by Star Jones
“Let’s get as far from the master bedroom as we can,” he said in a whisper. “Let’s find the last room she’d ever enter.”
Riley pulled her all the way to the opposite end of the long, darkened hall. Whitney wondered how long they had before somebody got suspicious. Riley had cleverly used the phone call excuse. It would be a long time before Virginia came looking for her network president husband to interrupt a phone call. Riley pushed open the door to a room in the far corner of the hall. It looked like the room of a teenager. Was this the room of the son who had killed himself? The thought gave Whitney a chill. She quickly pushed the thought out of her mind.
“What do you think?” Riley said.
“It looks fine to me,” Whitney said, already yanking off his dark dinner jacket. She looked around in the dim light and saw a sizable walk-in closet. “Let’s go in the closet,” she said, leading Riley by the arm. He paused to close the door to the room, sealing them off in darkness.
Once they were inside the closet, they attacked each other like two ravenous animals. Within seconds, most of their clothing had been removed. Whitney pulled down her panties in a frenzy, desperate to feel her lover inside of her. She was tempted to drop to her knees and take him inside of her mouth, but that temptation was overshadowed by her yearning for him to fill her up. After he had tugged off his pants, Riley turned Whitney around and bent her over. She braced her hands against the wall to hold herself up as she spread her legs to open up wide for him. Because they were in the dark, the anticipation and mystery made every move more intense, more dramatic. Whitney held her breath and waited. In an instant, Riley reached down and forcefully shoved his penis deep inside of her, amazingly driving it in all the way with just one motion, like it had been guided by a magnet. Whitney sucked in a mouthful of air so strongly that the sound would have been frightening to anyone listening in. Whitney felt as if she had been stabbed, the sensation of him entering her was so severe. As he slammed in and out of her, Whitney’s head was spinning; she was wild, free, uninhibited. She wanted to scream out, to tell the world how good it felt, how much her entire being was filled by this man, how much she loved every fiber of his body, every cell in his thick, engorged penis. She heard Riley’s jerky, spasmodic grunts, which matched his thrusts. He had never sounded so animalistic to her. For just a second she worried about him. He was no youngster—it would not be a good look for this man to have a heart attack while buried inside of her in one of Maxine Robinson’s closets. But as he reached around his hand and squeezed her breasts through the sheer black bra she was wearing, she knew she had no need to worry about Riley Dufrane. He was doing just fine.
“Oh God, Whitney, I think I’m coming!” Riley said in her ear.
“Wait!” Whitney hissed through clenched teeth. “I want to come with you!”
She rammed back against him so hard that he almost slipped out of her. He increased the force of his thrusts until they almost resembled two souls in mortal combat. Slap, slap, his thighs smacking her cheeks approximated the sound of waves crashing against rocks. Together, thankfully, they reached their destination.
“I’m there!” Whitney said. “Please, Riley, come with me!”
“Ooooh God!” Riley howled quietly.
“Yessss!” Whitney answered him.
Slowly, they came down, balloons deflating, back to the soft carpet of the closet. They sank together onto the floor, feeling shoes and sneakers beneath them. Surely they would leave behind some lovely gooey goodies. When her heart had stopped thrumming wildly in her chest, Whitney finally was able to speak. But instead of talk, she did a dead-on impersonation of a panting, chirping dog. Ever since she was a little girl, Whitney had been gifted at doing animal impressions. She still did them all the time for her children and family members. Friends would sometimes make her stand up at parties and take special requests. She heard Riley’s soft chuckle. That wasn’t the first time he had heard her panting dog after sex.
“I think that was the best ever,” Whitney said.
Riley didn’t answer her. “Don’t you think so, Riley?” Whitney said. “Don’t you think that was the best ever?”
More silence.
“Whitney, I have something I need to tell you,” Riley said finally. If she wasn’t mistaken, that sounded like solemnity in his voice. What’s about to happen? Is he breaking up with me? she wondered. How could your secret lover break up with you?
“My God, Riley, you’re scaring me. What is it?”
She heard Riley take a deep breath. Her pulse quickened. Whatever it was, she was going to brace herself and not overreact. She clenched both of her fists.
“I got a phone call this afternoon,” he said. “It came from the president of All Cable News, Steve Rucker. It was about your husband, Eric.”
“Eric? Why in the world would he call you about Eric?” Eric. She hadn’t thought about him in at least two days.
“Apparently, he got a call from the producers of Primeline, letting him know that your husband had been caught in a Primeline sting. I think it was in Prague. He was arrested for soliciting minors for child prostitution. They got him on tape. Steve said he had paid thousands of dollars to spend the night with two girls in the Czech Republic. He thought he was getting two sisters, thirteen and fourteen years old. He paid the first half of the money when he was still in the United States. Steve said it looks like this wasn’t the first time Eric has done this. He called me out of courtesy to you. But he said Primeline is airing the whole episode on Tuesday night. I’m really sorry, Whitney.”
After a while, Riley’s voice sounded to Whitney like it was coming at her through a wind tunnel, as if there were so much violent air whipping at her face that she couldn’t even concentrate on the words. She felt like maybe she was falling down into something, maybe a deep, narrow well. Maybe there would be a splash when she reached the bottom. But then words started coming back to her. Jumping out at her. Child prostitution. Arrested. Thousands of dollars. Two sisters. Thirteen and fourteen. Primeline. Primeline. Primeline. Tuesday night. Eric. Sorry, Whitney.
The tremor started in her belly. By the time it hit her throat it was a full-bore Technicolor scream, the entire contents of her belly gushing out onto the floor of the closet. The brunt of the vomit just missed Riley’s leg, but he felt little specks fall on the hairs of his legs. He jumped to his feet and fumbled around the wall, looking for a light switch. He found one and flipped it on. The sight that filled his eyes was enough to terrorize him for the rest of his life. Whitney looked like she had just been through an exorcism. Vomit dripped from her mouth and her face held a look of such tortured anguish and fear that he was almost tempted to run.
“Whitney?” he said tentatively.
She shook her head slowly back and forth. Finally she spoke.
“My God. My God,” she said softly. “But what about my children?”
She pushed herself up from the floor and pulled her dress back over her head, not even bothering to fix her bra or straighten her panties. Riley gingerly stepped over to her and fixed her clothing. He pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and tenderly cleaned the vomit from her mouth. With his fingers, he softly combed down her blond locks until there was a semblance of order to them. He pulled her into his arms.
“I’m sorry, Whitney,” he said.
But suddenly she pushed him away. Hard.
“You bastard,” she said, looking him in the eye. “You knew about this all along, but you didn’t tell me until after you fucked me?”
She drew back her hand and violently smacked him across his left cheek. He felt the sting, but he didn’t raise a hand to block it. He staggered backward.
“I’m sorry, Whitney,” he said again, reaching out a hand that she ignored.
Without even another glance in his direction, Whitney walked out of the closet. She moved steadily, but her face held the deadened expression of someone who had just seen her mother’s lifeless body in a casket. Riley made sure
his clothing was straight, then he followed her down the stairs. When Whitney came into the dining room, the guests had moved on to the dessert. The party had entered the raucous stage. Clearly everyone was having a good time. Maxine was surveying the room with a smile on her face—until she saw Whitney. Maxine pressed her hand against her chest. Whitney looked like a walking zombie. She popped up from the table and rushed over to Whitney.
“What happened?” she said. Whitney stared in Maxine’s light brown eyes but she didn’t say a word. Maxine was spooked by Whitney’s dead eyes. Did the woman just see a ghost in Maxine’s home?
“I’m sorry, Maxine, I have to go,” Whitney said woodenly.
By this time, most of the guests had noticed the commotion and had stopped talking to take it all in. When she saw the fear on Maxine’s face, Shelly ran over to Whitney.
“What happened to you, Whitney?” Shelly asked.
But Whitney just shook her head and headed toward the foyer, with Shelly and Maxine in tow. She didn’t even pause at the door. She opened it and disappeared. Gone. Just like that. When Maxine returned to the room, her eyes settled on Riley. Maybe he had done something to her. Something bad.
“Riley, why don’t you tell them what happened?”
The voice was that of Riley’s wife, Virginia Dufrane. Her words were a little slurred. Ginny had had too many gin and tonics. Riley’s head snapped around and he stared at Ginny as if he wanted to shoot her.
“Come on, tell them,” Ginny said. “I heard that call you got from Steve. Tell them about Eric.”
Apparently, Ginny had been listening in during the call. Riley cursed under his breath. He was shocked by his wife’s indiscretions. The woman had no class. But that was immaterial now. Her words were out there and couldn’t be taken back. Every eye in the room was on Riley, waiting.
Riley cleared his throat. “Well, apparently Whitney’s husband, Eric, has been arrested by police in Prague for child prostitution.”
There were loud gasps around the room. But Riley wasn’t finished yet.
“I got a phone call this afternoon from the president of ACN. He said the whole thing was captured by the cameras from Primeline. Drew Finch was there as well. The entire disgusting mess will be airing on Primeline. On Tuesday.”
There was another gasp, maybe a second of silence, then all at once the room exploded in about twenty simultaneous conversations, the sentiments veering from pity to utter revulsion. Maxine was horrified by Riley’s story, but she felt another thought coming on. This was horrible for Whitney, yes, but maybe not so bad for The Lunch Club. The ratings would go through the roof. And Whitney would have to leave, after all this mess. So in the end she’d free up Whitney’s slot also. Two birds with one stone. She’d have to send Eric the perv a bouquet of flowers.
Maxine tried mightily to revive her party after Riley’s bombshell, but there really was no recovery from that. And honestly her heart wasn’t in it, anyway. She was too busy plotting in her mind how she would use this. She saw Shelly hemmed up in a corner with Murph. Wow, she had forgotten to take another run at Murph to get some intel on Missy’s book. Murph seemed to be enjoying his time with Shelly. What was that girl up to now? Was it possible that the chick had crashed Maxine’s party and outfoxed her, right here under Maxine’s nose? Maxine refused to believe something so preposterous. But she did wonder what Shelly was up to.
When they were done, Shelly took a step backward and let Murph return to his auburn-haired wife. The two of them had been deep into a conversation about Shelly’s remarkable career and her path from Harvard Business School to Milan runways. Murph was so taken with her that he had offered her a two-book deal, right there on the spot. A steamy memoir that didn’t pull any punches about all the orgies and drugs she did during her days in Milan, followed by an uplifting inspirational book for twentysomethings on how to be fabulous. They hadn’t discussed money, but Murph had indicated that Shelly would be well compensated for her efforts. And he also had one other thing to tell her.
“Tell Ms. Robinson that the Missy Adams book is going to come after her pretty hard, so she better get ready to duck,” he had said with a devilish grin.
Shelly glanced over at Maxine and saw the queen bee staring her down. Shelly turned away, thinking to herself that giving Maxine a heads-up about Missy’s book was the last thing she wanted to do. Let the bitch sweat.
IT WAS IN THE backseat of the taxi on her way back home that Whitney finally released the emotion that had been building inside. After she gave the driver her address, she slowly sat back in the seat, closed her eyes, and let the tears flow. Once they started she couldn’t stop them. For blocks and blocks she cried and cried. The cabbie kept checking the rearview mirror, to make sure he wasn’t going to have a scene on his hands. New York City cabbies didn’t like scenes. As long as it stayed at sobbing and tears, he was okay. He had seen plenty of crying in his cab over the years. And he had learned that when they cried, you don’t try to stop them or help them or even pretend that you notice them. You just let them cry.
Whitney couldn’t fathom the horrible misdeed that Eric had done to her and to his children. When your father is broadcast to the entire world as a child-molesting pervert, how do you ever recover from that? How many years and dollars of therapy did her husband just hang around his children’s necks? And the girls were the same age as the twins? Whitney didn’t even want to take the next step, but logic forced her to consider it—had Eric ever done anything to Bailey and Ashley, touched them inappropriately? She’d fucking kill him. If he touched Bailey and Ashley in any way, she’d rip his heart out of his body with her bare hands and offer it as a sacrifice to the gods, like that scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. She couldn’t imagine that her strong-willed girls would have let something like that happen without screaming bloody murder, but she was sure many mothers had said the same things in homes where the fathers had been molesting the girls for years. After all, Whitney was a longtime journalist; she had seen her share of child molestation stories, some of them so horrific that as a mother she had to immediately block them from her memory so that they wouldn’t haunt her. She knew that she would be forced to have a very serious and uncomfortable conversation with her girls when she got home and she hated Eric all the more for putting their family through this.
But as she rocked back and forth in the back of the cab, Whitney was also dealing with another overwhelming emotion: guilt. No matter how hard she tried to get around it, she couldn’t escape the fact that this had all been going on while she was running into another man’s arms—a married man’s—as often as she could. While she was rushing from one liaison to the next with Riley Dufrane, her family had been crumbling all around her. Her husband had been nurturing some deep obsession for underage girls and she had been completely clueless about it. They had once been so close, so intimate, that she and Eric could practically read each other’s minds. What had happened to that? Had she played a role in the changes her marriage had endured? Of course she had noticed over the last few years when they had started to drift apart—but a part of her had welcomed the new distance because it gave her a chance to indulge her passion for Riley, thinking that the wild sex and intense desires were coming to her freely, without a price. How tragically wrong she had been! The price was astoundingly high—as a matter of fact, she might have paid the ultimate price: the permanent dissolution of her family. She vowed that, although her marriage was certainly over, she would now spend all of her time tending to the needs of her kids. Her only fear was finding out just how great those needs were going to be.
As Whitney struggled through the guilt, the fear, and the shame, her phone rang. She saw that it came from Bailey’s cell phone. When she answered it, all she could hear was screaming.
“Bailey? Is that you, honey?” Whitney said. The call had put her into mother mode, meaning she had willed her voice to be calm, but inside she was dying.
“Mom!” It was Ashley, screaming a
t her through Bailey’s phone. “They’re taking all of Dad’s stuff! The police or the FBI or whoever are taking all of his files!”
“Calm down, Ashley!” Whitney said. “I can’t hear you if you scream, honey. Explain to me exactly what’s happening there.”
“Okay, okay.” Whitney could hear her trying to control her breathing. “The doorbell rang,” Ashley continued. “Mrs. Dooley answered it. It was a whole bunch of men who said they were from the FBI. They handed her some papers. They said they had a search warrant. We told them they couldn’t come inside until our parents were home, but they said they had the authority to search the home if Mrs. Dooley was our babysitter. They asked where Dad’s office was. I didn’t want to tell them, but Mrs. Dooley showed them where it was. She said if we didn’t tell them, then they would mess up the whole house. Mrs. Dooley was crying the whole time. They started dragging out all of Dad’s files and his computer! They’re still taking stuff out. Are you coming home?”
“Yes, I’m almost there, baby,” Whitney said. “Calm down, okay? And can you put Mrs. Dooley on the phone?”
Mrs. Dooley was an older woman who lived down the street and had been babysitting the girls since they were toddlers. She was a kind, gentle Irishwoman, but she was easily spooked. Whitney couldn’t even imagine the emotional trauma that this must’ve been causing for Mrs. Dooley, with an FBI raid happening on her watch. Whitney looked up and saw that she was only a few blocks from their Upper West Side town house. Whatever earthquakes were rumbling through her soul right now and crushing her psyche, she had to present the image of the calm, in-control mommy as soon as she walked in that house. She had to be strong to help her girls and her two sons get through this—or at least emerge as unscathed as possible after their father became an international symbol of a degenerate. That last thought made Whitney close her eyes again and rest her head on the back of the seat. Waves of shame flowed through her. Deeper, more pungent shame than she had ever felt in her life. Then it hit her. The impact of Eric’s perversion on her personal life was apparent, but dear Lord . . . she hadn’t even begun to process how this news would affect her public life. She was a celebrity, a woman who now made a very good living sitting on a couch and talking about everybody else’s business—though that was the part of the job that had always made her a bit queasy. How brutal she knew the gossip and news machines would be with this news of the downfall of Miss High-and-Mighty Whitney Harlington. It was going to be ugly. The Internet was the greatest accomplishment of the twentieth century, but it was also the most dangerous. When you want to get news out about an issue or a cause, social media could run circles around traditional media, but there are trade-offs. Truth rarely mattered and gossip and rumor were given the same amount of space as actual facts. Plus, the bloggers could be relentless sharks when they smelled celebrity blood in the water, because taking the famous down was always going to be the sport du jour.