Satan's Sisters

by Star Jones

  “Sir, can you please stand up?” the policeman said. Eric saw the open handcuffs in the officer’s hand. Where did those come from?

  Eric stood. He saw the American cameraman back up a step, probably to get a better angle.

  “Mr. Harlington, what do you have there in that bag? May we take a look?”

  Finch stepped forward and picked up Eric’s bag as his cameraman stepped up to get a good shot of the bag’s contents. Eric felt a panic race down his spine. Again he feared that he might piss—or worse—in his pants.

  “Please, Mr. Finch!” Eric said. The camera swung back to him. “Please, give me a break. I have two daughters at home myself. I would never do anything to hurt a young girl!”

  “In fact, you have twin daughters, age fourteen, do you not?” Finch asked. He opened the bag and carefully lifted out the video camera. “Were you planning to use this camera to film these two young girls, Mr. Harlington?”

  Eric dropped his head, sniffling and sobbing into his chest. It was a sickening sound, one that would soon be broadcast all across America and many other parts of the world. Eric Harlington was about to become the international poster child for the American tourist child molester.

  The dinner party was at comfortable cruising speed when Bill Murphy, the president of Patterson & White, finally arrived with his wife, a pretty, full-figured woman with lovely, bright auburn hair. Maxine let go a relieved sigh when she greeted him, glad that he hadn’t been scared away by the story on that ridiculous website. The other women in the room, including Maxine, immediately wondered whether Murph’s wife was sporting her natural hair color or the striking shade came courtesy of some high-priced salon. It was a sure bet that at least one of the women would have enough alcohol to find out before the evening was done.

  When one hosts a dinner party, there are several elements that must all come together like the perfect storm for it to be considered a success. Of course, Maxine called in her favorite chef, Herb Wilson, to design the menu. His famous Roasted Guinea Hen with Morel Mushrooms and Black Truffle Risotto with Lobster was sure to be a hit with this crowd. Chef Wilson’s French bistro, Dine, on the Upper East Side had become Maxine’s dinner place of choice for the last year. Wilson jumped at the chance to cater Maxine’s private dinner party mainly because he owed her for giving Dine that necessary high-end buzz that every restaurant needs to keep it popping. Daily Blossom’s over-the-top arrangements of Casablanca lilies decorated the main salon, dining room, and entry foyer, and as a special touch, the owner, Saundra Parks, had sent over a tiny bowl of gardenias for the powder room. Food, flowers, friends, and, of course, a fabulous hostess outfit—those were the necessities.

  In the fabulous-outfit category, Maxine didn’t disappoint. She chose a Givenchy black satin tuxedo with a lace camisole to set off the tone of the evening. Style, sex, power, and privilege . . . all conveyed in one little suit. At just under ten thousand dollars, it was actually one very expensive little suit.

  Maxine actually had butterflies. All her dinner parties were important, but this one was a matter of life or death. She never hosted a dinner just to be social—she thought those who sat around with friends shooting the shit were just wasting their time. She’d never admit to herself that she had no real friends who wanted to sit around and shoot the shit with her, so a dinner designed for duplicity was her choice for all social events.

  Tonight’s dinner put all of Maxine’s considerable skills to work. She could be engaging and witty without having to hold deep, substantive conversations with anyone. When you were a dinner party guest, often you’d find yourself trapped in a long-winded philosophical debate with some boring character whom you would normally not even give a passing glance on the street. Maxine loved being the center of attention, but she didn’t really like to allow people all up in her business. As the host, all eyes and ears were on her, but she controlled the circumstances and the level of intrusion. Sure, she couldn’t completely contain three dozen people roaming around her apartment, but she knew someone would have to be a social deviant to wander beyond the generally accepted dinner party boundaries—living room, dining room, maybe kitchen, maybe media center if the host had opened up that possibility, and, of course, bathroom. That was it. If you found yourself in any other room, you had crossed a line.

  Maxine swept her gaze across the room, surveying it with the precision of a keenly calibrated radar system. She was looking for empty glasses, forlorn guests, overheated conversation, or the inappropriately inebriated. That last one was crucial because a drunk guest could quickly wreck a party and send everyone fleeing. She had seen it happen more than once. It was Maxine’s job to keep the conversations light and funny, make sure everyone was comfortable, and have every person walking out the door at the end of the night feeling like they were the guest of honor. As the guests stood around in the living room and foyer, the chatter and the laughter filled the space with the noise of a fun time. Most of the guests were powerful white men and their pretty wives, two groups that Maxine had learned over the years to manipulate at will. She was looking for a signal from Mary Guiliani, her catering manager, that it was time to have the guests seated, but she saw that the woman was still speaking to Chef Wilson in the kitchen.

  Maxine spotted Jamie Sloan, president of a major recording label, who was standing off to the side by himself. “Hello, Jamie,” she said, approaching him wearing a big smile. When she had called him on Monday, Jamie had told her he was too busy to attend. But after about ten minutes, Jamie had changed his mind. Or rather, Maxine had changed it for him when she told him that the legendary singer Debra Henley would be attending—and that Debra was about to be released from her longtime contract with Sony. Like Barbra Streisand, Henley was still selling millions of records well into her later years. Maxine knew that it would be a huge coup for Jamie if he could convince Henley to join his label.

  “Hello, Maxine,” Jamie answered her. He wore a hint of a grimace on his face. Maxine knew why.

  “I just talked to Debra about five minutes ago,” Maxine said. “She wanted me to know she was running a little late. But I have you two sitting at the same table. I have your wife sitting next to her. I think the two of them would really hit it off. Let June work her magic. Okay, Jamie?”

  A smile of relief spread across Jamie’s face. “Thanks, Maxine,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know how you do it, but you never cease to amaze.”

  Maxine almost blushed. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the catering manager, motioning to her that dinner was ready.

  “Excuse me, Jamie,” Maxine said. “Looks like it’s time to eat.”

  Maxine cleared her throat. “Excuse me, everyone! Dinner is now being served. I have hosts in the dining room who will show everyone to their seats.”

  It had been part of Lizette’s job to give the five pretty young girls serving as hosts a briefing on what all the guests looked like, complete with headshots of each one. Maxine had noticed the young girls hovering around the edges of the room in their short black cocktail dresses, making sure that they had every person in the room down cold, all thirty-four guests. Maxine had moved her long dining room table out of the room and brought in five round tables that seated eight people each. Daily Blossom had hit it out of the park with the decor. Each table was covered with a beautiful beige tablecloth and a breathtaking centerpiece that featured long glass vases filled with water and lovely white and purple irises, submerged to give off the artsy effect of magnification.

  As the guests slowly filed into the dining room, Maxine saw movement out in the foyer. New guests had arrived. She could see that it was four people, although Debra Henley and her latest boyfriend were the only guests who were missing. As she got closer, she saw that it was indeed Debra Henley and a gorgeous man about twenty years her junior. But it was also Shelly Carter and Whitney Harlington. Maxine scowled. Those impudent bitches had crashed her party—after she had told them they couldn’t come!
Maxine was extremely pissed, but it was her job not to let it show.

  “Debra!” Maxine said, ignoring Shelly and Whitney and gliding over to the aging pop diva, who had once been called “the voice of her generation.” Debra glittered in a sparkly white dress and gaudy jeweled earrings. They exchanged genuine hugs. Debra and Maxine had become friendly years ago, after Debra had sat for an hour-long interview with Maxine. Debra had just been nominated for a Grammy for her multiplatinum album. Maxine, the daughter of a sharecropper from Texas, and Debra, the daughter of a shoeshine man from Brooklyn, really hit it off and had remained friends ever since. Though they didn’t talk all that often anymore, whenever they were around each other they reverted back to the junior high school antics of the popular girls in the lunchroom, giggling and passing whispered secrets back and forth.

  “Maxine, you look fabulous!” Debra said.

  Maxine spun around to give Debra the 360-degree look at her outfit. “It’s Givenchy. You like?”

  Debra grinned. “Yes, I love!” She removed her light coat and did a spin herself. She had gotten a little thicker around the middle, but Debra still had the body and the legs, especially the legs, that had helped sell tens of millions of records.

  “We’re just about to eat, so you should go in and find your seat,” Maxine said. “I think you’re sitting next to Jamie Sloan.”

  Debra gave Maxine a knowing grin. “Maxine, what naughtiness are you up to?”

  Maxine shrugged. “What?” she said, feigning innocence. “It’s just a coincidence.”

  Debra shook her head. “Maxine, you’re bad,” she said as she sauntered away, linking her arm with the “boyfriend” she hadn’t even bothered to introduce to Maxine.

  Maxine pivoted and instantly turned her attention to Shelly and Whitney, who had been standing by and watching the Debra Henley scene with more than a little trepidation, though they also tried not to let it show. Crashing the party had been Shelly’s idea, but it had been Whitney’s idea for them to stop at a nearby bar and down a few drinks before they came upstairs. The drinks were obviously for courage, but neither of them verbalized it. Whitney had been thoroughly spooked by the story on chattercrazy about someone being fired. Though she had initially been giddy about the excitement of crashing Maxine’s party, it took a whole lot of convincing by Shelly to get Whitney to accompany her after that story ran. After the alcohol, Whitney had gotten a bit looser and more carefree on the elevator coming up, even talking a little shit about how Maxine had no right to keep them away, but now, confronted with the largeness of Maxine, in her tuxedo elegance, surrounded by the stars and the home, all the trappings of her fabulousness, their courage was quickly slipping away.

  “Okay, I’ll let you stay, since the alternative is so unpleasant,” Maxine whispered to them between her clenched teeth. “But don’t think you got over on somebody!” As she began to walk away, she added, “As you both well know, I have a looong memory.”

  Shelly and Whitney looked at each other. Whitney felt her heart leap into her throat. Shelly shrugged nonchalantly. They saw Maxine talking to one of the hosts and pointing at them and then at one of the tables in the dining room. She put Shelly at a table with Arnold Ross, president of another publishing house, one of Patterson & White’s rivals. With a gleam in her eye, she put Whitney at a table with . . . Riley Dufrane and his wife, Virginia. When Whitney sat down, she saw Riley’s eyes widen. For some reason, Whitney wasn’t upset or anxious about the seating. In fact, she found that, curiously, she was feeling a bit horny—no doubt spurred on by the two Cosmopolitans she had downed fifteen minutes earlier. She was also amused by Maxine’s attempt to make her uncomfortable by seating her here. She was feeling a bit uncomfortable, but it was because of her job security, not because of Riley and Virginia. She glanced over at Shelly and saw that she was already engrossed in a deep conversation with the man sitting to her right, whom Whitney thought she recognized as a publishing executive. Whitney shook her head. Shelly is so damn charming, she could sell snowsuits in Tahiti.

  Maxine finally sat down at her table in the center of the room and went to work on Murph, who was sitting three seats to her left—she didn’t want to be too obvious and seat him right next to her. He was engrossed in a conversation with Ted Koppel, the former host of Nightline. Maxine happened to know that Koppel was looking for a publisher for a book he was writing. She decided she would wait a while before she gave Murph the Maxine Robinson full-court press.

  At Whitney’s table, Whitney wanted to laugh as she watched Riley’s wife give Maxine lingering, longing stares. It was well-known to everyone at The Lunch Club that Virginia Dufrane was desperate to be seated on the couch. Whitney thought the woman was insufferably dull and vapid, and Riley had promised her that he would join the twentysomething cast of MTV’s The Real World and kiss a boy before he added his wife to the couch of The Lunch Club. Now that a seat apparently was up for grabs, Whitney wondered if Ginny had been torturing him for the job. Hell, Ginny was so desperate she might even have broken down and given Riley a blow job. After the entrées were served, Whitney planned on luring Riley to a spare room in the house and fucking his brains out. She kept making eye contact with him, but he seemed to be avoiding her eyes, purposely engaging in conversations with everyone else at the table. Whitney tried to tell herself that it was no big deal, but she was starting to get a little annoyed with him.

  “How is your soup, Whitney?” Riley finally asked her from across the table. At the mention of her name, she saw Riley’s wife look up at her. Whitney smiled at Virginia, who smiled back, her lips stretched across her teeth in a grin that was about as fake as a three-dollar bill.

  “It’s very good, Riley,” Whitney said. “I love French onion.” When her eyes met Riley’s, he gave her a quick, almost imperceptible wink. It was the same wink he gave her when they were together, often when they were lying in each other’s arms and coming back down to earth after another gut-busting orgasm. The wink sent a tremor of pleasure down her spine. That was all she needed; she knew he was on the same page as she, that it wouldn’t take long for them to meet up in one of the empty rooms in Maxine’s vast apartment, some space that hadn’t seen a human form since the last time Architectural Digest was there.

  By the time the entrées were served, Maxine had gotten Murph to open up just a little about Satan’s Sisters—enough for him to tell her he didn’t feel comfortable talking about it, if that was okay with her. Maxine smiled sweetly at him, but she spat a thousand curses at him under her breath. After all, the whole reason for this party, for the tens of thousands of dollars she had already spent, was to get Murph to assure her that she didn’t have anything to worry about. She knew she would have to take another run at him before the night was over.

  Riley excused himself from the table, just as Chef Wilson’s Vanilla Panna Cotta with Spring Berries was being served, telling his wife he had to make a phone call and find a bathroom. She nodded at him and went back to her conversation with the wife of a well-known Hollywood producer. Whitney amused herself by guessing that perhaps Virginia now had her sights set on starring in a Hollywood movie if The Lunch Club gambit didn’t work out. Whitney thought the perfect vehicle for her would be the movie version of Jackie Collins’s Poor Little Bitch Girl, if one were ever made. Whitney looked up and saw a very handsome, distinguished-looking older black man standing in the corner of the room, gazing at Maxine. She thought she recognized him as Maxine’s butler—he was wearing a black tux and the white gloves of a butler—but he certainly wasn’t looking at Maxine like she was his employer. For a second she wondered if Maxine was getting it on with her butler, but just as quickly the thought was gone.

  When she had reached the count of fifty in her head, Whitney slipped away from the table, though she didn’t even bother to excuse herself. She hadn’t started up any conversations anyway. As she left the room, she saw Maxine glance in her direction, pausing from a deep discussion with Murph. Whitney wondered if Maxine h
ad gotten what she wanted out of this party—that is, enough information about Missy’s book to put all of their minds at ease. But Whitney wasn’t thinking about Missy at the moment—her mind was focused almost exclusively on Riley. She hoped she would have an easy time finding him. She wandered down a hall, under the guise of looking for the bathroom. As she walked past the curving staircase leading up to the second floor, Whitney heard a noise above her. She looked up. It was Riley, motioning for her to come upstairs with him. Whitney glanced around her, then sprinted up the steps, as quickly and as quietly as her five-inch stilettos would take her.

  “Let’s go find a good spot,” Riley said into her ear as he pulled her into his arms. When she pressed her body against his, Whitney could already feel the bulge in his pants. Apparently, Riley was as excited as she was about this scandalous interlude. They held hands and looked around the deserted second floor. They opened up a door to a grand spectacle of a room, with heavy burgundy drapes all around, a delightful four-poster bed covered with a matching burgundy bedspread featuring a dark brocade design, an antique desk off in one corner, and a plush burgundy sofa in the other corner.

  “It looks like her master bedroom,” Riley said. He pulled her away from the room. Whitney wanted to stay for a minute and look around some more. The wicked new bad girl in Whitney wanted to drag Riley over to that brocade bedspread, strip off his clothes, and impale herself on him, right there in the middle of Maxine’s bedroom. That would be like a dog peeing in the middle of the floor to show his displeasure. But she knew Riley would not be a willing partner. Shoot, she’d have to tie him down in order to pull that one off. Hmm, they hadn’t tried any bondage yet. Tying Riley down might be interesting.