She wondered if he was fidgeting because he was hard. She leaned forward, knowing that her tits were probably sitting up on the table like an entrée. If Shelly Carter could see me now, she thought.
“Martin, you think you could help me? My job depends on it,” she said. That might have been the truth.
“What do you need?” he said, his voice a bit hoarse-sounding.
“I need to find out what’s in Missy Adams’s book,” she said. She stroked his hand now, being obvious about it. She wondered what her “Power of the Feminist” professor from Yale, Claudia Reiss, would think if she saw Lizette now. Professor Reiss had been a favorite, back in Lizette’s more radical days. But that was a long time ago.
“Well, I think I might be able to help you with that,” Martin said, his voice still hoarse.
Maybe, Lizette thought, she should call up Professor Reiss and suggest that she change the title of the course to “Power of the Pussy.”
Lizette gave Martin her sexiest, most suggestive smile. “That would be wonderful, Martin!” she said. “I would seriously owe you one!”
Lizette wondered if she would ever allow herself to spend a night with the horn dog. He was kinda cute. But after a performance like this one, she felt like she’d need Oscar-caliber acting skills to keep a straight face with this guy.
Martin turned over his hand so that he could hold hers. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Maybe we can have dinner in a week or so and I can give you a report on what I’
ve come up with.”
Lizette nodded vigorously. “I’d like that very much!” she said. My God, she thought, the things I do for this job.
HEATHER HAD BEEN CALLING Missy all weekend without any success. She was in full panic mode by the time Missy actually answered her cell phone on Monday.
“Missy! Is everything okay?” Heather said. She heard a deep sigh on the other end.
“Girl, these damn attorneys are driving me crazy!” Missy said in her heavy Southern drawl. Her drawl got heavier when she was tired or stressed. Maxine used to claim that it got heavier as soon as that red light came on, that Missy used the heavy accent to appeal to her conservative base.
“What attorneys?”
“These attorneys from Patterson and White,” Missy said. “They’ve had me in meetings for three days straight. I didn’t want to call you back when one of them was around and could overhear me, and then when I got home I was too tired to talk. I feel like I been talking for a week without stopping.”