Hard Rhythm

by Cecilia Tan

  A few hours later I met Gwen at her favorite sushi bar, a place she and Ricki frequented partly because the restaurant was excellent and partly because the Hamilton security team approved of the place. It was off the beaten path enough that the paparazzi didn’t haunt the parking lot and the tatami rooms provided visual privacy.

  We placed an order quickly and then the waiter left us alone with an iron teapot and two small cups. Gwen poured for both of us. “Okay, so what’s up?”

  “Do you remember Price Lawson?”

  “The name is familiar. Wait. From the LA Times…?”

  “Newsday. He quit or was fired a couple of weeks back. He was also the guy who bait-and-switched a business lunch for dinner just to hit on me while he was getting a divorce.”

  “Ugh. Now I remember.” She made a face. “Do guys who resort to that kind of shit really think it’s going to work? Don’t they know it only proves to us they’re unsuitable for either sex or relationships? What does he want now?”

  “He’s starting a new gossip website and magazine called Pop-litico—trying to combine all the tawdriness of the celebrity tabloids with the political news, I guess—and that’s led to him digging into stuff like the political contributions of the rich and powerful in Hollywood.”

  Gwen raised one blond eyebrow. “Ricki and I only give to children’s and women’s charities.”

  “Not yours. Schmitt’s.”

  Now both eyebrows went up. “Oh?”

  “Lawson showed me what looked like pretty convincing evidence that Schmitt has been funneling a lot of money to Purity Values causes, including a SuperPAC and also a ton of ballot campaigns around the country. I told him who cares, Schmitt probably gives to a lot of causes and I wouldn’t put it past him to line any pockets he thinks will boost his influence, right or left wing. But this idiot Lawson actually tailed Schmitt to the mansion.”

  “Oh.” She nodded with understanding.

  “And the thing is, he knew I was there, too. So he tried to blackmail me about having an affair with Schmitt.”

  “What!” Gwen stage-whispered.

  “And when that didn’t work, he tried to ‘rescue’ me from the affair by—get this—offering to give me the byline on the exposé of Schmitt.”

  “What planet does this guy live on?”

  “I know. I told him if he needed a big exposé to launch his thing with, he was barking up the wrong tree. I thought I’d convinced him to move on, but then Chino caught him staking out my house.”

  “Oh man. And it’s not like you can tell him the truth about why you were at our place, or why Schmitt was there. But you definitely can’t pretend to be having an affair with Schmitt, either.”

  I sipped from the bright green tea and was surprised when it tasted like rice crackers. “Final straw came today. He sent me a text with a photo.” I brought it up on my phone screen.

  Gwen squinted. “It’s a bunch of numbers.”

  “I’ve gotten a little bit lazy about depositing my club salary. Ricki pays in cash, same as your grandfather did, so it’s untraceable, but Lawson got hold of my bank statements and it’s obvious that the same time every month I’m depositing the same amount. When I first started, Cy told me not to do that, to keep some at home, deposit it in two chunks, vary it up, but since he died I haven’t bothered.”

  Gwen stared into the tiny green pool of her tea. “And Lawson thinks it’s either hush money from Schmitt or that you’re his kept woman or whatever.”

  “He’s sure it’s something very not legit. What should we do?”

  “We should definitely fill Ricki in and then, maybe move the date of this month’s party? That’d mean contacting everyone about it, though, and that’s even less secure…” She pressed her palm to her forehead. “This is going to take some thinking through. Here, let me see if Ricki can join us. She just got back from Silicon Valley today, but I know she had some kind of a meeting in town tonight on her calendar. Maybe she can drop by here on the way home.”

  While she fired off a text to her sister, I looked at my own phone. I texted Chino: Did you get home safe?

  The answer came back quickly: Yes. Just a little while ago. I stopped at the gym first.

  I smiled a little at that. You mean to tell me I didn’t give you enough of a workout over the weekend?

  Ha! You know you did, sweets.

  Gwen set her phone down. “She’s on her way.” She peered through the crack in the sliding door of the tatami booth. “And so is our fish.”

  The waiter arrived moments later with a beautiful lacquered tray on which sat artfully arranged rice and fish. I tried to eat but now that I had dropped the bomb about Lawson I could hardly taste what was in my mouth.

  “You still haven’t filled me in about Chino, you know,” Gwen said, faux casually.

  “Oh, goodness. He’s…we’re…” I waved my two hands in the air.

  Gwen caught them and clapped them together. “Like Velcro. Is that the word you’re looking for?”

  I sat back with my tea. “I guess so. I’m loving every minute with him. But part of me is still holding back, you know? Maybe I can’t believe it could actually be as good as it seems? Or I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

  Gwen knew me pretty well. We’d grown close right after her grandfather had died when she’d inherited the running of the club and had very much needed a friend who understood kink while she explored her own kinky side. That meant for most of our friendship I’d been the one giving the advice. I was the older, more experienced, more jaded of the two of us, and it was disconcerting to have her wrinkle her nose skeptically at me. “Is that really it? That seems like a pretty abstract thing to be afraid of.”

  “Who says I’m afraid?”

  Her skeptical look intensified.

  “Okay, yes, I admit the D/s has gotten more intense than I expected. And it happened so fast.”

  “But maybe that just means you’re right for each other.”

  “It’s too early to tell that,” I said firmly. “After the Velcro stage, once the hormones calm down, is when I’ll find out.”

  “If that’s what you’re waiting for, though, I’ll tell you.” Gwen leaned closer. “Axel and Ricki are coming up on their first anniversary and the Velcro stage hasn’t let up yet.”

  “Nor with you and Mal, obviously,” I said.

  “True.” She beamed at the mention of her fiancé.

  Maybe a strong bond between dom and sub was the thing all my previous relationships had been missing. Maybe that was the magic that made the Velcro never come undone.

  And maybe that was another fairy tale, just a little different from the usual Cinderella story. “I don’t know.”

  “Cynic,” Gwen said with a sad shake of her head. “Does he make you happy? Let him make you happy until he doesn’t make you happy anymore. And then we’ll reassess. When are you seeing him next?”

  “I don’t know. I’m the one who invited him to this weekend’s play party. I figure it’s his turn to invite me to something now.”

  “Well, if you want to be old school about it, if he wants the relationship to be more than just sex, his next invitation to you should be to a fancy dinner.”

  “Oh, like he’s going to show up at the door with flowers or something?” I made a dismissive noise. “I’m so not into the candlelight-dinners-and-chocolate-hearts idea of dating. Yuck.” Come to think of it, Chino wasn’t really the flowers-and-hearts type, which I considered a plus.

  “Give him a chance,” Gwen urged as she picked up a rice ball topped with something golden.

  “I am giving him a chance. I’m just trying to slow down, that’s all.”

  “Slowing down can be good if it means you get to enjoy the ride more. Mm, my goodness. Maddie, you have to try this one.” She pointed at another one of the things she’d just eaten.

  I picked it up with care, and put it into my mouth. Sweet, salty, buttery—she was right, it was amazing once I slowed down enough
to savor it.

  “D/s can be pretty scary,” she said offhandedly. “It forces you to learn things about yourself. Sometimes there’s stuff you just don’t want to face.”

  “What did you learn about yourself?” I asked.

  “Not to keep trying to squash my dark side. I kept trying to tell myself kink was just good clean fun, like an extreme sport or a hobby. But Mal reached deep into some twisted fantasies. I think that really is why we did this.” She held up her engagement ring. “I can’t imagine spending my entire life with someone who doesn’t know me all the way down to the core, and the only person who can know that is the dom who dug that deep.”

  That struck a chord. Chino had already dug deeper than anyone else I’d ever been with in my entire life, but that was what he had told me: he wanted to go all the way to the core. “True submission?” I asked Gwen.

  “True love,” she said with a nod. “That’s the proof it’s the real thing. There’s some limit in your mind you think you can’t get past, but when you’re with your dom, you can. There’s no quote-true-unquote love without being totally open.”

  And us fucking would be total consummation. Him asking for my complete submission suddenly seemed less kinky and more downright…romantic. Almost traditional, in a way. I found myself smiling even as I was asking myself, could we get there? He wasn’t asking for me to beg for cock; he was asking me for a deeper emotional commitment. Was I ready for that? “What if it’s not real, though? What if all I want is some kinky fun?”

  “Maddie, I think you passed the ‘just kinky fun’ stage a while ago.”

  “Yeah.” On the other hand, Chino was holding back some things, too, and I didn’t mean his cock. He’d been cagey about where he lived. I still wondered about the female names on his phone. I wasn’t the only one who had to open up a bit more for this to become a real relationship.

  A little while later Ricki arrived. She moved into the booth next to Gwen and slid the tatami door closed. “I’m glad you called. I’m starved.”

  “Didn’t they have food at the thing you were at?”

  “They did, but it was all passed hors d’oeuvres and I was busy trying to close a deal. I wasn’t about to chase caterers all over the place for a scrap of bacon on a toothpick and mess up my lipstick in the process. In fact…” She opened her purse, took out a cocktail napkin, and pressed her lips against it to lift most of it off, then wiped them with the clean corner. “There. Enough of that. Bring on the fish, and some celebratory sake.”

  “Celebratory?” Gwen asked.

  “Yes, because between tonight and what I was doing up north…” She took the clip out of her hair and let it down, shaking it out in relief. “WOMedia is acquiring some new pieces, including a portal you might be familiar with, Maddie: PlayPeople Network?”

  “That’s the site I’m doing the sex toy reviews for,” I said, startled. “I didn’t realize WOMedia was in the business of buying up web companies.”

  “A couple of the main investors felt WOMedia needed to be bigger to have the right leverage,” Ricki said with a satisfied smile. She had started the company only a year ago, when she was fresh out of business school. “So they poured more money in for acquisitions and now I’ll be running a company twice the size it was.”

  Then her stomach growled audibly and Gwen giggled. “The very picture of the young, hungry CEO.”

  Ricki slid open the door with her foot, waved to a waiter, placed her order, and then sat back while he closed it. “Okay, what fire is it that we need to put out next?”

  Gwen started. “Price Lawson is sniffing around Conrad Schmitt. Maddie better tell the particulars.”

  I repeated for Ricki what I’d told Gwen about how I knew Lawson and what his off-base suspicions were, but with a little extra dose of apology. “Your grandfather warned me not to make those deposits too obvious. I got lax. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry because Lawson is a leech.” Ricki shook her head. “That’s not your fault. The question is what to do about it. Hold that thought. I’m going to run to the ladies’ room and wash my hands before my dinner shows up.”

  While she was gone, Gwen patted my hand across the table. “We’ll figure something out. Hey, you haven’t told me how the sex toy review blog is going.”

  “Well, they’ve turned out way sexier than I expected because guess who showed up to help me test out my cameras and equipment?”

  “Oooh, really? Did his manager approve that?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t even think about it.” I wondered if Chino had bothered to tell management. “I just gave him a model release to sign and he didn’t blink. I don’t know if he asked if it was okay to do it or not.”

  Ricki’s dinner, a beautiful ceramic bowl of rice with a veritable rainbow of fish on it, arrived and a few moments later she came back. “I knew the food would show up if I stepped away from the table. Isn’t that always the way? Now tell me everything you know about Price Lawson.”

  “Not that much, other than he left the arts desk at Newsday to start this new venture,” I said. “And the bit I already told you about him hitting on me.”

  She chewed thoughtfully. “I’ve been waiting for something like this to come up. One way Grandpa Cy handled problems like him in the past was to sic Schmitt on them. What do we think happens to Lawson if we tell Schmitt he’s on his tail?”

  “Lawson? What about what happens to Maddie?” Gwen asked.

  “One thing at a time, trying to think this through,” Ricki said. “In the old days Cy had a lot of people in his pockets. He could make a phone call to the right person—an editor, maybe an owner—and get a story quietly killed. But that was then. These days even Schmitt doesn’t have that kind of power anymore. Especially with a new-media guy hot for exposure like Lawson.”

  “I think Cy used to get away with it, too, by convincing editors our family wasn’t ‘real’ news, so it wasn’t against their journalistic ethics to bury a story about our private lives the way it would be something that actually mattered to the public good,” Gwen added. “But Lawson’s making the attack on Schmitt very political.”

  “As you know, Conrad Schmitt is far from my favorite person,” Ricki said. “What about the other extreme? If we let Lawson go after him, what happens then?”

  “I don’t like that plan because there’s too much we can’t control or predict,” I said. “We don’t know if Schmitt will leak the news about the club, or what.”

  “Or even if the Schmitt stuff gets handled… What if Lawson eventually figures out about the club anyway?” Ricki dabbed a piece of fish in a dish of soy sauce and then popped it into her mouth. “I’ve been thinking for a while we need a contingency plan for if the club gets discovered.”

  “What kind of plan?” Gwen poured more tea but was so focused on Ricki that she sloshed some of it onto the table. I surreptitiously swiped my napkin under it as Gwen lifted her cup.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Obviously the classic tactic is just deny deny deny. But with anything salacious enough, denials seem like confirmations. Is there some alternate story we could cook up?”

  “The problem is that the alternate story might seem even worse,” I said. “Lawson already thinks Schmitt’s having some kind of affair. If he wrote down license plate numbers the night of the party he might try to claim you’re running some kind of brothel in the mansion.”

  “That would be worse,” Gwen said. “I’ve kind of wondered actually, for us, would it be so bad if people knew we were into kink? Okay, maybe I don’t necessarily want to retroactively out every movie star who used to frequent the mansion in Granddad’s heyday, but for us? I’ve been kind of thinking people don’t care that much.”

  “Seems risky, though,” I said. Maybe it was different for the two of them: they lived in a mansion and had private security, and they were used to their faces being in the tabloids. But I wasn’t. Yes, I was making sexy videos, but I assumed people who watched that sor
t of thing were cool with it. Having my face printed in the Los Angeles Times next to a “Secret Hollywood Sex Dungeon Exposed” article, on the other hand, could be very different. I didn’t want photographers stalking my every move and baristas tweeting that they had sighted me getting a latté.

  Ricki pushed her bowl aside. There was nothing left in it but rice. “You know, I’ve been making the assumption we have to maintain secrecy just as a matter of course, but you’ve got me thinking, Gwen. Look at all this Purity Values stuff going on. They frame everything about sex as being dangerous for women or oppressing women. But it’s just an excuse to try to turn back the clock on women’s rights. The real oppression is making women think they can’t have full, varied sex lives—or that they shouldn’t. By hiding, we play right into that. I’m not ashamed of what we do.”

  “Not anymore. You’ve changed a lot in the past year,” Gwen said with a smile.

  It was true. Ricki had been a borderline prude when they’d taken over the club and had been deathly afraid of the family secrets being exposed. I didn’t have as much to lose as they did, but I didn’t have the protections they did, either. I shifted the discussion a little: “Well, you know I’m never going to be ashamed of being sex positive. But if we ‘came out’ about the club, what about the rest of the members?”

  “The older ones are mostly middle managers at CTC and subsidiary companies,” Ricki said. “Their jobs are secure. Plus it’s not like we would release their names. But the younger crowd, the actors and musicians and fashion designers we’ve been bringing in? Most of them would love a rumor that they’re members of the most exclusive kink establishment in America.”

  “I can’t imagine that Mal would care, or Axel,” Gwen added with a giggle. “Christina will say it’s ‘on brand’ and want to issue a press release about it.”

  Christina. “Is that the band’s publicist?”

  “Manager, but she’s very publicity-oriented,” Ricki said with a nod. “She’s a gem. Think about it. Most publicity campaigns fail and are ignored. What if we told everyone and no one cared? Could be a win either way.”