Tease (8 page)

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.”

CHAPTER 11

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.

The bill came, and though I wasn’t responsible for paying it, I had to sign off on what I was taking out of the store. Lorraine had slid it across Shonda’s little desk with a smile. I checked the items and then the price. It came to two thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine dollars.

“I know I spent more than this,” I’d said. “I saw the price on the shoes.”

“Well, you caught me,” she’d said. “You’re not supposed to see the price tags. So if you don’t tell anyone you saw it…” She paused and smiled to let me know it really wasn’t that big a deal. “I’ll tell you. Mister Drazen asked that the bill say this number no matter what. He said you’d get the joke.”

“I get it all right.” I’d signed, trying not to smile too wide. But as I looked at myself in my bedroom mirror, I smiled again.

Gabby had done my hair to cover the bite marks, tsking the whole time and making me giggle. I’d told her what I could about the night before, leaving out the parts that made my thighs black and blue. She did a church lady voice that made me laugh so hard I thought I would break a rib. We were in the bathroom playing with my makeup bag when the doorbell rang.

“God,” I said, “this is ridiculous. I feel like I’m going to prom.”

“You didn’t go to prom.” Gabby ran some hand cream over her fingers. “You and Darren stayed in the limo making out.”

“And you and Bennet Provist? In Elysian Park?” I popped tubes and pencils into my little makeup bag.

“Yeah. Excellent prom.”

“Mon!” Darren shouted from the living room. “You have a gentleman caller!” Oh God, was Darren going to embarrass me? I ran out to do damage control.

Jonathan was by the doorway, looking too big for the space, wearing a tuxedo cut for him and no one else. He and Darren were smiling.

“Yes, sir,” said Jonathan, “the dance is chaperoned.”

“I want her home by eleven.”

I stepped into the living room before the joke got old, and Jonathan saw me in my new black dress. He liked it. He pressed his lips together to suppress a smile that would have mortified me in front of Darren and Gabby.

“You clean up nice,” I said.

“Obviously you were intending to clean up in that old thing as well.”

I snapped my bag shut. “Good thing the Salvation Army was open late.”

He held out his hand, and we laced our fingers together.

“You met Darren, I guess?”

“Yes. He mentioned his shotgun.”

“This is Gabby.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jonathan said.

“Hi.”

“Okay, great,” I said. “Let’s go.” I pulled him out the door. I saw Lil standing outside the Bentley, which looked damn near vertical parked on my hill.

Darren stood in the door and wagged his finger. “Remember what we talked about. Not a minute later, young man.”

Jonathan walked backward a step and waved to Darren. “Eleven tomorrow morning, yes, sir.”

“Hi, Lil,” I said. “How did you enjoy my hill?”

“Quite a ride,” she said. “I want to try it in the Jag.”

“Be careful.”

“I was born careful, miss.” She opened the door for us. I slid in, and Jonathan got in right after and sat facing me. Behind him, the partition between us and Lil was shut. We sat quietly for ten seconds. My eyes must have eaten him alive as much as his undressed me. By the time the car started rolling, we were on each other, lips searching, tongues twisting, hands testing how far they could get before we risked wrinkles and stains.

He put his hands up my skirt, and when he felt the garter, he whispered
oh
into my ear. But I cringed because he’d gone up high enough to touch the bruises. He pulled back and said, “Let me see.”

I pulled the skirt to the top of the stockings.

“Monica, are you shy all of a sudden?”

“Don’t freak out.”

“I guarantee you I’ll freak out.” His tone told me he didn’t mean “freak out” in the same way I did.

I pulled the skirt up to reveal the black silk garters, and though the fronts of my legs were fine, he could definitely see the damaged insides.

“I did this?”

“We did it. I shouldn’t have worn garters, but they were so pretty.”

“Turn around.”

I turned to face the back window, my knees on the seat cushion, my hands on the back of the seat, steadying me. He touched me when he pulled my skirt up, his fingers barely grazing my skin. He didn’t hurt me, but the anticipation of pain made me flinch anyway. He kissed where I hurt, lips soft and yielding. “I’m sorry,” he said as he kissed the backs of my thighs.

“Don’t be. It was worth it.” He pulled my dress down and gently guided me back to sitting. I took his hands. “I just got a little bruised, but I was never scared.”

 “I feel terrible.” His elbows rested on his knees, a posture I remembered from the morning I saw him talking to his ex-wife on the back patio. His eyes searched mine, looking for any hidden anger.

“Okay, stop it. Really. I’ve never had sex like that in my life. The bruises will heal. My brain chemistry is what’s totally fucked.”

“That’s a high compliment. I should say thank you first.”

“You’re welcome.”

He held his hands over my thighs. “I’m afraid to touch them.”

“Do it.”

“I’m going to San Francisco for a few days. By the time I get back, these should be healed enough I won’t have to worry about hurting you.”

“I remember asking for it.”

“God,” he whispered, “so do I.”

He put his hands on my neck and kissed me all the way to the museum.

CHAPTER 12

We walked hand in hand to the L.A. Mod from the parking lot, taking an extra turn around the block. His dry palm against mine, the tracks of his thumb drawing circles on the base of my wrist, and the sound of his voice seemed to have a direct line to the heat in my crotch, which pulsed to its own beat after the make out session in the car. 

The museum had been built on one of the busiest streets in the city, set back to leave room for a granite courtyard flanked by steps on either side that led to a patio a flight up. The gathering began in the courtyard. Jonathan introduced me to thirty people, none of whom stuck in my mind. Gabby would have had a field day drawing connections between everyone, but all I saw were the expensive dresses and cufflinks. I saw why Jonathan had insisted I go to Barney’s. I would have stuck out like a sore thumb in my cotton shirtdress.

“When you sent me to Barney’s, you were saving
me
from embarrassment,” I whispered after another introduction. I held Jonathan’s hand, leaning into him as if he was a string bass.

“I just wanted you to fit in.”

I squeezed his hand and looked over the crowd, my eyes scanning the staircases.

“Why are you nervous?” he asked. “I’ll introduce you to anyone you want.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Kevin.” I looked right at Jonathan when I said it. I was a little ashamed to have my eyes peeled for my ex-boyfriend while I was with my current lover, but I had no illusions about my future with either man. “I’m looking out for Kevin. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. I just suddenly want to avoid him.”

“Monica, when you’re with me, you don’t need to be nervous about seeing Kevin or anyone else.” He led me up the stone stairs.

“I’m not nervous.”

“You better keep the truth on those lips.”

I shook my head and looked away. I saw her at the top of the stairs: Jessica Carnes. She didn’t photograph well. She looked gorgeous on film, but in person, she was exquisite. She wore a long white dress over her straight, slim figure and low heels on small feet. She saw us, or rather Jonathan, and excused herself from the couple she was speaking to.

Jonathan squeezed my hand. I looked in his direction and spoke close to him, keeping my lips as still as possible. “And this is who makes
you
nervous.”

“I hate this,” he said.

“We can lean on each other. Then you can take me home and bruise the rest of me.”

“The things that come out of your mouth.”

“They please you?”

“Yes.” He looked at me and took one long blink before facing his ex-wife. “Jess, how are you? Congratulations!” His smile was so wide I thought his face would snap. It wasn’t a happy smile. They kissed each other’s cheeks, his hand on her bare shoulder.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m glad you could come.” She made a quarter-turn so she faced me completely, her sky-blue eyes twinkling with icy delight. “We haven’t met.” She held her hand out.