by Josie Brown
“Wow, you mean she turned down the opportunity to have you handle her? Gee, now that’s a surprise. Well, I guess CAA bags another one.”
“Not necessarily. Now that you’ve officially tendered your resignation, it’s made room for one of our junior associates to make the leap to partnership—that is, if he’s able to keep the loving couple happy. The partners all feel that Riley McNaught just might be the person to do that.”
“Riley?” Sam couldn’t believe his ears. Suddenly, it all made sense. So it was Riley who had provided Baxter and Serenity their scoops! He’d probably given the stalkarazzi the heads-up to watch Nina’s apartment, too.
And unknowingly, she had led them right to Sam’s doorstep.
Sam started laughing. “Sure, Riley will be perfect for the job.”
“Huh. We’re glad you agree.” It was obvious in Randy’s tone that he was disappointed at Sam’s positive reaction. Still, he couldn’t resist getting in one more jibe. “Well, anyway, Katerina certainly thought he’d fit the bill. In fact, she implied that he might have been doing the job all along.”
Randy’s condescension was too much for Sam. This time, when he reached the door, he didn’t look back. If Riley had indeed been doing her bidding all along, he’d now have the corner office to prove it.
That morning, when Nina got to the employees’ lounge at Tommaso’s, she noticed that there was a padlock on her locker. A Post-it note slapped on it instructed her to see Tori immediately.
She found Tori blessing out the produce manager for the lackluster condition of his fruit, a daily ritual that accomplished nothing other than to make the poor, hardworking sap’s life a living hell, which was why the other store employees likened his gig to that of the boatman Charon on the River Styx. Upon seeing her, Tori motioned for Nina to follow her into her office, where the Person-Formerly-Known-As-Tony then proceeded to avoid eye contact, choosing to fidget instead with the French tips on her long, tapered nails.
Finally, Nina couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “Tori, what’s the deal? Why can’t I get into my locker?”
“Because you don’t work here anymore.” A couple of tears formed in Tori’s heavily mascaraed eyes. Reaching up to wipe them away, she accidentally stuck a nail in her eye. “Damn hormone pills! Damn fake nails! This fucking acrylic polish stings!”
“Fired? Why? Has a client complained about something—”
“No, are you kidding? Everyone loves you.” The tears started falling again. This time Tori knew better than to put her talons anywhere near her face. She wiped her tears with a monogrammed hanky instead. “It’s management, hon. They’ve heard about your little, um, ‘side job,’ and they’re now worried that you were using our client list to solicit your—do you call them johns?”
“No. In fact, I don’t call them at all. They call me.” Nina wanted to cry, but held her head up high. “You know I’d never, in a million years—”
“I know, Nina. Believe me, I personally think they’re making a huge mistake—but I can certainly understand why they feel they have to do it. They don’t want this place to become a carny sideshow.” Coming from the first ever six-foot-three-inch transsexual store manager the chain ever had, that was quite a statement. “You’re the best employee this store has. And you know I don’t pass out compliments to just anyone.”
In fact, they both knew that she’d never complimented anyone.
“But—but I need the insurance! What about Jake’s asthma?”
“If they yank it, you might have to file a grievance. But they feel they have a pretty strong case against anything beyond a couple of weeks’ severance.”
That was it? For five years of loyalty, she’d be walking out of there with less than half a month’s rent!
Numbly, Nina stumbled toward the door. Tori followed her out to her car, then asked Nina not to drive off until she cut her severance check. Fifteen minutes later Tori was back beside the car. Not only did she have a check, but she had a cartful of groceries with her, too.
“Here,” she said, shoving bag after bag into the backseat of Nina’s Civic. “Consider it a going-away present.”
“Tori, I can’t take this! They’ll accuse me of stealing it! Or you may get fired!” Nina reached across the backseat and gave her ex-manager a kiss.
“Hey, watch the lipstick!” Tori muttered, but Nina knew she was touched. “I chipped in for the wine, but the groceries were a gift. You’ve got an admirer in the company.”
“Huh? Who?” At Tommaso’s? She had never even been introduced to any of the brusque, dark-suited men who showed up periodically for the unscheduled walkthroughs that always terrorized the store employees and usually put Tori in a dither for the following twenty-four hours.
“Some bigwig on Tommaso’s board. Seems he shops here often and has always been impressed with your customer service skills. Anyway, he owns a large amount of Tommaso’s stock, but apparently it wasn’t a big enough chunk to get the majority of the board to go along with his suggestion that you be given a reprieve. Do you remember that really old guy, Herbert Cahill?”
Herbie! What a doll. The next time he called, she’d have to do something extra special to thank him. Better yet, Fraulein Von Berens would give that “bad boy” a tongue-lashing in German that he’d remember for some time to come.
According to Mrs. McGillicutty, Nina wouldn’t be speaking to any of her clients in German, or English either, for that matter, until things cooled down a bit: Most of her regulars were now scared to call O.
“Face it, doll, you’re just too hot to handle right now, particularly for those Hollywood studio executive types who like to come off pure as driven snow.”
Well, there goes the other half of the rent money, thought Nina. “Maybe I could change my phone name. If I do, will you still send calls my way?”
“To be honest with you, hon, even if you did, I wouldn’t be able to keep you on right now. Or any of my girls, for that matter. A friend in high places tipped me off that my phone lines are hot right now with the Feds.”
“Omigod! Mrs. McGillicutty, I certainly didn’t mean to ruin your business for you!”
“Well, it was fun while it lasted. In the past twenty-four hours, the number of calls to the service have increased by four hundred percent! Your regulars may be hiding out, but everyone else is looking for you, kiddo. Although I suspect that half of those guys are reporters.”
Nina sighed. She had no doubt that the dispatcher was right. That was another reason to stay off the phone until things cooled down.
Mrs. McGillicutty continued, “Look, kid, don’t worry about me. Hell, as soon as I find the right guy to pay off, I’ll be back in business, so be thinking of another nickname you can use when this crap gets straightened out.”
“I don’t know. I may just find another line of work altogether. If I don’t starve in the meantime.”
The dispatcher gave one of her foghorn guffaws. “You won’t, not with that voice of yours. Keep in touch, O…or whomever. I’d hate to lose you to another service.”
When Nina went to pick up Jake at school, Mr. Pickering was waiting curbside with him. It was obvious that the little boy had been crying.
“Jake, what’s wrong?” cried Nina as she jumped out of the car and knelt down to give her son a hug.
“I was just explaining to Jake that, just because he has to leave the school, it doesn’t mean he’ll never see any of his little friends. That is, if their parents don’t mind.”
“Leave? But, of course, he’ll be back tomorrow—”
“No, he won’t be coming back, Nina—you don’t mind if I call you Nina, do you? Seems that everyone else is being so—informal—with you these days.” Nina looked up at him, surprised. On school grounds, parents and staff weren’t allowed to call one another by anything other than their surnames, preceded by Mr. or Ms. The last person she expected to lift the sacred veil was Pickering—until he added, with a dirty smirk: “Or would you prefer if I call
you O?”
Nina stood up. Blowing her bangs out of her eyes, she patted Jake on the head and nudged him toward the car. “Go ahead and buckle up, Jake.”
The little boy knew that tone in his mother’s voice, and rushed to do as he was told. He was so glad it was directed at the headmaster, and not at him. Perhaps Plum was right, and Mommy was going to give Mean Mr. Prick Ring that spanking after all!
“Are you telling me that my son is no longer welcome at Sage Oak Academy?”
“Well, since you put it so bluntly, yes.” He leaned in toward her—too close for comfort, for sure. “Bluntness is a specialty of yours, I’ve heard.”
Nina fumed silently. She wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of watching her explode in fury in front of her child.
Prick Ring’s just lucky I don’t have him alone in a dark alley.
Ignoring her silence, he continued. “In any event, due to your, er, ‘change in profession,’ the majority of the board”—his emphasis on the word majority was his way of saying that he had triumphed in having Herbie overruled—“felt that Jake would be better off in a more accommodating academic environment. If you’d taken the time to read the SOA handbook, you’d recall that this sort of behavior is grounds for dismissal from our strongly ethical community.”
“Well, then there goes half your parent body”—Nina smiled up at him sweetly—“because I know several fathers in this school on, shall we say, something a little more intimate than a first-name basis. Tell me, Brad, can you say the same?” She gave him a naughty smile. “You don’t mind if I call you Brad, do you? Although if you prefer ‘Prick Ring,’ I think I can say it without gagging.”
He turned blue—not just because of the taunting nickname (by now he was resigned to it, and even suspected that some of the other parents used it when referencing him as well) but because she was right:
He had no real allies—let alone friends—within the parent body.
Among the daddies at the school, he had never been considered “just one of the guys.” But then again, how easy could that be when most of those guys just so happened to be the town’s biggest movers and shakers? In their world, he was merely another fawning sycophant.
Suddenly a cold dread crept through him: In a community that so highly coveted notoriety, infamy, and celebrity, had his insistence on the Hartes’ ejection—over the strenuous objection of the board’s president, no less—been sheer folly on his part? Instead of the anticipated outrage at the Hartes’ continued inclusion, would the expulsion instigate a mad exodus from the school?
Perhaps he’d unknowingly opened up a political can of worms! Pickering sighed out loud. Before he found this out the hard way, he’d better come up with an exit strategy, and quick!
He made a mental note to start looking for another headmastership immediately—in a town definitely more chaste than Hollywood.
As if there really was such a place…
One of the items that Tori had put in the Tommaso’s care package was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia: manna for a little boy whose world was caving in around him. Nina didn’t even bother to dish out a premeasured tummy ache-proof scoop of the chewy, gooey concoction into one of his baby cups. Instead, she just handed him the pint with a spoon and the remote control. Hell, the kid deserved to binge, just like everyone else caught up in this mess their lives had become. She’d deal with the sugar high sometime later.
O’s phone might be silent, but Nina’s was still ringing off the hook—from what she could tell through caller ID, most of the callers had numbers she didn’t recognize. Naturally, she assumed they were reporters.
Her voice mail verified that. The people she was most desperate to hear from—like Sam, and of course Lavinia Hannigan, whom she had phoned twice already that morning—had yet to return her calls. However, Star, Globe, National Enquirer, Insider, Entertainment Tonight, Extra—even Diane and Barbara!—were clamoring to give Nina an opportunity to tell her side of the story, to cry on their shoulders about Nathan’s departure, to come clean about her phone sex work—not to mention her affair with Sam.
As if her life was anyone else’s business.
She could only imagine how news of her tryst with Sam had gone over with Nathan and Katerina. She had no doubt that Katerina had hit the roof and was calling for Sam’s head on a platter for daring to be disloyal to her. And as for Nathan, well, Nina could only imagine the jealousy he must be feeling right about now, knowing that his agent had been comforting his wife (that was, his soon-to-be ex-wife) with the kind of intimacy that she’d experienced with only one other man her whole life:
Nathan.
Well, that’s too bad, she thought.
Lost in the heady fantasy of Nathan choking on some of his own bitter medicine, Nina absently picked up the insistently ringing phone.
“Nina, hi, it’s Susannah.”
Susannah.
As in I-dumped-you-as-a-friend-because-you’re-too-hot-right-now Susannah.
“What do you need, Susannah?” Of course she wanted something. Why else would she be calling?
“Look, Nina, I—I have to apologize for—for dropping you the way I did. It was a cowardly thing to do. Please forgive me.”
Whoa. Talk about out of left field!
Funny what little is left of your heart when you’ve been burned by a friend, thought Nina. It certainly seems to grow a thicker skin.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re calling, Susannah, and I really don’t have all day. Gotta field calls from the press, know what I mean?”
There was a silence on the other line. Finally Susannah spoke: “I—I was wondering if you could put in a word for me with—with that company you work for.”
“Tommaso’s? Just go on in and pick up an application. Hell, I know they’ve got an opening, because I just got fired.” Of course, Nina knew Susannah wasn’t talking about Tommaso’s. It was fun to hear her squirm, though—for McGillicutty’s number, of all things!
“Uh, no. Not the grocery store. I mean…you know, that call center.”
“Oh, I see. You want to do phone sex! Gee, I don’t know, Susannah. Has this request been cleared by Mr. Pickering?”
“Pickering? What does he have to do with it? He doesn’t—omigod! Does he call you, too?”
“No, you don’t have to worry about Pickering. At least, not at my service. Oh, and by the way, I haven’t heard from your husband, either.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good.” Susannah sounded almost surprised.
Considering what a prick the guy is, I guess that is somewhat surprising, thought Nina.
“Look, Nina, it’s hard for me to ask this, but I have to. You see, Rolf’s hit a—a bad patch, financially, that is. He’s thoroughly in over his head, what with this film he’s producing. And now he owes money to some people. Some really bad people. I’ve got to do something, you know? I just hate the thought of losing the house, but if we don’t come up with some money fast—”
Despite Susannah’s desertion, Nina couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She knew that Susannah’s stately Brentwood mansion was her pride and joy. “Look, uh, Susannah, I’ll give you my dispatcher’s number, but I have to warn you, she’s not putting on anyone new right now. Truth is, she’s having to close up shop for a while, over this whole O thing.”
Susannah said nothing, but Nina could hear her sniffling on the other end of the line.
“Susannah, I’m really sorry. I wish that there was something I could do!”
“I know, Nina. You’re a sweetie. You always were. Well, I guess I’ll just have to call around to some of the other services. Or go back to…to what I did before.”
“Modeling? That pays fairly well, right?”
Susannah snorted. “Oh yeah, right. I forgot that’s what I’ve been telling all the other mommies. Well, since I know your dirty little secret, I’ll let you in on mine: I never modeled. I did porn.”
Nina was stunned. Having anticipated that reactio
n, Susannah laughed harshly. “Yeah, yeah, I can just imagine what you’re thinking: that I’m a two-faced bitch.” A sob caught in her throat. “Hey look, I’ve got nothing to apologize for what I did. It got us out of the Valley and into Brentwood, right? And trust me, honey, SOA’s PTA is full of ladies who’ve gone down on their knees—literally—to stay in their beloved Blahniks and Botox.”
“But, Susannah, there’s got to be another way than doing that again!”
What a scandal that would be if it got out around SOA! Heck, Nina’s activities would be considered child’s play in comparison. “Even if you earn enough to pay off Rolf’s debt, how will you explain to him where all that money came from?”
“What, are you kidding me?” Susannah was laughing so hard that Nina thought she was having a nervous breakdown. “Honey, he produced my last three porn films!”
Then, bitterly, she added, “If only he hadn’t been so adamant about going legit, we wouldn’t be in this mess now…Oh, shit! Little Rolfy’s tennis coach is here, and I don’t know what the kid did with his racket. Sorry, sweetheart, gotta run!”
Nina hadn’t heard the door open because Jake’s sugar high had finally crashed and she had been putting him to bed.
But as she walked back out into the living room, she saw him there, silhouetted in the streetlight filtering through the closed window blinds, looking as handsome as he had when she last saw him.
Nathan.
He had on a hooded sweatshirt. He’d come in through the back door, not chancing that some of the stalkarazzi out front would even assume that a star of his caliber would shimmy up a three-story fire escape, then hike himself over the lattice screen that divided their apartment’s back terrace from their next door neighbor’s patio.
He stood there for the longest time, not saying anything. She, too, was afraid to speak, as if doing so would break the spell that had him standing there before her.