by CD Reiss
“What kind of people?”
“She got custody of most of our friends. I do business with some of them. Others have just been in the same circles too long.”
“Which sister you taking?”
“Deirdre, I think. Are you going to pretend you don’t know me?” His phone buzzed again.
I slid off the bed. “We’ll see if I even go.”
I went into the bathroom, a huge white room with a separate shower and tub. Every corner was clean, as if little gremlins lived under the sink and scrubbed the place while he flattened women on the bed.
I had no idea if I was going to L.A. Mod. It was a black tie thing, and I didn’t have anything to wear. And there was the Kevin issue. Jonathan would be there with Deirdre, who had given me dagger eyes just the night before. If I were being honest with myself, I would admit I was just making excuses. I didn’t want to be in Jonathan and Kevin’s line of sight at the same time. I couldn’t stand any unmanageable drama just as my career was rousing itself.
I heard Jonathan through the door, mumbling. Not a business call. Then it went quiet. I peeked into the bedroom. He was gone, but my dress was laid out on the chair. I put it on and fished my underwear and shoes out from under the bed.
I went downstairs. Though I’d been to Jonathan’s before, I hadn’t paid attention to what he had on the walls.
One couldn’t go through music school without an immersion in all the arts, and Kevin had continued my education with his passion for all things visual. So once I was fully clothed and paying attention, I recognized a Kandinsky in Jonathan’s living room. I saw the Holbein over the mantle and the Mondrian studies in geometry in the corner. I didn’t linger though, because I heard him in the kitchen. I didn’t want him to think I was prying.
I followed his voice to the kitchen, realizing he wasn’t speaking English, Spanish, or Korean. A middle-aged, dark-skinned woman with Asian features and wearing a cleaning smock smiled at me.
“Do you drink coffee?” Jonathan asked when I walked in.
“Not really.” I leaned on the counter. “I like it with milk, and dairy’s not good for my voice. So, let me guess. The lady you’re talking to is Philippino?”
“Good call.”
“I do live in Los Angeles.” I smirked. “You speak, what is it called?”
“It’s called Tagalog, and yes—”
“You live in Los Angeles.”
He smiled. “Ally Mira washed your dress.”
“That was very kind.”
“She is. So, seriously, are you going to this thing tonight?”
“Kevin dragged me to a thousand art shows when we were together, and I’m just not into another one.”
“That was Teresa on the phone,” he said. “She says you met Deirdre last night?”
“Briefly. Very tall. Big curly red hair.”
“She got alcohol poisoning.”
“That’s terrible.”
“That’s Deirdre. Theresa was watching her, and she didn’t know Deirdre had a flask. So Theresa’s counting drinks and Deirdre’s off to the bathroom twelve times. Do the math on that.” He came toward me. “They have her on a B vitamin IV drip, and she’s already cursing the nurses.” He put his thumb on my cheek, and I raised my face to kiss him. “You sure you’re not going?” he said. “I can give you a lift.”
“That would be like us going together.”
“Would that make you uncomfortable?”
“No.” I put my hands on his chest to caress him through his T-shirt. “I think it might make you uncomfortable.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist. “Tell me more about me.”
“You take your sisters out, and you meet your women in private. You said you and your wife, sorry, ex-wife, still hang around the same circles. You don’t want her to see you with an actual woman. And don’t make a crack about your sisters being women.”
He looked up for a second, and I got a full view of the muscles and veins in his neck. I was right, or at least close.
“I can go alone,” he said, looking at me. “I’m a big boy. But I don’t want to. So if you’re going, this non-creative wants to go with you, courtesy be damned.”
The offer was compelling. I hadn’t planned on going because I didn’t want to stand in a corner and watch Kevin work the room. I didn’t want to make small talk with his friends, and I didn’t want to get the death-eye from whatever little hipster groupie was chasing him. Jonathan would be a nice buffer.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll let your handsome ass drag me to a black tie thing at L.A. Mod. But you’ll owe me.”
“What exactly will I owe you?”
“You pick.” I stepped away. The call Gabby and I had to make had started worrying the back of my mind. “Whatever it’s worth to you. If it makes me scream and yell your name, even better.” I kissed him quickly. “I have to go.”
I walked toward the doorway, but I didn’t get past it before I heard him say, “What are you wearing?”
I stopped and turned. “Why?”
“Because you’re a beautiful woman, and what you wear is important.”
“If I’m going to embarrass you, I can just stay home.”
He stepped forward and grabbed me around the waist. “Jessica makes art because she has so much money she’s bored and because she has the sharpest eye I’ve ever known. If she’s going to see me with you, she’s not going to see you wearing Target.”
I looked him in the eyes. “Really, Jonathan? You never seemed like the catty type.”
“I also want to see you in something better. I’m sorry. Come on. Go to Barney’s and talk to Lorraine. She’ll fix you up and bill me.”
“Now I’m the one who’s really uncomfortable.”
“Please? Just go. And if you spend less than three thousand dollars, I’m spanking you and sending you back to Wilshire Boulevard.”
“I’ll come in just under three large then. And not because I have any intention of returning to that side of Wilshire.”
nine
I stood under the shower head with my hands on the wall, letting the water scald my back. My head drooped, and my hair fell in front of me. I couldn’t move without aching, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the insides of my thighs through the steam.
At first I’d thought they were dirty. When I touched them and felt a sharp pain, I knew they weren’t dirty. They were bruised.
I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror. My ass, the area just below it, and between my legs were black and blue. It hurt to move. My pussy was so sore, it had hurt to clean myself. I heard a soft tap at the door, and Gabby asked, “Mon? Is that you?”
“Yeah. You need to pee?”
“Yeah.” She started to open the door. Gabby and I saw each other naked and stood in the same room to pee all the time, but I couldn’t let her see me that way. I looked as if a shark had tried to bite me in half. I grabbed the door handle and pulled it closed. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine, I just….” I had no excuse. “Give me a minute.”
I wiggled into a tee and jeans I pulled from the hamper, cringing from torn muscle and broken blood vessels. I snapped the door open. Judging from her clean clothes and brushed hair, she’d been up a while.
“Where did you go last night?” she asked.
“I saw Jonathan.” I brushed my wet hair while she peed.
“Oh, really. Well? How was it?”
“He knows how to fuck, that’s for sure.”
“Better than Kevin?”
“It’s the difference between a man and a boy.” I slid my toothbrush out of the cup and got to the point. “I figure we should call WDE at about ten-thirty. Those guys don’t get in until ten, and I want to give him a chance to get his jacket off and bang his secretary, but I want to catch him before he goes into a meeting.”
“I’m nervous. Are you nervous?”
“Yeah. Actually, I am.” I lathered up my toothbrush, and Gabby leaned toward th
e mirror, picking some nonexistent crud from the corner of her eye. “But you know how it is,” I continued. “You get all nervous for a call, and you make it and they’re not available. Then they call you back when you’re going eighty on the 101.”
“Since when can you go eighty on the 101? Give me a break.” She held up a tube of aloe moisturizer I got from the farmer’s market. “Can I try this?”
“Go ahead,” I said, brushing my teeth. After I spit, I said, “I want to be clear we come as a set. You and me. Okay?”
“Why?” She seemed unfazed by my suggestion.
“Suppose he can’t get a keyboardist for some band, and then you’re off touring, and what am I supposed to do?” I pulled my hair into strands so I could braid it.
“We should give ourselves a name.” Gabby pushed me onto the toilet. I winced, but she wasn’t looking. God, sitting was going to be torture today, and maybe tomorrow.
Gabby had braid mojo. Our first year of Colburn, we made ninety percent of our friends because she could braid like a magician. She picked up the strands I’d started. I turned my head so she wouldn’t see me grimace at the pain in my behind.
“I really liked Spoken Not Stirred,” I said. “But Vinny reps them.”
“That wasn’t the last cool name we have in us,” Gabby said.
“I guess it depends on what he wants out of us. Am I recording my own stuff? But how could he want that? He doesn’t even know if I can write a freaking song.” I gestured with my hands and saw the bruising around my wrists. Fuck. I slipped them between my legs, wishing I’d worn long sleeves.
“You can, Mon. Your songs are amazing.”
I let her ministrations tickle my scalp. “What I’m saying is, if it’s my stuff, then that’s one name, but we’d need a whole band. If it’s just you and me, that’s a totally different sound. Which is fine, but even then, are we writing new material? Or are we doing Irving Berlin?”
“He might not even know what he wants.” She concentrated on the strands, looping one around the other, tugging and pulling, straightening and separating the lengths with a black comb.
“He knows,” I said. “Those sharks don’t start swimming around unless they’ve smelled blood. Some label is looking for a specific something he thinks we can do. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come out. Trust me.”
She pulled my hair off my neck. “Whoa, Monica.”
“What?”
“Hickey City back here.”
I stood and looked in the mirror. Gabby held up a handheld mirror so I could see the trail of bruises at the back of my neck.
“Fuck,” I said. “Can you braid it to cover it?” I sat on the toilet again and Gabby undid her work. My ass, my wrists, and now my back. If it hadn’t felt so good, it would have been assault.
“Sure, but what’s the diff?” Gabby asked. “It’s a phone call.”
“I’m going to the Eclipse opening at L.A. Mod tonight.”
“Fancy. Did Jonathan invite you?” Gabby moved my hair around in a way that soothed me, and I wanted to purr like a kitten.
“No, Kevin did. But Jonathan is taking me.”
“Kevin?”
“This is such a long story.”
“Are you wearing your little black mini with the bow on the shoulder?”
God, no. Even in my mind, that thing looked cheap and worn. Jonathan had been right, despite my hurt feelings. I had a closet full of black and nothing nice to wear to a black tie function.
“How about this? It’s almost nine. You go take your meds. Come back in here and braid while I tell you everything about last night without the dirty parts. Then, at ten-thirty, we make a call on the speakerphone in the kitchen.”
“Deal.”
ten
Barney’s New York was on the best part of Wilshire, close to Rodeo Drive and near all the big agencies. WDE was half a block away, in its own slick black phallus of a building.
Jonathan had given my name to an apparently very difficult-to-get personal shopper. She called me, and we made an appointment.
A valet drove my shitty Honda behind a Bugatti and a Jaguar and treated me like a princess when, as Lorraine instructed, I asked for the elevator that went to the fifth floor. I was handed off to a guy in a burgundy jacket who led me right down the hall, then right again, and pressed the button for me as if I was too good to lift my arm.
The elevator doors opened into a room rich in wildflowers and tapestries. The white leather couches were empty, but the antique desk was manned by a woman about my age with smooth skin and a ready smile.
“Good afternoon, Miss Faulkner,” she said.
“Monica’s fine.”
“My name’s Shonda. Lorraine will be right with you. Would you like some coffee? Or we have herbal tea?”
“If you have a green or a white tea, hot and plain? I’d love that.”
“Great.” Shonda seemed genuinely pleased to get me tea. She didn’t have the same face I wore when I wanted to seem genuinely pleased to get someone their drinks, but I really wasn’t. Or maybe that was exactly what I looked like.
I didn’t sit but stood at the window, staring at the WDE building. Our call with Eugene Testarossa had been as quick as a hot fuck. Our meeting was in four days at twelve-thirty. High lunch. Location TBA. That meant we were important to him. He wanted to be seen with us. One day, I’d walk into that big black building from the parking lot and take the elevator up as if I belonged there. I’d be a moneymaker, a golden ticket, their canary.
“Ms. Faulkner?”
I turned to see Lorraine, a sixty-ish woman a few inches shorter than me with pixie cut white hair and not a stitch more makeup than was appropriate.
“Hi,” I said.
“So nice to meet you.” She held her hand out, and I shook it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I want to be honest. I don’t know exactly how to do this. I mean, usually, I’d just go shopping, so, if you could kinda guide me through?”
“Of course,” she said, folding her hands in front of her. “You’re looking for something for the Eclipse show?”
“Yes.”
“Follow me.” She smiled slyly and winked at me. “This will be fun. I promise.”
We walked into a room with mirrors and a white carpet. My tea waited for me on a little marble table. Lorraine closed the door behind us.
“I set up some possibilities for you,” said Lorraine, pointing to a rack of garments on hangers. Four mannequins wore other dresses. All of the clothes were black eveningwear. “You probably won’t need any alterations. I pulled from size six per Mister Drazen’s recommendation.”
“He knew my size?”
“He said you were perfect. I had to draw conclusions from there.”
I didn’t want to know how many women he’d sent up to Lorraine. It wasn’t a productive line of thought, and I had a bunch of clothes to look through. I usually loved shopping, but that was nerve-wracking. I felt like a Dodger’s fan at Wrigley Field.
“If you sit,” Lorraine said, indicating a chair, “I’ll show you what I have.”
I sat slowly when her back was turned. I didn’t want her to see the pain in my face. She pulled things from the rack, one at a time, and laid them out. I rejected most as too dowdy or too slutty, which made her laugh. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, which didn’t help. As she got to the last frock on the rack, and I knew from the length it wouldn’t work, I imagined myself walking into the L.A. Mod. Who would I see? How did I want to present myself? I’d be with Jonathan, but who would see me besides him?
She didn’t seem impatient or put out at all when I rejected the last thing and said, “I think I decided something.”
“Oh, good.”
“I want to look like an artist.”
She looked at me for a second, hands folded in front of her again, and winked when she said, “I know just the thing.”
She left and came back in a second flat. The dress was black, naturally, and soft to the touch
, yet stiff enough to hold a shape. The skirt hit at the knee, with a raw edge and strips of fabric dropping from below the hem, like a deconstructed fringe. The bodice was plain, but the shoulder straps crisscrossed each other along the back and front, making an asymmetrical web of lines across the shoulders.
“It’s gorgeous.”
“Try it on.”
I went into the dressing room. The dress felt like magic on my skin. The difference between a Target dress and a designer dress brought to me by a personal shopper wasn’t the way it made me look, though I looked like the best version of myself. It was the way I felt inside it. I felt like a queen.
Until I got out of the dressing room, turned around, and saw the bruises on the back of my neck.
“Crap.” My face went hot red.
Lorraine waved the concern away. “We have something for that down at the makeup counter. I’ll get it for you. Don’t you worry. I’ve seen much worse. And I’ve seen wealthy brats who wanted something that showed those marks off.” She shook her head. I smiled at her. She made me feel comfortable, which I guessed was her job, but it was a gift. If she wasn’t there, I’d be very, very ashamed.
“I love this dress,” I said.
“You look lovely,” she said. “Do you have shoes?”
I hadn’t even thought of that. “I guess not.”
“And something nice to wear underneath?”
“Oh, I don’t need anything like that.”
Lorraine looked at me in the mirror. “It’s not about what you need, dear. And it’s not for you.”
“I guess I should spend a little something on him then?”
“Exactly.”
eleven
After shopping the fifth floor at Barney’s, my room looked messy and dim. My mirror made my body squiggle. The walls were cracked, and the floor was scratched down to the raw wood. Even through that, the dress was perfect on me. The bracelets I’d bought to cover my bruised wrists clinked and clanked when I spun hard enough to make the skirt wave. I’d tried to protest that the red soles of the shoes didn’t go with the black dress, but Lorraine insisted they were fine, and since she’d rejected so many things on my behalf before that, I felt pretty sure she wouldn’t bullshit me.