by Josie Brown
Right on!
Most of Hollywood was represented, too, albeit surreptitiously. (That is, any player who suspected he was in O’s little black book had sent a lowly assistant to take copious notes, because no one who was anyone dared to show his face in that courtroom unless he wanted his presence there to be “misconstrued” as proof positive he was listed.)
The rest of the seats were filled by the just plain curious who lived to be front row center at the biggest courtroom carnival since Wacko Jacko made pajama chic the attire of choice for that elite group known as the Infamous on Trial. Hell, the “Harte-to-Harte Custody Battle” (that nickname was courtesy of Page Six) was drawing even more gawkers than the Tobey Maguire Poker Game Slander Trial taking place across the hall, in which Ben had been accused of having one too many aces up his sleeve by Leo.
Now, who’s ya daddy?
And all because everyone wanted to know what muckety-mucks’ names were in that bitch Nina Harte’s little black book.
Big fucking deal. So some little silver-tongued coochie had been chatting up a few of L.A.’s finest. What was the crime in that? Hell, even Howard liked a little telephone foreplay every now and then. Considering the sweetness and light emanating from the tart Little Miss Harte, he couldn’t even fathom the kind of phone sex she’d be able to dole out. Certainly not the kind of hardcore filth he liked to get off on. Just thinking about tearing her up on the stand (which would be made even easier, considering the parent evaluation he’d heard she had received, through his spies in family court) was giving him a hard-on.
Which reminded him: Later tonight he should sweet-talk his phone sex service into hooking him up again with that one girl that he’d liked so much…what had he called her, Cunt? Yeah, boy, now she was certainly a sassy one! She’d even come up with a nickname for him…what was it again?
Oh yeah, Potty Mouth.
He chuckled to himself. What he’d give to hear Cunt’s breathy litany of twatalicious tongue-twisters in his ear right that very second…
HOO-HAH! Bring it on!
So, that’s the infamous barracuda, Howard Cross? He doesn’t look so scary, thought Nina, glancing across at her soon-to-be ex-husband’s attorney as she took her place beside Lavinia at the defendant’s table.
The man—mid-fifties, balding, and portly, with glasses—was so nondescript that he could have easily passed for an H&R Block accountant, albeit he was wearing a much better suit than the typical number cruncher. Howard Cross caught her eye and gave her a friendly wink. She smiled back at him sweetly.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe shared custody could be worked out in a reasonable fashion after all. Nina breathed easier, leaning back into her seat.
Then Nathan walked in on the sinewy arms of that BITCH DIVA WHORE Katerina.
They looked picture perfect, both golden-haired with big dimpled smiles and shining blue eyes…
Yep, they were the perfect couple.
Of course, it helped that they dressed the part: for Katerina, that meant a pencil-thin pale yellow silk skirt, with which she wore a high-collared yellow and white polka dot organza blouse. Conservative, yes, and certainly not what you’d expect to find on the back of the victor of Maxim’s recent online poll, in which panting male participants were asked to name “the woman you’d want to lose your virginity to—that is, if you could do it all over again.” Score points there.
Nathan was in Armani: elegant enough to infer “star,” but casual enough not to intimidate those lowly minions around him, who were swathed in Van Heusen.
Hand-in-hand, the lovebirds, trailed by Riley and Fiona, made their way toward the front of the courtroom as casually as if they were taking a Sunday morning stroll on Santa Monica’s Main Street. Waving to well-wishers, Katerina took it up a notch by blowing kisses to the VIP reporters in the gallery, many of whom she knew by name—Dominick, Ted, Jeannette, Michael, Richard, and most certainly Serenity: all celebrities in their own right, whose pens were poised to document, speculate, or pontificate from an already chosen point of view. The loving couple pointedly ignored Baxter Quinn, but he didn’t seem to mind at all, giving Nina a raised eyebrow and a thumbs-up that put a shaky smile on her face.
Upon reaching the first row of spectator seats, Nathan situated Katerina right behind the chair that he was to occupy, then leaned in to give her a kiss. It was tentative, hopeful, and heartbreaking, and he lingered into it just long enough that any cell phone camera pointed in their direction would get the money shot.
Nina wondered how many times they’d rehearsed that move. She had to admit, though, that Katerina’s choreography was spot on.
At Lavinia’s insistence, Jake was waiting with Casey in an empty office next to the courtroom where the hearing was to take place, and Sam was sitting in the back of the courtroom somewhere, so that his presence wouldn’t call any more attention than was necessary to Nina’s own state of affairs. Already every man who entered the courtroom was being scrutinized severely as a possible “client” of the infamous O.
That was exactly what Howard Cross had hoped would happen. In fact, unbeknownst to his opponents, Howard had planned to introduce into evidence O’s phone records, which he had obtained through a subpoena of the phone company.
Hoo-hah! Now, that should release a few bladders!
But first things first. When Judge Jessup queried both parties as to whether the temporary arrangement of joint custody was agreeable, Lavinia put forth that her client found it acceptable.
However, Howard, in a dark, ominous voice reminiscent of James Earl Jones channeling God, said his client did not. No sirree, not under any circumstances whatsoever.
Oh…kay. Moving on, Judge Jessup asked for a counter proposal from Howard.
“We are proposing sole legal custody for my client, Your Honor. It is the only situation that would be acceptable—”
Lavinia objected, loudly and haughtily. To Nina’s chagrin, Nathan sat in stone-faced silence. He understood only too well that any move he made that was empathetic to Nina would incur Katerina’s wrath. Realizing this, Nina teared up.
“—and, I might add, Your Honor, my client’s uncompromising position is due to the immoral activities conducted by Mrs. Harte, which have put Jake Harte’s welfare in jeopardy, and most certainly make her an unsuitable custodian for the child.”
A murmur hummed through the courthouse. Judge Jessup banged his gavel severely. It was obvious to him that Howard was bound and determined to turn these proceedings into a celebrity courtroom Cirque de Soleil. Normally the judge would have curbed the pompous attorney’s grandstanding, but hey, it was an election year, and he knew that the notoriety could work in his favor if he played his cards right. He just didn’t want Howard trumping this nicely dealt hand with a courtroom free-for-all.
“Well, well, that was a very pretty speech, Mr. Cross. However, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a judge, not a preacher. Therefore, my ruling will be predicated solely on any evidence presented here that may substantiate your client’s claim that even partial custody by the defendant will do harm to the child. By the way, am I to assume that your client is asking for sole physical custody as well?”
Howard growled back: “Leaving that poor child in the hands of that woman would be an egregious oversight of this court, Your Honor, as we will prove today…”
Judge Jessup sighed. “Proceed, then.”
Lavinia patted Nina’s hand gently and winked consolingly at her. Still, that didn’t stop the bead of sweat that rolled slowly down Nina’s back.
She closed her eyes and prayed for a miracle.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. That McLaughlin woman’s report was so damn wrong.
First off, she was not homeless, Nina wanted to shout, just temporarily relocated, thanks to the paparazzi climbing up her back patio and rummaging through her garbage for disparaging evidence.
And second, a couple of appletinis in the middle of the day with a sympathetic friend did not make her a drunk.
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Okay, well, maybe a pathetic loser temporarily down on her luck, but certainly not a drunk.
And finally, yeah, okay, so she didn’t have a job that very second, but how could she be blamed for that? For five long years she’d held down two gigs—and did such a great job with both that she was always getting commendations from her bosses…
Granted, one was a hormonal transsexual, and the other was a phone sex operator dispatcher…but that was beside the point.
Nina couldn’t wait to get up on the stand and set that creep, Howard Cross, straight on all of it!
Howard Cross’s first few questions were innocent enough. “Tell me, Ms. Harte, how long were you and Mr. Harte married?”
“Just over six years.”
“In fact, you met in high school, did you not?”
“Yes. I guess you could say that we were high school sweethearts.”
“How touching. That’s quite a quaint term. In your line of work, you must know a lot of ‘quaint’ terms.”
“What do you mean? I was at Tommaso’s for over five of those years. Not too many fruits and vegetables are what you’d call quaint.”
A chuckle ran through the courtroom.
“Ah, you’re a comedienne as well. I’m sure that such a sprightly sense of humor comes in handy, too…for a phone sex operator.”
Unconsciously, Nina flinched.
“And, how long did you hold down that job…as a phone sex operator, I mean?”
“Not quite five years.”
“I see. Half a decade. In other words, you were a phone sex operator even before your little boy Jake was born.”
“Yes. You see—”
“Just answer the questions, Ms. Harte. That’s a lot of dirty talk, isn’t it?”
This time Nina said nothing.
“How many days a week did you work your job as a sex phone operator?”
“Three. Sometimes maybe four,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. I think you said four nights a week?”
“Yes, sometimes,” Nina growled louder.
“And you’d do this for how many hours a night?”
“Five. Maybe six.”
“Humph! That’s a lot of talking…I’m surprised you weren’t…. hoarse afterward.”
Several people in the courtroom let out with raucous chuckles. Nina peered at Judge Jessup in the hope that he would reel in the attorney, but the judge didn’t seem to care that she was being skewered in public.
Well, he just lost her vote.
“How many—I don’t know what do you call them, clients, customers, johns—did you talk to?”
“I called them only by whatever they asked of me,” Nina retorted.
“I can imagine that whatever those names were, they weren’t their real names. After all, any man who would masturbate while some strange woman on the phone filled his ear with dirty, filthy, disgusting sex talk must be very imaginative in his own right, wouldn’t you say?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that, yes, some were, when it hit her: The way he said “very imaginative” sounded familiar…
She knew that voice from somewhere…
“You didn’t answer my question, Ms. Harte. How many customers would you talk to, on any given night?”
“I’m sorry, I—that varied. It could be as few as five, or as many as twenty—”
“Twenty men, four nights a week, for fifty-two weeks out of the year…That’s, let’s see, four thousand, one hundred and sixty dirty conversations a year…twenty thousand, eighty hundred filthy dialogues over the past five years…with horny, lascivious men to whom you—”
“Your Honor!” Lavinia stood up angrily. “I object to this line of questioning!”
“—open your mouth wide in order to—”
“Your Honor! Puh-leez!” Lavinia’s thunderous cry seemed to wake Judge Jessup from his catatonic state. The judge frowned—more at Lavinia than at Howard.
Dammit, he thought, what is Howard doing, going for an Academy Award?
“Mr. Cross, you don’t have to paint us a picture here.”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Howard smiled at Nina with his tiny feral teeth. “So, tell me, Ms. Harte, while you were on the phone, what was Nathan doing?”
“He was usually in the living room, listening out for our son, who was asleep. Of course, some nights Nathan was at rehearsals, or at his acting class. Or working. He would bartend at parties.”
At that point, Howard turned back toward Nathan, in order to lift his hand in tribute to his client, as if to imply What a great guy you are!
“And I assume your little boy heard none of these conversations.”
“No…not at all.” She turned red as she thought of the one time Jake had climbed out of bed for a cup of water and walked in on her as she was cooing naughtily into the phone. He had heeded her silent plea to say nothing, but that had not stopped him from climbing into her lap and scrutinizing her intently until she could jump off the call and put him back to bed. “If you let me stay up and watch Nick at Nite, I won’t tell Daddy you said all those bad words,” Jake promised. She broke down and let him, just that once, and she stayed off the phone for the rest of the evening. As she watched him giggle through Full House, she wondered if what he’d heard had, subconsciously of course, made him hot to trot for little Michelle Tanner.
“I’m glad you’re so certain about that. Of course, I’ll be calling up little Jake later on, to see what he has to say on the matter.”
Jake, testifying? Nina tried to keep the fear out of her eyes. From the cruel smile on Cross’s face, she knew she was doing a lousy job at that.
“Now, when you told your husband you wanted to take on that profession, what was his reaction?”
Nina paused. “He…he wasn’t too happy, I guess.”
“You guess. You mean you didn’t know how disgusted he was at the suggestion? Or how it tore out his heart and broke it in two each and every time you got on the phone to pump up the egos—not to mention the…libidos…of these other men?”
Nina dropped her head. Tears fell into her lap. She would feel like a fool if she lied blithely, if she pretended that Nathan hadn’t cared.
Because she’d known all along that he had hated it.
And after her last conversation with him, she knew exactly how much.
That’s why she’d never mentioned any of her callers to him. She’d never told him about the men who had begged her to be their ultimate fantasy, or the little boys who called her with their parents’ credit cards to hear her talk dirty to them, or the many guys who asked her to coo filth at them in her patented little girl voice.
But hey, it paid the rent, right? It allowed them to stay in Los Angeles, so he could keep acting, didn’t it?
At that time, that was all that mattered to Nathan.
And now he was taking her son away from her because of it.
“Your honor, I can answer that.”
Upon hearing Nathan’s voice Nina looked up. The courtroom froze. So did Howard, who was shocked that his client was opening his mouth—against his attorney’s wishes, and for that matter, Katerina’s, too.
“No sir, honestly it didn’t bother me in the least. In fact, the only reason Nina did it in the first place was because I asked her to.”
Baxter Quinn’s Nat ’n’ Nina Custody Battle Blog 4/25 1:32 P.M.
Libidinous lawyers! Election year grandstanding! Public confessions!
Don’tcha just LOVE L.A. law?
If I’m moving too fast and furious for you, readers, you’ll have to forgive me, but the atmosphere is SO hot and heavy in this courtroom that I may NEVER need another perm as long as I live! (Sigh! Too bad it doesn’t have the same effect on highlights. Although, if things keep going the way they are, Kat McPherson’s hair may turn gray overnight. More on that later…)
First things first: I never thought I would say this, but I tip my hat (that is, if I wore a hat—and my darlings, if
that were the case, it would definitely be something a little less Kangol and a little more Borsalino) to that studly hunk, Nathan Harte, for standing up for his li’l woman, Nina (and, unfortunately for him, soon-to-be ex–li’l woman) while she was being persecuted by his very own attorney!
Nathan-Doll actually INSISTED on taking the stand so that he could confess—listen closely here, gang, ’cause it’s hotter than Boston Legal during a ratings sweep (LOVE that Danny Crane!)—to coercing sweet, innocent Nina into taking the phone sex operator job that has put her in the hot seat in the first place!
“She really didn’t want to do it,” he admitted. “But she was pregnant. So I asked if she’d consider that horrible job, just to make me happy. Otherwise we couldn’t afford to stay in Los Angeles so that I could follow my dream to act. Believe me, she cried about it, but she did it anyway, for me. She did make me promise, though, that she could quit once my career got off the ground. She would have, too—but then I met Kat.”
To shut him up, the noble lug’s attorney asked for a recess. I’d give anything to be a fly on that wall when Kat gets ahold of him! She was hoping to avoid any (ahem!) unseemly bumps in her future by absconding with Nina’s little guy. Hey, if she doesn’t want to get preggers or adopt another kid, she could adopt one of those abused pups she’s always moaning about, right?
My next posting of sizzling pixels will be up soon, so stay tuned…
“Lavinia, something’s not right.” Nina’s heart was beating too fast. She felt a bit woozy, as if she was going to faint.