Satan's Sisters

by Star Jones

  MAXINE SAT BEHIND HER desk after Thursday’s show, her eyes closed, her heart breaking. She was wondering what she could do to get William to come back to her. She had been calling him all week, but he had stopped answering his cell phone. Maxine was beginning to unravel at the thought that another loved one had been driven away by her unbridled ambition. Her massive apartment was so empty without him that it hurt. She didn’t know what she could do to lure William back at this point. She knew he loved her, but it was her character that he had always questioned. Was this the end?

  She heard a knock on her door. “Who is it?” Maxine called out, extremely annoyed at the interruption.

  “It’s Shelly.”

  What did Shelly want? Maxine couldn’t imagine.

  “Come in.”

  Shelly came in and sat down opposite Maxine. She knew how much Maxine hated small talk, so she was certain her best move was to get straight to the point.

  “I have to talk to you about something,” Shelly said. Maxine waited, expressionless. Shelly cleared her throat. “I wanted to, uh, tell you that I’m leaving the show. I got offered another show. It’s a reality show. Well, kind of. I will be traveling the world, in each episode bringing a celebrity along with me, to find them a potential mate in another country. The idea is to try to bridge the growing cultural gaps in this country, to show that love can happen anywhere, between anybody. I can use my fluency in French, and all the contacts I made around the world when I was modeling. Of course we’re not going to try to hook the celebrities up with garbage men or strippers or anything like that. They are going to be worthy partners. We haven’t finalized the name of it yet, but it’s tentatively being called ‘Alien Love’ or ‘In Search of Love.’ I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for me in the years I’ve been here. You have been a fantastic teacher. And I thought this would make things easier for you, you know, since you don’t have to fire anybody.”

  Maxine should have been surprised, but she wasn’t. Once she had had the chance to see Shelly operate, she was surprised the woman had lasted on the couch as long as she had. Maxine wanted to dislike Shelly, to attack her ambition, but she always found herself to be somewhat charmed by her—though she would never let Shelly know that. But that was the personal part. As for the show, Maxine wasn’t going to miss the scene-stealing diva, and she didn’t think her audience would either. She scoffed at the ridiculous-sounding show that Shelly had described to her. She gave it six weeks before the network pulled the plug on that mess.

  “Well, I have one thing to say,” Maxine said. “For heaven’s sakes, anything but ‘Alien Love’!”

  Lizette felt like a character in a bad spy movie as she waited down the street from the Patterson & White building for Martin Peters. He said once they made eye contact, they would duck into a nearby coffee shop and do the exchange. Lizette closely watched the street traffic through the safety of her sunglasses, which shielded the frantic movement of her eyeballs. Finally, she saw Martin emerge from the building and head in her direction in a long, loping gait. He carried a backpack and was young enough to resemble a college student in the big city perhaps on an internship. His face spread into a big grin when he spotted her. Now that Channing was out of the picture, Lizette was actually free to let Martin have his way with her. Of course, she had no intention of doing such a thing, but she kind of enjoyed toying with the thought. She wondered what Martin would do if he knew that she had actually daydreamed about what he would be like in bed.

  “Hey, baby!” he said jovially when he reached her. Martin was a genuinely sweet guy, Lizette had decided. Not the most ethical lawyer in the world, but a nice guy nonetheless. As she smiled back at him, Lizette recalled Tim’s description of Martin as a “horn dog.” Somehow, she had conveniently let that slip her mind. She had to remind herself that she had no patience for horn dogs. “Let’s go in that deli down the street,” Martin said.

  They walked down the block in silence. Lizette wanted to say something, to at least thank him for taking this grave risk, but she didn’t want to break the secretive spy mood. Martin held the door open for her and they slipped into the deli. She followed him to a corner, behind the potato chip stand.

  “You know I could get fired or disbarred for this, right? So under no circumstances can you ever let on how you got the manuscript,” he said, as he pulled out a huge stack of white pages still faintly warm from the copier and held together with an oversized rubber band. “Practically half of New York had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to work on this book.” Lizette nodded. She took the stack from him and slipped it into her brown Furla purse, one of the largest purses she owned. She had just gotten it two weeks earlier from ideeli.com, another of her discount designer websites.

  “So, you think you can find time for dinner with a poor schmuck like me?” Martin asked. Lizette nodded again and gave him a smile. Dinner was the least she could do, since he was risking his career for her.

  “Okay, good,” Martin said, returning her smile. “I’ll give you a call.”

  Lizette nodded again. Martin nodded back, then they both took off in opposite directions, acting the part of the slinky spies. As she headed over to The Lunch Club offices, Lizette was torn: should she bring the manuscript to Maxine right away and earn her way back into her good graces, or could she risk keeping it over the weekend to read it herself before she handed it over? Lizette had seen the way Maxine had been looking at her lately. The woman appeared to be disgusted by the sight of Lizette. Lizette wondered if Maxine was busily collecting publicist résumés to replace her. But her curiosity was killing her. The manuscript was burning a hole in her bag. She wanted to find a park bench somewhere and dive into it.

  By four o’clock, Lizette had decided that she would read the manuscript over one night, then bring it to Maxine on Saturday, acting as if she had just gotten her hands on it. Despite Maxine’s feelings about her, Lizette was proud of herself. She had actually managed to get the damn thing in her hands in just the couple of weeks since Heather Hope had dropped her bombshell. If she got fired, maybe she could become an investigative reporter.

  As soon as she stepped into her little junior one-bedroom on West Sixty-ninth Street, Lizette ripped off her clothes and plopped onto the couch wearing a T-shirt and panties and clutching a tall glass of Diet Coke on ice. Lizette was excited to finally be able to delve into this book that had become the bane of her existence. She expected to skim it until she came upon the juicy parts, but within fifteen minutes it was clear that the book was much too compelling to skim.

  Lizette pulled an all-nighter for the first time since college, making sure she read every word of Missy’s book, stopping only to pee and refill her glass. When she was done, she carefully placed the pages on the coffee table next to her and settled back into the couch, lost in deep thought. Her emotions were jumbled, mixed with outrage over what Maxine and Missy had done to that poor man and a surprising fondness for Missy for finally having the guts to tell the real story. Her love story with the young black teenager was moving, making Lizette long for a relationship like the one Missy described. Missy clearly had harbored a great deal of anger toward Maxine when she wrote it; her rage came off the pages in waves during the section about her last days on The Lunch Club. Lizette was aghast at Missy’s and Maxine’s heartlessness when it came to the man in prison. Missy had allowed that man to sit there for years, and Maxine was willing to keep it under wraps as long as she got what she wanted from Missy. Missy was obviously tortured about her decision and the remorse showed on the pages of her book. But the book also was a shocking display of Maxine’s true nature. Lizette wondered if Maxine would ever be able to recover her good name—but then again, perhaps this would just enhance her reputation for cold-bloodedness, which wasn’t necessarily a bad reputation to have in the television industry.

  Missy clearly had sources for the rest of the info in the book and was eager to portray the set and staff of The Lunch Club as a veritable soa
p opera of lies, deceit, and illicit affairs. Lizette winced when she came across the section about Whitney’s affair with Riley Dufrane. Considering everything that Whitney had been through over the last week, Lizette thought the timing was unfortunate—but, on the positive side, at least she no longer had a marriage to worry about destroying. But Riley was another story.

  Lizette was stopped cold when she came across the pages recounting Josh Howe’s affair with Callie Sherman. Callie didn’t get artificially inseminated after all, but had had Josh’s baby—and Josh didn’t even know it! Lizette shook her head in mock pain. Wow, that was going to go over like a hand grenade on the set. Not only would Josh’s marriage probably implode, but Lizette expected that his job would probably be snatched from him too. But then again, Riley Dufrane might be too busy—and too compromised—to bother with punishing Josh and Callie. That’s if Riley emerged still in possession of his own job.

  Lizette jumped up from the couch and immediately headed for the shower. She felt gross, and so sleepy that she feared she might collapse under the falling water. But before she crawled into her bed and passed out, she knew she needed to get the manuscript in Maxine’s hands. After she got dressed, she called Maxine’s cell and told her she was on her way over with Missy’s manuscript. Maxine sounded strangely distant, like she didn’t really hear what Lizette had said.

  Lizette had never set foot inside of Maxine’s home before, though she had seen plenty of pictures of it in magazines. After having just left her tiny apartment, which could fit comfortably into Maxine’s front foyer, Lizette suddenly was transported into another world, the one where the other New York lived. The New York that hovered like an untouchable cloud over the regular folks who walked the streets and rode the subway every day. Lizette, because of the nature of her job, sometimes was allowed a glimpse into this other world, brief opportunities to ascend into the cloud and see what wealth and power in the big city could bring, but she actually lived far below it, down on the grimy streets with everybody else. She was told to wait in Maxine’s living room until the grande dame decided she was ready to see her. Lizette swept her eyes around the room in amazement. Every tiny detail was worthy of awe, from the honest-to-God authentic Picasso hanging on the wall to the friggin’ Fletcher Capstan table with Ming vase sitting smack dab in the middle of the foyer. Lizette could hardly believe that such a magical place existed in the same city she lived in, that someone she spent most every day around came back home to such stunning opulence. If Lizette’s home looked like this, she’d never want to leave. Why Maxine continued to come to The Lunch Club every day and put up with the bullshit of life among the proletariat when clearly, as a full-fledged member of the bourgeoisie, she had more money and influence than any person could spend or need in a lifetime, would never cease to amaze Lizette. Lizette thought to herself that Maxine will probably be looking for the red light when they close the lid to her coffin. Maybe that’s what made Maxine who she was. Relentless, unabashed ambition. Lizette both envied it and pitied it at the same time.

  When Maxine swept into the room, wearing a flowing hand-stitched gold dressing gown, Lizette got an even bigger shock. Maxine wasn’t wearing a wig or a turban. Atop her head was a short, round, salt-and-pepper Afro that looked like a glorious crown on top of her head. Lizette thought that Maxine had never looked so beautiful. The real hair gave her face a natural, glowing grace and magnificence that Lizette had never seen before. It made her look easily fifteen years younger. If Maxine could see what Lizette saw at that moment, she would never wear another wig for the rest of her life.

  Maxine sat down opposite Lizette with what appeared to Lizette to be a pained expression. Lizette felt nervous and awkward, like it was her first visit to the principal’s office. Maxine stared at her but still seemed far away, just like she had sounded on the phone. Maxine was waiting for Lizette, but Lizette didn’t realize it. And besides, she was still so shocked to see Maxine’s real hair that she had forgotten for a moment why she was there in the first place.

  “Do you have something for me?” Maxine said to Lizette. Lizette rose from the couch and walked the ten feet between them, Maxine watching her closely every step of the way. Lizette felt like she was on some sort of strange stage, being observed by an unseen audience. She hovered uncomfortably as Maxine began to read.

  Maxine flipped open the manuscript and immediately spotted her name. The next line said: “You’d think her son killing himself would have softened her—but you’d be wrong.” The words on the page were so startling, so brutal, that they had an instant effect on Maxine, as if she had just been Tasered. She put her hand over her mouth and began to softly cry, a chilling sound that actually frightened Lizette. Lizette slowly sat down next to Maxine. Though she often wondered whether her boss was really human, at that moment Maxine looked like she needed the comfort of a human touch, maybe even a hug. Lizette slowly put her arm around Maxine’s shoulder and squeezed just a tiny bit—all the while holding her breath.

  “I’m sorry,” Maxine said through the tears. “It’s just that . . . people don’t know how much I have suffered . . . and they never will. It seems like everyone I have ever loved has left me. I tried to tell that boy how much I loved him . . . sometimes it was hard for me to find the right words. I tried to be a mother to him . . . I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand why he had to do that to himself.” Maxine put her head down and continued sobbing quietly.

  “I’m so sorry, Maxine,” Lizette said. She took a deep breath. Maybe it would help if she shared her own pain. “I just had one of the worst weekends of my life,” she said softly. “I just found out that it was my boyfriend, who I thought was about to be my fiancé, who was the source of all those Internet stories. I think I introduced him to you before, Channing Cary?”

  Maxine nodded, finally looking up at her.

  “Well, apparently he took a new job, running chattercrazy.com, and he kept it from me. Looks like he thought it would help his career to sell me out, throwing away our relationship in the process. He was supposed to be the love of my life! I still can’t believe he did that.”

  Maxine shook her head in disgust, looking at Lizette maybe for the first time like she was a real person, rather than a faceless employee without a life.

  “That’s horrible, Lizette. He claimed to love you, then he went and did something like that? Maybe Tina had it right . . . what’s love got to do with it? Men can sometimes be baffling creatures. Look at poor Whitney. And then my William just up and—”

  “Excuse me, ma’am?” It was her housekeeper interrupting them. “Do you want this?”

  Maxine turned her head and saw that her housekeeper Annemarie was holding one of her turbans. Maxine took it from her, and reached up and realized her head was bare. She turned to Lizette, awkwardly holding the turban in her hand, unsure of what to do. What was the point of putting on the turban when Lizette had already seen the Afro?

  Lizette had never seen Maxine so awkward and uncomfortable. The moment they had just shared was gone, disappeared into thin air, as if it had never happened. It made her even more nervous, seeing her boss in this flustered state. Lizette wanted to flee as soon as possible.

  “Will there be anything else?” Maxine said to Lizette. She had decided to leave the turban off. She placed it next to her on the couch. When she saw that her housekeeper was still lingering, Maxine barked at her.

  “That’ll be fine, Annemarie!” Annemarie scurried from the room, chastened.

  Maxine quietly went back to the manuscript, ignoring Lizette. She said nothing more, not even a mumbled thanks. Lizette waited for a brief second to see if Maxine would acknowledge her, say something about the hard work it had taken to get her hands on it, express just a tiny bit of gratitude. But she got nothing else except silence. Maxine started flipping through the pages, already having dismissed Lizette in her mind. Lizette turned and headed for the door. Their moment clearly was forgotten. Lizette was tempted to yell out, “You�
�re welcome!” before she slipped through the door. But she didn’t do anything except disappear.

  JOSH HOWE WAS HAVING the week from hell. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it started, but he had been having the strangest sensations in his lower regions. It burned like crazy when he peed and it was uncomfortable when he sat down. It almost felt like his testicles were swollen or something. He had taken to conducting all of his meetings standing on his feet—and trying to postpone his visits to the bathroom for as long as possible. By Friday afternoon he couldn’t take it anymore; he scheduled a doctor’s appointment for Saturday in Connecticut.

  He sat on the table in the doctor’s office in disbelief when he got the verdict. The doctor had stuck a Q-tip in Josh’s penis and come back twenty minutes later with the result: gonorrhea.

  “Well, do you know whether your wife has been tested?” the doctor asked.

  The doctor was trying to be cute; what he really wanted to ask was whether Josh had been sleeping around.

  “How long does it take before gonorrhea makes itself known?” Josh asked, ignoring the doctor’s question.

  The doctor shrugged. “Well, you can have it for as long as a month before the symptoms become known,” the doctor said.

  “A month!” Josh felt sweat start to form on his forehead. A month? Damn, how many women had he slept with in the past month? He saw the doctor watching him. Josh had purposely looked for a doctor he hadn’t seen before, to avoid any possible embarrassment.

  “You must inform all the partners you’ve had in the past month, okay?” the doctor said.

  “But I always wore a condom, Doc!” Josh said.

  The doctor shrugged. Surely he had heard that one before.

  Josh climbed off the table, his heart pounding, wondering how he was going to manage this bit of news. The biggest problem was Barbara. He could easily have passed it on to his wife. She would have to go to the doctor to see if she had it. That would be an enormous disaster he couldn’t even think about. But then again, maybe that wasn’t inevitable. Maybe he could somehow stick a Q-tip in her vagina when she was asleep, throw it in a Ziploc bag, and bring it to a lab himself. Or maybe he could venture down there during a lovemaking session, armed with a hidden Q-tip in his hand. She’d never know. Possible, right? Considering the alternative, maybe it was worth a try.