Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (79 page)

I watched her reaction across the table. Her face flushed, and her jaw set. I hadn’t seen her blush since the first time I’d kissed her. The red deepened for the next part, which Margie turned up.

“I’ll undo your jeans. I’ll pull them down to the middle of your thighs so it’s hard to walk. You’ll be uncomfortable, and that will please me. Then I’ll get behind you, and I’ll grab a handful of your hair at the back of your head and bend you over that table. I’ll take off my belt, loop it once, and slap it across those sweet white cheeks until you’re pink as a rose and your face is covered with tears. I’ll stop when I can stick two fingers in your cunt and feel how sopping wet you are. Then I’ll fuck you until you beg me to let you come, which I may or may not let you do. That going to work for you? Didn’t think so.”

“Do it.”

I noticed for the first time how shrill and desperate her voice was. At the time, it had sounded like a controlled whisper. On the recording, it sounded like a child’s whine.

“Jess, really.”

“Do it! Start with the hair. Or the pants. Whatever.”

“No.”

“Do it!”

“Stop, Jess.”

“Are you a fucking man? Or do you just beg and cry for what you can’t have? Is that how you get off?”

Then the crash.

Margie paused it. “We’ve heard the rest.”

“Where did you get that garbage?” Rinaldo asked.

“Youtube,” Margie said. “It had seven hundred views this morning. But let me refresh. Huh. Got about forty-two hundred now. Funny what people find entertaining, isn’t it?”

“A woman asking for it,” I muttered. Margie shot me a look, but I was spared the heel.

“She stole my phone.” Jessica’s eyes bore into me.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The singer.”

“Go near her again, and I’ll kill you.”

Margie’s heel drew blood. I would have to buy her flats for our next meeting.

“Like you did Rachel,” Jessica said through her teeth. “Took sixteen years. But there’s no statute of limitation on murder, even manslaughter, Jon.”

Ryan Myers stood, closing his files. “We’re done here. Ms. Drazen, you and your client can consider our offer. Get back to me when you have an answer. The photographs still stand, as well as the possible pattern of abuse with his current girlfriend, which we’ll be sure to mention to the prosecutor.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Margie stood and shook his hand. Meeting over and, as usual, only the lawyers walked away unscathed.

MONICA

I
wore bruise-hiding clothes for the meeting, but as I wrapped my scarf around my neck, I wondered if Jonathan would come back to me before or after they were gone. My eyes welled, but I choked it back. Self-control. A woman of grace. I had to be that. I could crash after the meeting.

The car was, in a word, themostfantasticthingever. Fuck Jonathan. I got to the meeting feeling as though I was the architect of a major planetary takeover. I would return the car as soon as I was done there, but until then, it was like a space pod in a science fiction movie. Up the elevator, I told myself the usual.
My name is Monica. I stand six feet tall in heels. I am descended from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I sing like an angel and growl like a lion. I am music. I am a goddess.
I choked on the last word because it was his, but I believed it. I didn’t think I ever had before.

I expected to be awed by the size of the lobby or the glass-enclosed conference room, but I wasn’t. The dark wood floors, the receptionists’ desk that put their heads six inches above the person they were talking to, the marble staircase to the executive offices, all of it would have given me an anxiety attack six months earlier. But on the day I actually had a meeting that would have sent my friends into fits of envy-laced congratulations, I felt not a bit of tension or worry. Everything was in its box. Every emotion, positive or negative, was put away.

I understood what Jonathan found so appealing about self-control. I was the master of my body, my feelings, my words. I was fully in the moment, keeping my shit together. I was unattached to the results of the meeting. I was only concerned with being
in it.

I’d heard those sentiments before, but I only realized that I had internalized them as I waited to be brought to a meeting where I was but a single, struggling singer in a room full of people who could make my dreams reality. I had what they needed. I had the music.

Carnival Records didn’t have a cutting edge reputation. They weren’t “street.” They recorded gangsters and drug addicts, same as anyone, but internally, they were old school and buttoned-up. The office was all business. They weren’t there to create or be part of an arts community. They took care of business. That was all. So though I’d worn a yellow dress with cream shoes, a cream scarf to cover Jonathan’s marks, my hair in braids, and red lipstick bright enough to stop traffic, the employees kept the colors toned down, the lipstick nude, and the arty affectation to a minimum.

I wasn’t waiting long before the receptionist brought me up the stairs, her ass swaying like a pendulum in her Robert Rodriguez skirt, big cloppy shoes silent from practice. She led me into the conference room. “Would you like some coffee?”

Again, Los Angeles was spread before me from Wilshire to the haze of the horizon. “Tea would be great. Just plain.”

She smiled and left. I didn’t sit but looked out the window onto the city of Los Angeles and the miasma of smog over the east side. Windows looked out into the hallway and all the blinds were up, so everyone in the office could see where Harry was and who he was talking to. He came into my sight, flanked by an entourage, mid-conversation. He smiled and waved through the window to me, stopping to finish talking to Eddie Milpas and an older woman who had a very important point to make, apparently. Two younger women flanked with notebooks and smart suits. A young man with three days of facial growth and a plaid shirt with slacks, an intern from the looks of him, opened the door when Eddie pointed to it. The gaggle of them strolled in.

“Ms. Faulkner,” Harry said.

We had handshakes and introductions. Eddie and I exchanged a meaningful look that acknowledged we’d already met. I tried to put an innocuous expression on my face to tell him I wasn’t going to wrestle with him over Bondage Girl in front of his boss. Everyone sat.

We had almost exactly the same small talk as every other meeting I’d attended. Traffic first. Los Angeles neighborhoods next. Some personal family stuff from Harry about his kid’s Little League. I avoided a conversation about baseball that could have gone on for days.

“Well,” Harry said as if he was cutting in on his own conversation, “it was something else to hear you perform last week. Wasn’t what I expected to see when I came out there.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

Jerry, the producer who first recorded me playing “Collared” with a theremin, blasted in wearing a navy jacket and a windowpane shirt with the top three buttons undone “Sorry, sorry.” He winked at me.

Harry gave him a smile that could have been swapped for a glare with no change in the message, then turned back to me. “Everyone in this room has seen you play.”

I hadn’t expected that. I thought they might have all heard Jerry’s recording, but apparently, they all stopped by Frontage at some point. Of course, Harry had heard me play the B.C. Modern.

“We’re all very impressed,” he said. “Eddie and I have been discussing some marketing strategies, and he’s come up with some ideas that are out of the park.”

Customer service smile.

If it was Bondage Girl, we were going to have a very short meeting.

If it was me pretending I was some sort of expert in the art of submission, I was taking my little F-type Jaguar home, picking up Darren, and going up and down Mulholland until I needed to hit a gas station. Then I would bring it right back to Griffith Park with an empty tank.

“Out of the park, huh?” I said. “I’m excited to hear it.”

“Were you considering doing more work like you did at the B.C. Mod show?”

Without Kevin?

Could I? I wasn’t visual. I had taste, I could put stuff together, but I didn’t have what Kevin had. “I’d like to, but it’s complicated. That was a one-off.”

He waved his hand. “It’s an attitude. The work will follow, if that’s what you want. We want to brand you something like a Laurie Anderson. An all-around package. A musician, yes, but also an artist.”

“We want to introduce you around to some of L.A.’s art patrons,” Eddie broke in. He seemed on board with the new strategy. I hoped he’d thought of it, because if he was just along for the ride, it would be half-assed. “There’s an event Thursday night at L.A. Mod. The Collector’s Board gala. Very big thing.”

“It’s short notice,” I said. I had work, but I could switch a shift. Work wouldn’t stop me. Jonathan had been clear he wasn’t going, but maybe that had changed. I didn’t know how I felt about seeing him under those circumstances.

Harry picked up the thread. “It’s very short notice, but this event is only once a year. Next year, it’ll be too late. We want your face there, photographed with Carnival Records.” He indicated Eddie. “An artistic partnership.”

I don’t know what expression I wore, but I wore it long enough for Eddie to break the silence.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Can I get back to you on Thursday night?”

“No problem,” Eddie said with the same tone he’d used the last time we met, as if
maybe
really meant
yes
. He held out his hand to one of the assistants, and she handed him a piece of paper. He passed it to me. “These are the terms we’re offering.”

I looked at the paper, but the words and numbers swam before my eyes. I bit my lips between my teeth to keep from smiling.

MONICA

I
couldn’t drive. I kept hitting the gas pedal too hard and taking unbelievable risks because that fucking car moved like a Serengeti cat. I had a heart-lightening exuberance I hadn’t felt since, well....ever.

I needed a lawyer. The problem was artists didn’t hire entertainment lawyers. I couldn’t call someone out of the phone book or get a recommendation from a friend and hire an entertainment lawyer for a ridiculous hourly rate. Entertainment lawyers took on clients they believed in and either charged seven-fifty per billable hour or took a percentage of the contract’s value. They didn’t just look over a contract; they negotiated it, and negotiated hard. The big ones were picky. They weren’t wasting their time on a negotiation where their client had no leverage.

I pulled over, parking by a meter on LaBrea. I called Jonathan but got a recorded message in a soothing female voice telling me the subscriber wasn’t available. I’d never heard that one. I didn’t go to voice mail. Just nothing. Fuck it. I played with my phone until the web told me the number I was looking for.

“Hi,” I said when I got a pick up. “This is Monica Faulkner. I’m looking for Margaret Drazen.”

“Hold please.”

I waited. I was sure I’d be sitting at the side of the road in my white convertible for a good long time. Her firm was huge, her name was on the door, and I wasn’t even a client.

“This is Margaret,” Margie said.

I sat straighter, pausing because I didn’t expect her to pick up. “Hi, uhm, this is Monica. Jonathan’s...” I paused again because I didn’t know how to describe myself.

“Yes. Hello. Nice to hear from you. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I really hate to do this. I feel like I’m imposing on you.”

“You don’t need me to help you move or anything, do you?”

“No. I need a lawyer.”

“Fancy that,” Margie said. “I’m a lawyer, and I got a staff of them running around here.”

“I know, but I need an entertainment lawyer. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to use Jonathan to get ahead. I’m just in a bit of...well, a great position, actually. And I need help with some contract negotiations. So I’m sorry, but—”

“My dear,” Margie said, her voice warm and comforting, “don’t you realize? You’ve turned my brother around. You may live to regret this, but you’re one of the family now.”

She seemed so happy, I couldn’t tell her about the previous night.

JONATHAN

“T
hat’s Steinbeck country,” I said, watching the waitresses work the floor.

“Yeah,” said the blonde in the blue dress. Her friends were ten feet away. “They made us read all that in school. I’m more of a Heinlein, Ellison girl myself. You?”

She was lovely. The perfect vision of womanhood in a simple, short blue dress and heels. Not slutty. Fair hair twisted up. Warm smile through pink lips. Fingertips at the wine glass she sipped from. She was smart, and we were both sober, which was also nice.

“Modernists, I guess. Pynchon, that kinda thing. Ever read
Mason & Dixon
? It’s hilarious.”

“None of that stuff in the Salinas library,” she smiled. “Sheriff Traulich would burn it himself.”

I normally wouldn’t talk to a woman at my own bar, and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t sleep around. But that morning, I’d run over a silver heart Harry Winston keychain as I pulled out. Since it felt insignificant, like an out-of-place stone, I opened the gate and continued. I almost hit the white Jaguar parked across the driveway on the street.

The return of my gift had hurt, even though it shouldn’t have. I should have expected it. Of course Monica wouldn’t accept it after what happened. She was still honorable. I’d managed to leave that intact. I looked in the glove compartment for the navel ring and didn’t find it. I was sure it would turn up on my desk.

But it didn’t, and that confused me. I’d gone up to the bar to verbally pistol-whip Freddie about hiring a sixteen-year-old to carry drinks, and to think about not thinking about Monica. The first got done, the second was interrupted by the blonde in the blue dress.

“...and they all play country music,” she said.

I’d missed something, and I didn’t care. I’d never actually needed to care before, but that had changed. The woman in a blue dress was a nice person, by all accounts, but I had no interest in sleeping with her.