“Are you hungry?” Thad asked.
“Ravenous.”
But not for food.
My phone buzzed again. It was a text message this time.
Urgent I see you. Duggan.
No, no, no. Not tonight, Nick. There was nothing urgent tonight outside this suite. There was only me and Thad and what we were going to do to each other. Nick Duggan could wait until the morning when I was back in the real world. I was intent on living a fantasy for a few hours.
“I’m not very good with chopsticks,” I admitted, as Thad revealed the sushi rolls waiting for us, which were works of art, little geometric morsels. They were so pretty I hated to ruin them.
“I did a movie in Japan,” Thad said. “I became an expert.”
“I drop everything I pick up.”
“Here, let me show you.”
Thad came around behind me at the table to show me, and he molded himself against my back. His arm became my arm. His fingers became my fingers. I let him guide me as he lifted a perfect rainbow circle between the chopsticks, dipped it in a bath of wasabi and soy, and delivered it into my open waiting mouth. The flavors were like a dozen little tongues lapping at my taste buds.
Talk about oral sex.
“Good?” Thad whispered.
I moaned.
We finished the first course that way, him feeding me, me trying to feed him. I wasn’t as smooth, but he indulged me. Something sizzling arrived on silver trays, carried by a waiter so unobtrusive that he probably wouldn’t have blinked if he’d found us having sex on top of the table. We drank more. We ate things I’d never eaten in my life, fish, vegetables, and fruits that had probably traveled from countries on the other side of the world to arrive between my lips. At some point, the lights dimmed. We were finally alone, and no one disturbed us. I have no idea what time it was. I was in suspended animation.
What was bound to happen began to happen.
I remember us on the sofa, me with my legs pulled underneath me and my head on his chest and his arms around me. His fingered traveled my black hair like raindrops and wound up on my bare thighs. I remember tilting my head back and our mouths finding each other. The pressure of his fingers became one finger, perfectly placed, perfectly soft, a lone castaway adrift in a wet sea.
I was already breathless when we stood up.
“Undress for me,” he murmured, helping me by sliding my zipper like a slow-moving train car to the small of my back. He wanted to watch.
It wasn’t hard. It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much to let fall to the floor, but it all fell. I was nude in front of him. I put myself on display, thinking: It’s been fifteen years since he saw my body. Dim light is forgiving, but I wondered what he would say.
“You have the cutest little pooch,” he told me.
No, he didn’t say that. Just kidding. What he did say was very sweet.
If I were Bree, I would now give you all the gory details of what happened next. Him getting naked, us coupling in bed, sweaty and loud. What positions we used. How many orgasms I had. Etc. However, I am not Bree, and I’d prefer to keep those little details to myself. Yes, we had sex. It was beautiful. It was satisfying. It was exactly what I needed. A time out from the world.
By the time we were done, it was still early, just past ten o’clock. I didn’t spend the night there. Instead, I took a shower, and as I toweled dry, Thad watched me from the bed, where he was still naked.
“You should stay,” he said.
“I know, but I need to go.”
If I stayed, I was admitting that we were in a relationship again. Maybe we were. However, if I left, and I woke up in my own bed, then it was only one night. I’d committed to nothing. He didn’t look happy with me for leaving. He was used to getting what he wanted. Plus, it’s more fun when the clothes are coming off instead of going back on.
“Are you running?” he asked me.
I stopped, zipper halfway up my back. “Yes,” I admitted.
“Scared?”
“A little.”
He got out of bed, and I drank in the sight of him. My resolve weakened. If he’d said he wanted to go again, I would have unzipped. Instead, he kissed me tenderly and said, “I’ll have the limo take you home.”
“Thanks.”
He zipped me the rest of the way. “See me tomorrow before the show,” he said.
“It’s a busy day,” I said. “I’ll try.”
“I have some scripts I’d like to show you.”
“Scripts?”
“For the new production company. I’d love to get your take on them.”
“I don’t know, Thad.”
“I value your opinion, Julie. So does Cherie.”
I nodded. “Okay. Sure.”
So maybe it wasn’t just one night.
A few minutes later, the limo took me home. I had ten million things running through my head. I felt like a monkey in the jungle, with my hand clutching a new tree and my tail still wrapped around the last one. For now, I was dangling, with a long drop below me. Sooner or later, I’d have to choose to go forward or stay where I was.
Yes, I had a lot on my mind.
I was tired. I was sore, my body sated. I’d used muscles I hadn’t used in a long time. It felt good.
I wasn’t paying attention to anything except going to sleep. That may be why, as I got out of the limo, I didn’t even recognize the click of the paparazzi camera from a doorway across the street.
24
“Nice tits,” Bree told me as I opened my apartment door in the morning.
She glided past me, carrying a bag of donuts and two coffees in a foam container. She smelled of cigarette smoke, her highlights were freshly tinted, and her lips were even bloodier red than usual. I wasn’t expecting her, but you never really expect Bree. She just appears.
“Excuse me?”
I looked down, thinking I’d had a wardrobe malfunction, but I was wearing a conservative blouse and jeans. Nothing was showing that shouldn’t be showing.
“Small but perfect,” she went on. “Nice dress, too. Red. Very hot, good choice.”
“I’m lost,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
Bree plopped down on my sofa. She put down the coffee and donuts and slid a copy of the Post from under her arm. “You’re a page three girl,” she said. “In the UK, that honor goes to a different sweet young thing every day who is willing to bare her perky breasts for the delight of lads in the pub. You put most of them to shame, however.”
This couldn’t be good. Bree handed me the newspaper, and I ripped it open.
“Shame about them covering up the nips,” Bree continued. “We’re not so delicate about such things at home. Harden ’em up and point the way, that’s our motto. I thought about sending in my photo when I was 18. Imagine being the wank-of-the-day for all those teenage boys. I could have had the tits that launched a thousand – well, you know.”
Page three of the Post had a story about a Brooklyn judge on trial for corruption. They could probably run that every day and simply change the judge’s name. There was also a story about a raccoon biting off half a finger from a park ranger upstate and a story about a Manhattan cop moonlighting as an Elvis impersonator. The usual Murdoch stuff.
“There’s nothing here,” I said.
“Oh, right, sorry, I lied. Page six, not page three.”
I flipped forward in the paper and laid out page six on the coffee table in front of me. “Oh, balls,” I said.
Actually, it was more like: “OH, BALLS!”
There I was. Two of me, actually. One photograph had been taken last night, outside my apartment, me in my red dress, disheveled and post-coital, heels dangling from one hand, and – oh, Lord – my nylons and panties clearly dangling from the other. I may as well have been wearing a sandwich board with the message, “Just Had Sex.”
The other photograph was a still from one of my movie roles years ago. As in most of my movie roles, I was nearly naked
, in this case, emerging from a swimming pool with bikini bottoms and no top, wet hair, a come-hither smile, and two yellow cartoon daisies discreetly dropped over my nipples by the sensitive editors at the Post. It wasn’t my proudest moment on screen, although sadly, it was far from my most embarrassing.
Next to the photos of me was Thad’s publicity picture from Rear Window. The headline read, “Get A Load Of Thad.”
Nice.
The article was short, because a picture is worth a thousand words, so there wasn’t much to say.
What goes around obviously comes around for eight-mil-a-pic actor Thad Keller. In town for a limited run in the lead role of the hot show Rear Window, Keller found time on his night off for a steamy hook up with publishing exec Julie Chavan. Word is that the two were briefly engaged when both were struggling actors in the 1990s, and when you look at Julie’s assets, you can see why Thad was anxious to make another deposit. Hey, Thad, just wondering: did you go in the front door or did you use the “rear window”?
I threw the newspaper across the floor, where it scattered into pages on my carpet like drop cloths for a painter. “I’m going to jump,” I told Bree. “Will five stories kill me or just leave me a vegetable?”
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” she said. “Pretty funny, too, the thing about the rear window. You have to give credit to the boys at the Post for that one.” She added, “Obviously you did get a load of Thad. Good for you, darling. It’s about freaking time. Was it more than one load, by the way?”
“I’m not talking about this,” I said.
“Come on, it’s just us girls. I want details.”
“I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow account.”
“Ah, but there was blowing involved. Good.”
“Figure of speech,” I said.
“Your mother’s going to ask me, you know. She’s the one who told me about the newspaper. She called me and woke me up, she was so proud.”
“Oh, my God. What is my mother doing reading the Post?”
“Good news travels fast, darling. People were already calling. Have you checked your answering machine? I bet you have fans.”
I went over to the phone. Bree was right. I had 17 new messages. “Oh, balls,” I said again.
“So what does all this mean?” Bree asked. “Are you moving to L.A.? Are you and Thad an item again?”
“I have no idea.”
“By the way, what’s your batting average? Are you two for two this week? Did you and Garrett get it on when he took you home? If so, you’re welcome.”
“We did not, and you’re not welcome.”
“Shame.” Bree reached into the white bakery bag. “Cruller? I love donuts. You cannot get good donuts in London unless you go to Harrod’s, and even then, they’re Krispy Kremes from the States, which doesn’t count. I love Krispy Kremes.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, lighten up. Julie. So you’re naked in the Post. No big deal. Remember the photo of me cupping that starlet’s bare breast at the BFI party a couple of years ago? It went viral all over the world. The Mirror dubbed me ‘Breast of Show.’ I lived to tell the tale, darling.”
“That’s you, not me. Remember, you’re shameless. You live for publicity.”
“True enough.”
“How did the popzees find me, anyway? How did they know to stake out my apartment?”
“These boys will sit in their own feces for days to get a pic of Jen Aniston, so you’re not much of a challenge, darling.”
“I bet my mother tipped them off,” I said.
“Now you’re being paranoid.”
“Not with Cherie.”
I had another terrible thought. Had Thad tipped them off? Was all of this part of a sordid publicity stunt? I told myself that was crazy. Thad didn’t need that kind of press attention now. Popzee set-ups were something up-and-comers did, not actors who had already made it to the big leagues. Bree was right. I was being paranoid.
Then again, it’s easy to think everybody’s after you when your breasts are splashed all over the daily paper. Wherever I went today, I was going to feel like people were staring at my chest. Fortunately, this is New York, so I’m used to it.
“Meanwhile, back to me,” Bree said. “While you were getting past your hangover and getting laid yesterday, I was working hard with our friend King. Did you see The View?”
“No.”
“King killed. The ladies ate him up. He sang, too.”
“Oh, please tell me it wasn’t Assy McHattie.”
“No, but they had to bleep out a few words. It was hysterical. I thought Whoopi was going to wet herself. Thank God, there were no dogs, too.”
“You know, you still haven’t told me about King and dogs,” I said.
“It’s only little dogs, darling, and if I don’t get details about Thad’s load, you don’t get details about King and dogs.”
I growled at her. Woof.
“Then we did about two dozen more interviews,” Bree went on. “Radio, papers, local TV. I’ve already checked online, and we’ve got pieces about King in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the Plain Dealer, everywhere. It’s big, darling. The crowd at Stables & Proud today is going to be SRO.”
“I hope so.”
“I’m telling you, they better have enough books, because they’re going to sell out. And that’s before we do Good Morning America tomorrow. I am happy happy happy. You should be happy, too. Captain Absolute is going to hit the charts at #1, darling.”
She was right. The book was a bonafide runaway hit, but I wasn’t particularly happy. Bree read my face.
“Julie, you do realize that most ordinary human beings would consider all of this to be good news, don’t you? You are sleeping with a rich movie star. You have a job offer to go to Hollywood and make movies. You are publishing a book that’s going to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. You are the owner of breasts that can now be considered world famous. What more do you want from life?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Bree shoved a glazed old fashioned donut between my lips. I bit down, and it was doughy and delicious. “Lethsglotothofix,” I said with my mouth full. Translation: Let’s go to the office.
“Eat, don’t talk. Have some coffee. Relax. Don’t worry, be happy.”
I stood up, and Bree eyed the girls under my blouse. “They’re still looking good, even if you’re not twenty-three anymore. Petite but proud. Do they still stand up and say ‘howdy do’ when you take your bra off?”
“Frku.”
It’s a good thing my mouth was still full of donut, because I’m not sure that one would have come out as “freak.”
Bree had no trouble translating, and she grinned. “Me, as soon as the ladies head south, I’m visiting the emergency clinic to have them propped up. I will not have headlights shining at my feet.”
“Let’s go to the office,” I said again. I didn’t want to talk about breasts anymore.
“Mais certainement.”
I picked up the strewn pages of the Post and crumpled them into a giant paper ball, so that I could deposit them in the trash, which is where they belonged. Bree stopped me in horror.
“Please don’t tell me you’re throwing the newspaper away!” she cried.
“Yes, I am.”
“Julie, in thirty years, you will want to show this to your grandchildren.” Her voice rose an octave. “‘See, little Thaddy, this is what your gramma looked like before I got all these freaking wrinkles.’ ‘My gosh, grammy, you had great knockers.’” Bree grabbed the paper out of my hands and smoothed the pages on the coffee table. “This is for history, Julie,” she told me.
“It’s ancient history,” I said.
I reached for the pages, and several half-sheets ripped away in my hand. I bent down to grab the rest of the torn pages, and that was when my heart stopped. I really think it skipped several beats and then launched into some kind of malfunctioning arrhythmia. I may even have gone into a coma. I stared at the
headline on the Post blurb on page two, and I felt paranoid all over again.
Bree saw the expression on my face. “What is it, darling?”
I couldn’t speak, so I just pointed. Bree followed the direction of my finger and said, “Well, crap.”
HIT AND RUN KILLS POST REPORTER
It wasn’t a long article, and there weren’t a lot of details, because the story was only hours old. There was a photo with the article, though. No breasts in this photo. Just a face I recognized.
Someone had run down Nick Duggan.
III
25
“Julie Chavan?” said the woman who’d been following me for two days.
She was waiting in front of my apartment building when Bree and I went outside. She was still wearing a brown pants suit, like she’d been wearing when I saw her near the Gansevoort and outside Libby’s condo. Either she has a lightning fast dry cleaner, or she is not an imaginative dresser. She wore beige heels, low and practical. Her hair was mousy and straight, and her face had one of those under-the-UV light fake tans. She was, all in all, a very brown person.
“My name is Goldy Brown,” she told us.
Seriously? That can’t be true.
“I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” she added, showing me her FBI identification, which she kept in a tan wallet. “I’m investigating the disappearance of Irving Wolfe.”
“Disappearance?” I asked. “Irving Wolfe committed suicide. He threw himself off his boat.”
“Were you there?”
“You mean, on the boat?”
“That’s right.”
“No, of course not,” I said.
Ms. Brown gave me a look that said: Then you don’t know anything. Which was true. All I knew was what was in King’s book, and I was beginning to suspect that King was as big a liar as Pinocchio. Except it probably wasn’t King’s nose that grew every time he made up a story.
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